 Deputy Director here for the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, and it's very exciting to be here with this opportunity to share this wonderful news with you. But first off, I wanted to start by saying thank you to CSU Long Beach and the City of Long Beach for hosting this event. It is kind of appropriate because this is where we rolled out our very first Texas 911 deployment back in 2014 with the CSU Long Beach, and so to be here today is a very, it's a good place to come back to, and this location was especially chosen because of that. So text has been out now for nearly 24 years, and it is a primary means of communication with everyone up and down the state, and it has become synonymous with our daily life. And because of that, having Texas 911 available to the residents of LA County and the 75 participating agencies to make this happen is truly remarkable and a wonderful thing. It is important to us all, but it is even more important to those that are part of the deaf, part of hearing or the speech-impaired community, and bringing this capability here is going to be a significant improvement to the way we do business. It's also an alternative though, and we've seen this already to those counties that have deployed to this alternative to making a voice call and the ability to, where speaking aloud, might endanger yourself or others, such as a domestic violence situation or burglary, or something of that nature, this capability has proven to be very effective in those scenarios as well. And finally, I'll say that it's been established now that text travels further, and in those areas where we can't communicate on cellular, those that are in rural areas or isolated areas have been able to send a text message out for help, and that is going to certainly improve the capability for our first responder community to come out and help those in need. You know, the Governor's Office of Emergency Services would like to thank all of the PSAPs involved. The leadership and the unity of effort to bring this home cannot be overstated, and I know that every single member that has been part of this is doing it so that they can bring services to the community to help all of us. And so they are passionate about that, and they want to make sure that we're delivering the best services at all time. I have several members here today with us. They're going to speak as well. I'd like to make some introductions for those from us. First of all, I'm going to have from the city of Los Angeles, Mr. Richard Ray, who's going to follow me, and he's going to talk about the benefits of Text 9-1-1 for the deaf and the hard of hearing and the speech impaired community. From Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, I've got Commander Bill Song, and he's going to talk about the overall picture and what this means for LA County. And then from the LA Police Department, we have Mr. Josh Rubinstein, who's going to talk about some of the success stories that have already taken place, because as you can imagine, while we're officially rolling out today, we have been in a pilot stage to ensure that the technology works, and that this has been going on now for a little bit of time, and so there have been some cases where we received Text 9-1-1, and he's going to share those stories with you, and I think you're going to see how quite remarkable they are. And finally, the California High Patrol will be with us. Assistant Chief Mark Garrett's going to talk about their message. CHP has been a partner with us and has already implemented Text 9-1-1 in a few other counties, and so they're going to talk about their messaging with you. And then, remember, my team, Assistant Director Pat Malin, whoever sees our Public Safety Communications Division, is going to come up and talk about the strategies of Text 9-1-1. Together, we have taken enormous steps to address some of the inequities in our population going forward, and this is an amazing feat and one that is commendable to everybody who's involved. With that, I'd like to say thank you. It's been a pleasure to be here, and I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Richard Ray at this time. Thank you. Thank you, Mitch. That's the wrong mic. All right, let's try this again. Thank you, Mitch. My name is Richard Ray. I work for the City of Los Angeles, the Department of Disability, a work of the American Disability Act, Technological Access, and I am very happy to be here. Telecommunication is one of the most important ways to communicate society today, and with the innovation in technology, we're in an innovation stage right now with technology, and it's driving other technologies that can add capabilities and applications for people's general safety. This innovation also has the goal of expanding the technologies, in parallel with the growth and investment in this mobile wireless world. Now, individuals with disabilities who use these hand-held wireless devices and use them as their primary mode of communication. Historically, these individuals deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, and those with other speech disabilities, they use these short message services or SMS, e-mails, video conferencing, and other communication localities. Now, here in the state of California, there's about 2.2 million individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing. That's deaf, deafblind, and those who have speech disabilities will rely on these emerging technologies in the middle of life-threatening or urgency situations. To write access through the use of simple, easy to remember, three-digit numbers, what's it called, 9-1-1. