People who need emergency assistance in St. Louis County can now reach 911 services by text message.
The county’s Emergency Communications Commission launched the program Tuesday.
“In an emergency situation, having options is critical,” St. Louis County Executive Sam Page said during a Tuesday press conference.
Officials said it’s better to call 911 if possible – response times increase from two minutes for a phone call to six minutes for texts.
But for English-speaking individuals with trouble hearing or speaking, or people such as domestic violence survivors who may want to summon authorities discreetly, texting could be a better option. Emergency workers are not prepared to respond to texts written in languages other than English.
“It can be an important tool for anyone in a home invasion situation, or anyone in a public place where talking on the telephone safely would be difficult. It's also an important tool for anyone with a disability who needs access to 911,” Page said.
To contact 911 from within St. Louis County, a person can send a text directly to 911. Public safety officials ask texters to include a description of the emergency and the exact location, and to state whether it’s all right for responders to call back. They also advise individuals to avoid internet slang or abbreviations in their messages.
Emergency responders typically do not get a specific street address when people call from a mobile phone or text 911, unlike when they call with a landline.
St. Louis County Police Chief Kenneth Gregory cautioned that the same rules apply to texting 911 as to calling it: Contacting 911 for nonemergency purposes, or submitting a false report, can be a misdemeanor offense. The service is available to report a crime in progress, a fire, a medical emergency, a person in physical danger or a similar situation in which help is needed immediately.
The texting capability is the latest upgrade to St. Louis County’s emergency response apparatus following a 2009 ballot question approved by voters that created a sales tax to support emergency response efforts. Officials have since outfitted 911 dispatchers with a new radio communications system that shares information better, updated technology to better approximate the location of mobile callers and installed 200 tornado warning sirens.
“We’ve converted our legacy 911 system to a next-gen 911 system, with added dispatchers and new screens in front of them that do a lot more than what we could do before. So the focus was to get that in, and this was the next piece,” said St. Louis County Director of Emergency Communications Mike Clouse.
The texting upgrade in St. Louis County is the latest move by officials in the region to improve 911 services. St. Louis broke ground in October 2024 on a new 911 dispatch center in Jeff-Vander-Lou, which is scheduled to open in 2026. St. Charles County officials implemented a new 911 response system in 2023 meant to eliminate delays when connecting mobile calls. An Illinois law went into effect in July 2024, mandating text-to-911 capability across the state.
St. Louis County 911 dispatchers fielded 33,068 calls in May.
