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In March 2015, the Massachusetts State 911 Department and the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security called attention to a little-known, decades-old feature of the state's 911 system when they posted an infographic about it to social media: The 911 Silent Call Procedure, which many state residents were unaware had been implemented back in the 1990s, was created to facilitate communication with emergency responders by callers who could not speak with them due to factors such as physical disability, injury, an impairing medical condition (e.g., choking), or the nearby presence of criminals who might seek to terminate the call and/or harm the caller if they became aware their victim was summoning help: The procedure, which can be utilized with touch tone landlines and cell phones, enables a caller to talk to a dispatcher using a telephone keypad. The dispatcher will ask a caller who doesn't respond verbally to press a key corresponding to the nature of the needed service (1 for police, 2 for fire, and 3 for an ambulance) and will guide that caller through a series of yes/no questions that can also be answered through the keypad (4 for yes and 5 for no): Although similar silent 911 procedures may be implemented elsewhere in the U.S. on a local basis, we could not find any indication that such a system has been implemented on a state-wide basis outside of Massachusetts.
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