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Gov. Code, § 53112 · Article 6. Local Emergency Telephone Systems

Gov. Code, § 53112

Verbatim from the official edition

Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)

(a) All systems shall be designed to meet the specific requirements of each community and public agency served by the system. Every system, whether basic or sophisticated, shall be designed to have the capability of using at least three of the methods specified in Sections 53103 to 53106, inclusive, in response to emergency calls. The Legislature finds and declares that the most critical aspect of the design of any system is the procedure established for handling a telephone request for emergency services.

(b) To maximize efficiency and use of the system, all pay telephones within each system shall enable a caller to dial “911” for emergency services, and to reach an operator by dialing “0,” without the necessity of inserting a coin. At those “911” public safety answering points serving an area where 5 percent or more of the population, in accordance with the latest United States census information, speak a specific primary language other than English, operators who speak that other language, in addition to English, shall be on duty or available through interagency telephone conference procedures at all times for “911” emergency services.

(c) Each system shall require installation of a telecommunications device capable of servicing the needs of the deaf or severely hard of hearing at the “911” public safety answering point or points. The device shall be compatible with devices furnished by telephone corporations pursuant to Section 2881 of the Public Utilities Code.

(d) By January 1, 2021, each public safety answering point shall deploy a text to 911 service that enables an individual to text “911” for emergency services that is capable of accepting Short Message Service (SMS) messages and Real-Time Text (RTT) messages.

Notes and commentary — not statutory text

History

Amended by Stats. 2019, Ch. 237, Sec. 1. (AB 1168) Effective January 1, 2020.

Source of truth

Edition
As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
Official file
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=GOV&sectionNum=53112.
Text hash
sha256 1d155dd54e7aeeaaad9a5f32c06a72d15f2e972724177e1d3fe9db740611e393
Composed by
compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section

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