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission have taken significant steps to provide access to 9-1-1-4 deaf, hard of hearing, and other populations that cannot access emergency services, using the traditional voice communication methods. The state of California, Los Angeles County, all the other government agencies, the wireless industry, and even the emergency services industry have all collaborated to make sure that text-up 9-1-1 becomes a reality for anyone who cannot call 9-1-1 using traditional voice methods. This is very valuable for emergency responders who can interact with individuals with a disability, as well as individuals who might be in a violent or hostage situation. On November 28th, there was a group that I was with at the Sepulveda Basin Party. During this get-together, one individual who could hear, was hearing, actually, thanks, passed out and hit her head on the sidewalk. Another person called 9-1-1, my voice. It just so happened that the telecommunicator received erroneous information. I happened to text to 9-1-1. I was able to provide them the exact information and requested an ambulance. My call was transferred to the fire department, where I provided additional information, excuse me, to the dispatcher. The response I received was, quote, help is on the way. And when the emergency responders did arrive on scene, I informed the telecommunicator that the ambulance had arrived. The response I received was that this session was completed. And if I needed any further assistance in the situation that I could call or text 9-1-1. I was told that if I needed to contact 9-1-1 emergency services, it was important to know the specific area that you're at to give them the specific information. So to wrap it up, I would say, call if you can, text if you can. Thank you very much for the honor of being here. And I would also like to introduce the next speaker, Commander Bill Song. And he's from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Commander Song. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Commander Bill Song from Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. I'm here on behalf of Sheriff Jim MacDonald. First, I'd like to thank everybody that was involved with this to push this out in the large collaborative effort and big kudos to them. The partnering of 77 agencies within the Los Angeles County is a big accomplishment. The Los Angeles County has a population of over 10 million. Only eight states have a large population than our county. Los Angeles County covers over 4,200 square miles, 42 contract cities, 130 unincorporated communities. Last year, 2016, LASD responded to more than 1.1 million calls for service. 33,000 of those calls were calls to 9-1-1. With continued advancement in technology and implementation of next generation 9-1-1 systems, we now have the ability to use text to 9-1-1. We have the ability to transfer 9-1-1 calls and text to 9-1-1 to any of the 77 agencies or 9-1-1 answering systems. We continue to make technological advancements to keep up with the digital world which includes text messaging, the new form of electronic communication. Text to 9-1-1 does not replace a phone call to 9-1-1. It creates another avenue for the public to request emergency assistance when unable to make a phone call. Text to 9-1-1 now provides equal access to emergency services for the hearing impaired. It is a tool for all law enforcement agencies within the Los Angeles County to further provide excellent public safety service by working together more effectively. It is great to see technology allowing our law enforcement agencies to work together in providing the public with another option of communication when they need it. Please remember, call if you can and text if you can't. Thank you for having me. Thank you. I'd like to introduce our next speaker, Josh Rubenstein from the Los Angeles Police Department. Josh. Morning everybody. My name is Josh Rubenstein. I'm the Public Information Director for the Los Angeles Police Department and I'm here to talk about success stories and how this system works. And I have to tell you, such a simple thing which makes such a significant impact. And when I walked in this morning, I got a chance to say hello to Rich Ray over here, told me his story as he just relayed to you. And looking at the smile on his face at the ability to text to 911 is so significant, so impactful and you get the idea of how important this technology is. What I want to tell you about is an incident that occurred in the Topanga Division of the LAPD. And this was a situation where the person who was requesting service will call her the PR, that's what we call it in the business. This person could not make a voice phone call because she was the victim of domestic violence. And I have the transcript of the call and I want to read to you some of the highlights of the call to give you an idea of how Text to 911 worked in this situation. So this is October 11th. This is during the soft launch of Text to 911. And the first text that comes in from our PR says, I need the police over here ASAP. Our 911 operator gets on. City of Los Angeles 911, what's the address of your emergency? Boyfriend beating me. And then this PR texts the address of where this is occurring. He got a gun. Our operator says, where is he right now? Other room. I locked myself in the room. I ran to the room when next door people came to see what was going on. He sent them off. Please hurry. The phrase that you heard from Richard Ray, help is on the way. That's what our 911 operator texted. Thank you. Who are you with? Wrong text. And then we get a description of who this, the suspect was. Are you able to make a voice call? Is it safe to make a voice