Next step: Tracing wireless 911 calls

PHILADELPHIA - Police dispatchers could do little but listen to Reinaldo Zayas scream as he was tortured to death by a gang of kidnappers.

Somehow, the 25-year-old managed to dial 911 twice from his cell phone after his abduction Monday. One chilling call lasted 18 minutes, during which dispatchers could hear Zayas beg for his life.

Philadelphia, like most big cities, has not upgraded its phone system with equipment that can pinpoint the location of a cell phone when someone dials 911, even though the technology has existed for years.

With Zayas unable to speak, and no way to trace the calls, investigators sat helpless as he was repeatedly stabbed in the buttocks and thigh, then left to bleed to death. His body was found Tuesday inside a van.

If the kidnappers had been just a few miles away, in Delaware County, police might have been on the scene within minutes. The suburban county has one of the rare dispatch centers that has installed computer software that can tell dispatchers almost exactly where a wireless call originates.

"In some cases, we can get within five feet," said Ed Truitt, Delaware County's emergency management director. "It's possible that we could have saved that man's life."

Most 911 dispatch centers have been able to trace calls made from landline phones since the 1980s, but only a few hundred of the nearly 7,000 centers nationwide have systems that can do the same with wireless units.

For example, dispatchers in the Tampa Bay area say they can't trace the exact location of 911 calls from cell phones. The best technology available in the bay area, which depends on the cell phone carrier of the caller, can trace a 911 call only to the closest cell tower. That could be miles away.

In a few hundred places nationwide, a system known as Emergency 911 Phase II can pinpoint cell phone locations using one of two methods: global positioning system chips that communicate with satellites, or software that triangulates a phone's position using signals sent to cell towers.

Zayas' life is not the only one that might have been saved with wireless tracking. In January, dispatchers in New York lacked the technology to trace a 911 call made by four teenagers who died when their rowboat sank in Long Island Sound. The case persuaded officials to accelerate efforts to upgrade 911 systems in New York.

Many places complain that they cannot afford the upgrades.

Delaware County spent $8-million on its system, which went into operation in September. The center handles about 500,000 emergency calls a year, about 55 percent of which are made from wireless phones, Truitt said.

It could cost much more to implement a similar system in Philadelphia's 911 center, which handles 3.3-million calls a year.

Implementing the system nationwide could cost as much as $8-billion, according to the National Emergency Number Association. Only Vermont and Rhode Island have the systems in most call centers.

Not all cell phones and systems are equipped for wireless tracking, but the federal government has ordered all carriers to include the technology by 2005.

- Times staff writer Mike Brassfield contributed to the report.

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