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NYC 911 to Accept Cellphone Pics and Video
SpaceAdmiral writes "New York City is developing a plan to allow images to be sent to 911 emergency operators from cellphones. This will likely give emergency operators better information to pass along to responders. They're also planning on implementing a program of street-corner video cameras, as seen in the city of London. According to John A. Feinblatt, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's criminal justice coordinator: 'The more information that the police have and the more quickly that they get it, the more likely that they are going to fight a crime.'" How practical do you think it is to expand this sort of project to cities across the country? Moreover, is it worth the expense?
One aspect of this that could be especially valuable is for the Emergency Medical Services side of 911. I'm a Firefighter/EMT, and responding to a call, the more information we have the better, and pictures/videos could definitely be useful. Often times we get dispatched for things like a hemorrhage or amputation, and its not clearly communicated to us responders what we are going to find - whether it is just someone that lost a fingertip, or if their whole arm is gone (which understandably affects what we'll bring with us to the scene as well as how we manage the whole call. My guess is this probably mostly a result of the people on scene (understandably) freaking out in an emergency and not being able to clearly communicate the severity/magnitude of an incident, so if they could send 911 operators a picture, that would help a lot.