West commends the New York City Council for the recent passage of the new law, “Requiring direct telephone access to 911 service.” The passage of this law ensures that New Yorkers using multi-line telephone systems (MLTS) in certain businesses and City agencies have easy, direct access to 9-1-1 service in an emergency.
The law is modeled on Kari’s Law, so-named in honor of Kari Hunt whose tragic passing in 2013 alerted the nation to the dangers of requiring a dialing prefix to access 9-1-1. Simply, this new NYC law will allow users of these MLTS to dial 9-1-1 without requiring any prefix, post-fix or trunk access code. In addition to the direct dialing provision, the law also requires that on-site notifications be issued when 9-1-1 is dialed and that calls must be directly delivered to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP).
