Text-To-911 Services Coming To Osage And Tulsa Counties

The Tulsa County Sheriff's Office is set to announce the regional launch of Text-to-911 services.

The services allow people to text emergency messages to 911. It will be available to the cities of Bixby, Broken Arrow, Collinsville, Glenpool, Jenks, Owasso, Sand Springs, Sapulpa, Skiatook, and Tulsa.

"It's been in place for a couple of months and it proved very useful and instrumental in alerting us to an incident taking place at one of the campuses at Tulsa Public Schools last year. Where we thought there might have been an active shooter and we did find a child with a gun," said Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin.

Osage County will also receive the service, and Rogers County will receive an upgrade to its existing Text-to-911 system. People say this technology will change the way deaf, hard of hearing, and speech-impaired citizens request help during an emergency.

It will also change access to 911 in situations where safety would be compromised if a caller were speaking out loud.