Palo Alto Asks FCC to Investigate Phantom Calls that Flooded Dispatch Center
By Jesse Dungan, San Jose Mercury News
Original publication date: Feb. 17
Palo Alto, Calif. — The Palo Alto Police Department on Wednesday asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate a mobile device that flooded the city’s emergency communications center with 566 calls over a five-hour period in January, according to a police official.
“I asked (the FCC) to open an investigation … on the problems this device was creating,” said Charles Cullen, technical services director for the Palo Alto Police Department. “And that’s where they have jurisdiction, because it’s a mobile device.”
The phantom calls started pouring into the city’s emergency communications center the night of Jan. 13 and continued into the early morning hours of Jan. 14. Cullen said it appears the device was in a Mercedes-Benz and is also likely responsible for flooding the California Highway Patrol’s Vallejo dispatch center with 2,225 calls over a roughly 21-hour period between Jan. 25 and 26.
He said Continental Automotive Group — the manufacturer of the device — told authorities the device in both incidents had the same electronic serial number.
CHP investigator Krista Crocker met with Cullen on Tuesday and told him she figured out earlier this month the device was located in a Mercedes-Benz at Insurance Auto Auction in Fremont.
The car was totaled and in a San Carlos auto repair shop before being taken to Insurance Auto Auction, Cullen said.
It’s possible the Mercedes-Benz initially crashed in the Palo Alto area, which may have prompted the device to call the city’s emergency communications center, but police have no record of a collision involving the car, Cullen said. Police have yet to reach the registered owner to sort out the details.
Crocker said the device started calling the CHP dispatch center in Vallejo as the Mercedes-Benz was being towed from San Carlos to Fremont.
She identified the Mercedes-Benz using the vehicle identification number provided by Continental Automotive Group. The dispatch center’s software pinpointed the area where the calls originated, she said.
Crocker’s investigation ended with the deactivation of the device.
“The scope of my investigation was solely to locate the source of the 911 calls,” she said.
Cullen, however, said that he is continuing to investigate what caused the device to malfunction in the first place.
He said he is concerned the problem could happen again if the car is salvaged.
Through the FCC’s investigation, Cullen hopes to learn whether anything can be done to prevent similar incidents, how many of the devices exist and whether it has happened elsewhere.
“The FCC was very responsive and interested in the issue,” he said.
Mercedes-Benz spokeswoman Donna Boland said she was aware of the phantom calls to Palo Alto’s dispatch center and that police had contacted the carmaker’s legal department. However, she did not know about the Vallejo incident.
A device that can call 911 directly in the event of a major crash was installed in some Mercedes-Benz models, Boland said. However, the carmaker in 2009 switched to a new emergency services and navigation system that contacts a third-party call center and limits the number of calls.
Boland said she didn’t know what caused the device to activate in the Palo Alto case, and wasn’t familiar with all of the details.
“The bottom line is that it’s not the way the system was designed to operate,” Boland said, “and it’s not the way it usually operates.”
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E-mail Jesse Dungan at [email protected].
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