Hundreds of Accidental 911 Calls to California Dispatchers Traced to iPhone Repair Center

Apple's iPhone repair and refurbishing center has been identified as the source of hundreds of apparently inadvertent 911 calls received by Elk Grove, CA, police and Sacramento County sheriff's dispatch centers over the past five months.

Since October, the Elk Grove Police Department's dispatch center has been receiving about 20 non-subscriber initialized 911 calls per day, said Officer Jason Jimenez, police spokesman. The calls show no service provider for the phone, but the dispatch center has traced them to a cell tower near the Apple campus and determined that they are coming from the phone repair facility, he said.

Efforts to contact an Apple spokesman Thursday afternoon were unsuccessful. Workers in the facility have previously told The Sacramento Bee that part of their jobs was to trouble-check iPhones by seeing if various buttons worked.

The new iPhone X has an SOS function that automatically dials 911 when the user holds down the side button and one of the volume buttons, according to the Apple website.