call to 911? No, he will hear me. Okay. Stay where you are. We're sending the police. The LAPD came and took that domestic violence suspect into custody without incident. This is a situation where the technology worked where was not, this person was not able to call 911 using voice, but they were able to use it using that text method. This is a, I also want to take, make one moment here. Stop for one moment to point out that this is great technology, but there are human beings behind it. And there are 911 operators who are taking those phone calls and answering those texts and they're doing fantastic work. And we can't just celebrate the technology without recognizing the people on the other side of that that are actually dealing with not only voice calls, but text calls as well. The LAPD, we are absolutely proud to be a part of this collaborative investment here in technology for those who have hearing and speaking challenges and for those who can't make a phone call because of the predicament they may be in. And of course that partnership extremely important. And at this time, I want to welcome one of our great partners, California Highway Patrol Assistant Chief Mark Garrett. Thank you, Josh. And thank you for everybody here today, especially Cal State Long Beach for allowing us to get together here and talk about an incredibly important topic. And that's really public safety is what it comes down to. Of course, I have in this fortune of following the most famous person in the room and one of the most dynamic guys we could possibly have here, Josh Rubenstein. But, you know, it's funny, Josh and I were talking before we actually came in here for the press conference. And of course we all know him from KTLA over the years. He's a great weatherman and being in the media world. And back then, of course, we partnered with him and other media outlets to disseminate public safety information and charitable functions that we were engaged in. And it really reminded me that all of this is about partnerships, collaborations, what it comes down to from the Federal Communications Commission to Cal OES and the OES Sheriff's Department, LAPD and all the other agencies here in this county. This is what it comes down to that now knowing that we have Texas Island One is simply one more tool in the arsenal to provide and ensure public safety. We've heard all the very important lines about call if you can, text if you can. And I want everyone to remember to walk away with that. But the bigger picture is this, is that all of us in the public, federal, state, county, local, public, private entities are all working together, all working together to do everything that we can to ensure public safety. And that's what I want everybody to walk away with in the big picture sense. Remember what we're doing here today. You know, the CHP, we've actually done our trials with this. We've done it with some smaller divisions, the Inland Division, which is, I'm sorry, the Inland Empire, Inland Division. And now we have Text 9-1-1 here in Los Angeles County, which is Southern Division of the California High of Patrol. We here in Los Angeles County, the Southern Division of the California High of Patrol, we have the busiest 9-1-1 center in the world. So this is going to be an enormously important platform to operate Text 9-1-1. We actually have the captain, the commander of that facility. We actually have some supervision here, one of our subject matter expertise, one of our dispatch supervisors to answer questions afterwards. But we take this very seriously. We're very excited to actually be able to utilize this system to ensure public safety. And finally, of course, I'm not going to get out of here reminding people that, again, call when you can, text if you can, but never text while you're driving. We don't want this tool to actually add to any problems out there when we're operating a motor vehicle. That is not a smart decision. So with that said, I would like to introduce a video that the California High of Patrol has produced and will be available on the Cal OES website for the public to view on a regular basis. Something we just put together very quickly. We had a great staff did this and I'm very proud to share that with you at this time. This is a free use by the deaf, hard of hearing, hearing impaired, or in situations that are too dangerous to make a voice call to 911. When text to 911 is available in your area, please remember, texting should only be used when you're unable to make a voice call to 911. How to text to 911 in an emergency. Enter 911 in the two fields. The first text message should be brief and contain the location of the emergency and the type of help needed. Push the send button. Be prepared to answer questions and follow instructions from the 911 call taker. Use simple words. Do not use abbreviations, acronyms, or emojis. Keep text messages brief and concise. Make sure you do the following in an emergency. If you can, always contact 911 by making a voice call. Call if you can, text if you can't. If you text 911 and text is not available in your area, you will receive a bounce back message advising. Text to 911 is not available. Please make a voice call to 911. Location accuracy varies by carrier and should not be relied upon. Be prepared to give your location. Translation services are in the development stages and not available at this time. It can take longer to send or receive and maybe receive out of order. Is not available if you are roaming. Text to 911 cannot be sent as a group message. Photos and videos cannot be sent to 911 at this time. Text and drag. For additional information on text to 911 please contact the local law enforcement