How to contact the local police in case of emergency calls

BROADCAST SCRIPT:

Robinson police discovered Tuesday morning that their 9-1-1 cell service was down, with no emergency calls coming in for about an hour.

According to police, this rarely happens, but there are systems in place to forward calls to another department in the area.

What should you do if 9-1-1 doesn’t work? 25 messages Reporter Kadence Cobb asked Robinson’s deputy police chief to find out.

“The best thing you can do is store the non-emergency numbers of all the local police departments in your phone in your contacts,” said Larry Adams.

“These rarely go down, this is a landline and a backup way to call 9-1-1. So you can call this number directly and reach the same dispatcher who takes your 9-1-1 call.”

The Robinson Police Department’s non-emergency number is (254)-662-0525.

If you can’t call, you can text 9-1-1.

“If you don’t get through when you call 9-1-1, you can still try sending a text message to 9-1-1,” Adams said.

“This also goes to the same 9-1-1 dispatcher and they can respond to your text message via SMS.”

However, keep in mind that SMS service outages can also occur – which is what happened over the weekend due to maintenance work in Waco.

25 messages I contacted Waco police and they said service would be out Friday afternoon through Tuesday evening and asked people to call 9-1-1 in case of emergency.