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NEW YORK -- Trapped on a capsizing 8-foot fiberglass dingy floundering in 33-degree waters off New York, Henry Badillo used his cell phone to make a desperate plea for help.
"We're taking in water.... We're on the Long Island Sound in a boat off the coast of City I ... oh, my God, we're going to die!" Badillo screamed in his 12-second call to a 911 emergency services operator on Jan. 24, 2003.
Badillo, stranded on the boat with three friends, didn't have time to say exactly where he was before the call cut off, and the operator did not clearly hear his reference to City Island, which could have helped to pinpoint the boat's location.
The operator and her supervisor decided they didn't have enough information to request assistance. Badillo and his friends died that night.
Their parents believe they might have been rescued if New York's 911 system was able to trace cell-phone callers' locations, a service that the state has been collecting taxes to implement for more than a decade.
Since 1991 New York state has collected at least $200 million from a surcharge added to every New Yorker's cell-phone bill. The money is earmarked for installing an "E911" service, which uses GPS technology to quickly trace the location of 911 callers on their cell phones.
But instead of paying for a Wireless Enhanced 911 system, the money has gone to the state police, who have spent the funds on departmental dry cleaning bills, ballpoint pens, travel, car leases, grounds maintenance for precincts and winter boots, according to an audit (PDF) conducted by the New York State comptroller's office.
The boys' parents are now supporting a bill (A.3911) to expedite the rollout of the E911 system. The bill -- the Wireless 911 Local Incentive Funding Enhancement Program -- has passed the state Assembly but is stalled in the state Senate.
New York state Assemblyman David Koon is sponsoring the bill. In a recent hearing on Enhanced 911, Koon said that New York budget woes could account for the bill's slow progress through the state Senate. The state is trying to close an $11.5 billion budget shortfall in the new fiscal year.
"All (New York) cell-phone users are surcharged to fund the enhanced system that would have traced the boys," said Barbara Dufty, mother of Max Guarino, one of the teenagers who died in the boating accident. "It is inexcusable that after 10 years and over $200 million in collected surcharge revenue, no real progress has been made in implementing enhanced wireless emergency service."
The state comptroller's audit indicates that about $20 million of the collected funds have been used to maintain the existing 911 system and roughly $162 million have been "diverted."
In response to the audit, state police officials said most of the money they spent had been appropriated years ago, before the technology had been developed that would enable an E911 tracking system.
A memo from the state police to the state comptroller's office additionally stated that the funds were used in "support of our public safety mission … to build and support a framework to provide fast emergency response."
But the state comptroller's office concluded that "most of these expenses cannot be easily construed as expenses related to the establishment and maintenance of E911 services."
"This is one of the most egregious budget gimmicks ever uncovered," City Council member Peter Vallone Jr. said. "The audit clearly shows that the governor is using cellular surcharge funds to finance ongoing operations of the state police rather than using the money to develop the enhanced 911 system."
Currently, New York cell-phone users are charged $1.20 a month for E911 services. Until 2002, the charge was 70 cents a month. Some users also pay local government charges of around 30 cents per month.
Tragedies connected to untraceable cell-phone calls are not new to New York. On a Saturday morning in 1993, 18-year-old Jennifer Koon called 911 from her cell phone after she was abducted from a mall parking lot in Rochester, New York.
She was unable to speak to the operator, who listened helplessly as the 18-year-old girl pleaded with her captor for her life. The operator was still on the line as Koon was raped and then killed with three gunshots.
Koon's body was later found in an alley.
The girl's father is David Koon, the New York state assemblyman who is sponsoring the LIFE bill, which would require the creation of local emergency 911 dispatch centers.
"That technology wasn't around for Jenny's case," said Koon. "But it's available now, and we should be able to use it."
It's impossible to say whether enhanced 911 could have saved Jennifer Koon. It's also impossible to know whether E911 could have saved Max Guarino, Henry Badillo, Andrew Melnikov and Carlo Wertenbaker last January. But their parents believe E911 could at least have given them a fighting chance.
It worked for three boaters lost in the fog on Lake Michigan in November 2001.
They used a cell phone to make a 911 call to the office of the sheriff in Lake County, Indiana, according to a report in the Western Queens Gazette newspaper. The E911 system in use at that agency pinpointed the latitude and longitude of the boat in less than 15 seconds. The boaters were rescued.
Experts said that Guarino, Badillo, Melnikov and Wertenbaker could have survived after their boat capsized for at least 30 minutes and perhaps up to two hours, long enough to be saved if their location had been known.
New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the nearest boat or helicopter could have arrived in about 20 minutes, according to reports filed after the tragedy.
Twenty-eight states have implemented some form of E911 service. However, some have also dipped into their E911 funds to finance other projects.
Last year, state agencies diverted $53 million in California, $9 million in Oregon, $10 million in Rhode Island, $5 million in North Carolina and $6 million in Washington to other projects from taxes collected for state E911 implementations, according to audit reports.
The Federal Communications Commission has set a deadline of December 2005 for all states to offer E911, an extension of a previous deadline that would have installed the system nationwide in October of 2001.
A hearing on reasons for the delay in rolling out E911 across the country is scheduled for April 29th.