agency at 911. At this time I would like to introduce from Cal OES, Patrick Mellon. Good morning, it's always nice to go last because you can repeat something that was just put up on the screen. As was introduced, I'm the assistant director of the public safety communications section within Cal OES. And we have within our section the 911 branch. But I'm here to talk about texting strategies. Our short message services is defined by Wikipedia as text messaging a service component of most telephones, worldwide web and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communications protocols to enable mobile devices to exchange short text messages. SMS was not implemented with the intent to be able to support 911 but fortunately it's proving to be a really nice fit. But as you saw in the video, there are some things that the public needs to know about strategies of text to 911. Some of them very important in some limitations. As has been said time and time again this morning call if you can, text if you can't. Currently texting, text to 911 is available in English only. But there are strategies under development at the present time that will make it available in other languages. You cannot send video or pictures to text to 911. Hopefully that will change with the implementation of next generation 911. You cannot send emojis and should not use abbreviations when texting messages to 911. Please send a plain English text. It helps to convey a clear message in a very expeditious manner. Be prepared to give your location accuracies particularly in the cellular arena. Cannot really be totally relied upon so please be prepared to enter your location. Text to 911 cannot be sent to more than one person. So send it only to 911 and that will avoid any confusion. And lastly as was said in the video you will receive a bounce back message stating text to 911 is not available. Please make a voice call if for some reason the carrier does not support text to 911 or if you're in a roaming situation and you're outside your coverage area you could get that same thing. So as I said most of the messages in the limitations were conveyed in the video. But with that I thank you very much for this opportunity to close it out. Thank you Pat. With that I will open it up for any questions that myself and my colleagues can answer for you. So can you walk through the process say I'm in Pomona and I send a text does that go to one centralized location and then they contact Pomona PD or how does that work? So a text will travel to the closest tower and then from that tower it's going to go to the appropriate public safety answering point and that's the location where they're going to take your call. That selection is based off where the most calls should go to. It may need to be transferred but in most cases the majority of the calls that it's going to come to is going to be the same location that they're going to be working to provide your assistance with. But if it does have to be transferred they'll transfer that call to another location and then ensure that you get the support you need from the appropriate location or community that's going to help you. And we hear that it's not available in Spanish yet. It seems, I mean obviously there could be technical reasons but seems like you know if a message is sent in Spanish it may be able to be translated right or what's keeping it back? Yeah, no it's a great question. Certainly we would prefer to have translation services like we have now for all of our languages. We currently have translation services for voice calling that supports approximately five languages in the state of California. We are not there technologically yet so this is the first step for us. LA County is a leader in this area. I mean it's the sixth county that we have for the state of California that's rolling out. We're starting here with English services first and then we're going to find a way to provide that service for really the whole state and then hopefully simultaneously start working translation services as well. It's a technological challenge. What other counties can help? We've San Bernardino, Butte, San Benito, Monterey and Santa Cruz, Contra Costa. Have we seen this anywhere else nationwide? There are other states that have been rolling out Text 9-1-1 with various levels of success. It is the more populist you are and the more numbers that we have. There are certainly more challenges here in California than we have in most places but there are various levels of success depending on which state you're going to. What are the big pitfalls? Well, you have a technological piece where independent agencies you have to get everybody locked in together so that your text control centers or the technological components that interface that allows communication to be transferred amongst agencies. You need to make sure that everybody's on board. Everybody's rolled that out. Everybody's trained. There's a combination of activities that have to be completed to make that work. That's why the leadership that's been shown here in LA County to make this happen is really remarkable and something to be proud of and commendable to everybody who's involved. How long has this been in the works and can you talk about that process? So LA County, you have to correct me if I'm wrong, has been in a soft pilot now for almost a year now and has started this process another year before that. Trying to get everybody to say yes all these independent agencies to say we're on board, we agree. Making a determination and deciding on an agreeing upon the right technological solution for multiple vendors that they can choose from. After they've picked that out, they