County on Cutting Edge With Cell Phone Tracking

MD Coast Dispatch
Sep. 30, 2005

09/29/2005 OCEAN CITY – Being a popular vacation destination, there are certain things that come with the territory such as care-free beach goers who are often times not familiar with there surroundings at no fault of their own, but new cell phone technology tracking people in emergency situations has already been a success and will continue to save lives.

Michael Cosgrove, an executive vice president of a Maryland marketing communications company and Chevy Chase resident, knows first-hand how Worcester County’s 911 communication system works. He was on vacation in the area looking to relax, do some fishing, and enjoy the annual White Marlin Open, which takes place in the resort at Harbour Island each August. Cosgrove said he was packing up at a condominium in West Ocean City near Sunset Marina when his wife advised him of several things he needed to do before heading home. He was watering his wife’s potted plants when a wasp stung him, and having an allergic reaction to bee stings, Cosgrove thought his body would swell the next day and continued to his car when he started feeling unsteady.

“I just literally passed out,” he said this week, but not after he grabbed a cell phone in his truck and dialed 911.

Cosgrove said he told the dispatcher that he was near Sunset Marina and later awoke to a swarm of emergency personnel. He said the response was immediate and the dispatcher even left several messages on his cell phone trying to make contact with him while he was unconscious.

“I thought it was great response,” said Cosgrove. “Because I had the GPS [Global Positioning Satellite] chip, they knew where I was.”

He was later taken to Atlantic General Hospital, treated and released. Cosgrove said he knows that he could have stopped breathing or been in a worse condition if he wasn’t treated right away and feels the cell phone technology might have saved his life. “I don’t want to know about ‘what if’,” he said.

Cosgrove is just one example of someone who benefited from the new technology, which was implemented throughout the state of Maryland this month.

Maryland is the eighth state in the country to announce that all of its 23 counties can now receive what is known as Phase II wireless calls. The system allows 911 operators to locate a caller and display their phone number and location on a computer within seconds.

The system works through cell phones by targeting a chip that is now in most cell phones, through the phones equipped with a GPS tracking device, or triangulation, which measures signal strength to different satellite towers.

Richard “Buzzy” Bayles, the town’s emergency planner, said the technology is a major asset in helping people and locating someone in distress. He said the resort and the county is at the cutting edge of life-saving technology and continues to look at ways to safeguard their communities. Bayles said the response time is quick, efficient and effective, but said technology changes rapidly and it is vital that emergency response continues to keep up.

“For me, as a former dispatcher, it’s great,” said Bayles.

While the concept of GPS locating devices in cell phones originated as a means to track emergency calls made to 911 response centers, there are some other applications, both positive and negative, that have emerged as a by-product. Law enforcement agencies can use the cell phone as tracking device technology to locate and follow known or suspected criminals.

Ocean City Police Department spokesman Barry Neeb said the Phase II enhancement would benefit the community and assist the police force on several different levels. “The system is two-fold,” he said.

Neeb said that outside of the emergency medical response, which has many obvious benefits, the system can also help local law enforcement track criminals through the use of a cell phone and locate their whereabouts more efficiently. “There are a lot of benefits and uses,” said Neeb.

The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) in 2001 mandated all new cell phones be equipped with GPS tracking devices, meaning most of the cellular telephones currently in use are equipped with the technology. The GPS devices use latitude and longitude readings beamed from satellites to pinpoint exactly from where on the planet the calls are originating.

However, some have questioned whether the cell phone tracking technology represents another infringement on the most basic of civil liberties in a Big Brother sort of way. Using Internet services with names like “Ulocate” and “Wherify Wireless”, employers can track the whereabouts of their employees, parents can keep close tabs on their wayward teens, and suspicious husbands and wives can even track the whereabouts of their spouses.