Your cell phone might be crying wolf without your knowledge.

Lansing police Lt. Ray Hall said the department is now receiving many false emergency calls from cell phones.

“This year, for the first time, we experienced receiving more cellular 911 calls than from normal phones,” he said. “As a result, we’re experiencing a large number of false calls.”

Hall said as many as one out of every seven 911 calls are unintentional cellular calls.

Many cell phones have a one-button feature that allows a user to automatically dial 911. Many of the false 911 calls have arisen because users have accidentally pushed or bumped the button.

“What we’re asking is, for citizens who have cell phones, to store them so the buttons don’t get punched,” he said.

Cellular phone calls to 911 are on the rise. In 2000, 76,239 calls were made to 911 from homes and 63,952 were made from cell phones.

In May, there was a total of 7,203 calls to 911, and only 666 of them were from homes.

Renee Korrey, communications supervisor for 911 for the Lansing Police Department, said many people are not storing their cell phones properly, which can lead to the automatic feature being pushed.

“We would also like to ask, if (citizens) know they have made a false call, stay on the phone so we know there is not an emergency,” she said.

Andrew Lewis, sales manager for Millennium Digital LLC, 5030 Northwind Drive, said Nextel phones no longer have the feature.

“I would assume (it’s) because there would be a good amount of false calls to 911,” he said.

Linda Jennings, director of corporate communications for Nextel, said the change was to stop the false calls.

“We had a turbo dialing; knowing this is part of the problem we have now upgraded the phones,” she said.

Jennings said the new software was installed on models that came out at the beginning of this year.

“We will also automatically upgrade older cell phones (for free) when you come in to the shop for any reason,” she said.

Along with upgrading the phones, Jennings said Nextel has run lists of customers who have repeatedly dialed 911 and used a direct mail campaign to inform cell phone users.

“We want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem,” she said.

Jonathan Bowman, a communication graduate student, said he has the automatic dialing function for 911.

“I haven’t ever accidentally bumped it, but I have accidentally bumped my phone and called people randomly,” he said. “And I have accidentally dialed the 911 feature just by pressing the one button too long.”

Bowman said he is going to keep the automatic feature.

“I just keep it locked now, because you can lock your cell phone so that it doesn’t dial out anymore,” he said.