start that training process, start installing that equipment and as mentioned earlier by Josh, there's some apprehension on how am I going to do this. This is a new form, we've been so used to taking calls and now I'm introducing a new technology. How is this going to work for us? Am I going to be flooded by text? Is it going to block up the system and really make it less timely for you and for the rest of us? And fortunately what we found is that is not the case. The numbers support that people are generally calling when they can and they're only texting when they can't. And so there's been a couple of counties that have given us a longer period of time to examine their calling and it's been averaging about 1% of their calls have been in the text arena. So that's been very successful for all of us. We know that after an earthquake, phone lines can be very busy or don't even go through just because of the amount of people calling. Do we expect the same difficulties or problems with texting? So the short answer is if we are communications in the case of cellular whether it's a voice call or text traveling through a tower, that tower is impacted, it's going to have an impact on our ability to finish that communication line for us. We work with the carriers and we work with the public safety answering to try to build resiliency and redundancy into the systems that are out there asking them to find backup ways to move their data and work for alternate solutions whether it's a portable device to move into place or a microwave system to back up their fiber. But nonetheless it's associated with the cellular piece because that fragility can be damaged in a catastrophic event. Response time. Does it make a difference if you call or text which one's faster than the other? You know what, I'm going to have to defer that question. I don't know if what we're seeing if there's been a substantial difference from it and it's probably more appropriate to compare a language translation service time with a text time versus a voice call time to a time because there's if you were calling asking for language translations but let me see if somebody can phone a friend here and somebody can help me out with that. I'll step in real quick. It's a good question to fair question and personally I don't have any data historically to answer the question but here's what I'll say common senseically that this is why we say call if you can because the direct conversation we're having right now is a lot more direct, a lot more efficient, and a lot more effective than if we're texting back and forth. If I give you a location through a text and it's not complete dispatcher has to reply that same way and then wait for the response rather than say I know you're on the 134 but can you tell me again exactly where you are? So my guess is just again from common sense point of view South of the text is going to be a little less efficient than what I say. It's an added tool in the arsenal to ensure public safety. It's not the answer. It's not the only thing that we recommend you do. We want you to have live conversations impossible but in those situations where it's your safety depends on remaining secreted it's a fantastic tool and it's the best that we can do at that point. See you said what I said in five seconds it took me two minutes. That's exactly right. Spoken words faster than you can hear them. Anything else? Yeah I apologize I was wondering also about next generation 911 I know that's a broader policy question what are we saying on that? Sure. My name is Mitch Medigovic M-I-T-C-H last name is Medigovic M-E-D-I-G-O-V-I-C-H I'm a deputy director with the governor's office of emergency services and as far as next gen 911 that is something that the state of California in partnership with all of the public safety answering points up and down the state are moving forward with we are developing a strategic plan for the state of California for next generation for us and I've also been engaged in a couple of pilot programs pilot studies we have one down here in southern California I went up in northern California now testing a solution that we could try to bring into play in the future to roll out that will enable us with an IP backbone to do a lot more sharing of a lot more information using that IP backbone and also a lot more redundancy to back one another up in the cases where a public safety answering point can't take your calls and your calls can be routed to another nearby answering point so just for clarification there are agencies within LA county that have been operating somewhat of a pilot program but today's roll out is essentially countywide that's correct and we've been fortunate to have individual answering points by individual agencies that wanted to jump on early and join this but really when you roll out in a countywide a roll like this it really shows a tremendous amount of leadership and success because who wants to be in an area where if I'm on this side of the line of text on this side of the street I can't in that agency it's really a lot more difficult to do when you roll out a countywide roll out and so once again why so commendable for the actions that took place here did you get 100% of the agencies? no we did not we have two agencies that have not finished interfacing with us but the vast majority 75 out of 77 as I understand it what are those two agencies? Bell and Bell Gardens are the two that have yet to join us but we're working with them and hope to have them on board as soon as possible alright we can break off for one-on-ones if anyone needs interviews, thank you guys thank you everybody, appreciate your time and attention to text if you