A technological upgrade will help dispatchers at the Seattle Police 911 Center determine a mobile caller’s precise location.
Previously, dispatchers could only tell the precise location of those who called from landlines. Cellphones accounted for 70 percent of all incoming 911 calls in 2017, according to FCC data. “RapidSOS, enabled late last month at no additional cost through the existing Rave 911 Suite interface, provides pinpoint location services to our 911 Center. Previous iterations of cell phone GPS provided latitude and longitude, but locations were generalized and lacked verticality, something common in our urban city,” Seattle Police said in a blotter post Tuesday.