An Apple facility that repairs iPhones in California called 9-1-1 over 2,000 times in four months
The calls appear to originate from iPhones being repaired — and at one point, they tied up all six emergency lines for the city of Elk Grove, California
By Kif Leswing
A small city near Sacramento has been dealing with a never-ending string of false emergency calls from an Apple repair facility in town.
Between October 20, 2017 and February 23, 2018, the police department in Elk Grove, California received 2,028 calls on its 911 lines originating from the Apple facility — an average of 16 calls per day.
At one point in January, the calls from the Apple factory were so frequent that they tied up every single one of Elk Grove’s six 911 lines, according to public documents reviewed by Business Insider.
“They lit us up like a Christmas tree,” one dispatcher wrote in an email to other dispatchers.
It was obvious to Elk Grove police that the 911 calls were not real emergencies, but rather, the equivalent of accidental “butt dials,” mysteriously ringing the city’s hotline on an assembly-line scale. For whatever reason, many of the iPhones being repaired at the Apple facility were going rogue and dialling 911. But for city officials trying to stop the nuisance and to ensure that a critical emergency resource was not overburdened, fixing the problem has not been easy.
Despite crediting Apple for being responsive to their pleas for help, Elk Grove officials have been frustrated by the company’s inability to fix the problem. At one point, officials even discussed the possibility of getting the state government involved and sending police to the factory.