Operators at Heart of 911 System : Effectiveness of Response to Emergencies Depends on Human Judgment

For all their high-tech hardware and its ability to relay information in a split second, authorities acknowledge that the 911 emergency systems in Los Angeles County are only as good as the people who answer and say, “911 emergency. What are you reporting?”

From the huge communications center below Los Angeles City Hall to a small glass booth at the sheriff’s station in the Santa Clarita Valley, 911 operators must make snap judgments on calls nearly every minute of the day.

And it is in that oft-repeated human transaction that the system is most vulnerable to failure.

“Given that we have the hardware, the most important thing is the human element,” said Capt. Robert Spierer, Santa Clarita Valley sheriff’s station commander.

That was no more evident than at 10:36 p.m. on Jan. 20 when a veteran deputy and 911 operator at the Valencia sheriff’s station said, “Have a nice day,” and hung up on a man frantically trying to report a gang shooting and fearing for his life.

Caller Not Injured

The caller was not injured, but sheriff’s officials acknowledged that he was a victim of human error--the deputy made a snap judgment that 911 operators are trained not to make. He decided that a call for help was not legitimate.

The incident, now the subject of an internal investigation, has raised questions about how 911 calls are handled and how system operators are trained. Though as many as one in four calls are pranks, one basic rule is that an operator should never terminate a call for urgent help because he suspects that it is bogus.

“It is not our place to decide whether it is real,” said Los Angeles Police Sgt. John Emerson, a communications room supervisor. “The caller could be lying through his teeth, but we have to take it at face value. We have no reason not to send a car.”

Authorities stress that the Jan. 20 incident does not indicate a larger problem. They say that only a few complaints about the handling of 911 calls have been made in recent years.

All 911 calls in Los Angeles, including those from the San Fernando Valley, go to the Police Department’s communications center four floors beneath City Hall. In a dimly lit room nearly the size of a basketball court, more than 100 computer screens glow in 911 and radio-dispatch consoles.

Mostly Civilian Operators

The operators at the 15 consoles where calls come in are mostly civilians. A few exceptions are police officers who ask for experience handling 911 calls.

The civilians must complete a seven-month training and testing program before taking their first 911 call. The program teaches them how to deal with callers ranging from drunks to children, from those who are hysterical to those who are injured or unable to explain their emergency.

During training, the operators spend several hours handling simulated emergency calls before they can take real 911 calls.

An actual call that reports what sounds like a life-threatening situation is termed a “hot shot.” The operator immediately dispatches the information to patrol cars. The 911 computer automatically tells the operator the caller’s location and the nearest patrol car.

The majority of calls are not emergencies. Those are transferred to radio dispatchers at 45 other consoles. The calls then are assigned to patrol cars according to availability and priority. Calls for fire or medical services are immediately transferred to the Fire Department.

Staffing of the city’s 911 consoles varies from shift to shift, police said. On weekend nights, all 15 consoles are staffed. During daylight hours, fewer operators are needed. Sometimes only half of the consoles are staffed.

In contrast to the city’s quiet 911 center, the Sheriff’s Department’s 911 facilities seem less rigid or confined.

At the Valencia station, two 911 consoles are in a 5-by-10-foot glass booth behind the front desk. Emergency calls are sometimes answered at the front desk or in the station sergeant’s office.

When a call comes in, information taken by a deputy is put on a computer screen and sent to the sheriff’s communications center in East Los Angeles to be dispatched. The 911 deputy also tells the dispatchers the nearest patrol car to the caller.

Police and sheriff’s officials said the dispatching of calls takes only seconds in either system. But sheriff’s officials believe their decentralized method has an added advantage because calls are answered by law officers with firsthand knowledge of emergency situations and the area.

“It gives us more of a customized service,” Spierer said.

On-the-Job Training

Deputies assigned to 911 receive some instruction from manuals but mostly receive on-the-job training from a senior operator, or watch deputy, officials said.

California, which pays for the state’s 911 systems, has no training requirements for operators.

“There are generic minimum standards” for the operation of the equipment, said Leah Senitte, 911 program manager for the state General Services Administration. “But everything that happens after a call is answered is the local agency’s responsibility.”

Sheriff’s officials said that each station fills its 911 positions with carefully chosen personnel, not with troublesome or patrol-weary deputies.

“We will never put somebody who we believe is not adequate on 911,” Spierer said. “If we have a deputy who says he is tired of the street, he can volunteer but his qualifications for handling emergency situations are the primary considerations.”

Keys to Advancement

Spierer said the 911 posts are seen as keys toward advancement in the department. The senior position within the system--watch deputy--is the highest-paying deputy classification.

On Jan. 20, Deputy Jim Greene, a 25-year veteran who had worked in the Santa Clarita Valley for 19 years--four of them answering 911 calls--was the watch deputy.

Greene picked up the call from a pay phone on San Fernando Road in Newhall. The caller, Jim Finnila, reported that a teen-ager had been shot and lay bleeding a few feet away.

Until then the sheriff’s system had operated smoothly. An emergency call had been answered by a seasoned deputy familiar with the area from which it came.

But then something went wrong.

“Get the cops here quick!” Finnila said after indicating that he too was in danger.

A few moments later Greene made a judgment call that 911 operators say should never be made. Sheriff’s officials said he apparently decided that Finnila’s call was not a legitimate emergency and disconnected the call.

Recognized Address

In this case, one of the positive aspects of the sheriff’s 911 system may have worked against it. According to Sheriff Sherman Block, Greene apparently believed that the address flashed on the computer was that of a neighborhood bar, perhaps leading the deputy to dismiss the call.

Greene apparently realized his mistake a few seconds later when a deputy on the other 911 console informed him about a shooting report at that location. The call had come 30 seconds ahead of Finnila’s, but Greene hadn’t known about it.

When a caller provides incomplete information or cannot be understood, the Sheriff’s Department and Los Angeles Police Department require that a patrol car be automatically dispatched on an “unknown trouble” call to the address.

The 911 operator then must extract more information from the caller and pass it along to the officer. Even if the operator believes the call might be a prank, a patrol car must be dispatched, albeit with a warning that it is suspicious, officials said.

“We have to take a person literally,” said Police Lt. David Musil, a communications center supervisor. “We have to respond.”

The Sheriff’s Department’s Spierer agrees that it is better to be safe than sorry.

‘Difficult Judgment’

“When there is something that doesn’t sound right . . . that is a very difficult judgment to make,” Spierer said. “In 99.9% of the cases, we are going to take a chance” and dispatch a car.

There is little question that Greene’s handling of Finnila’s call reflected bad judgment, Block said. Greene, who no longer answers 911 calls, could not be reached for comment.

Authorities do not tabulate false 911 calls, but city and county 911 supervisors said many calls are not legitimate.

“911 is really abused,” Musil said. “We have people who call up just to ask what time it is. It is frequent that someone will report something very heinous and it is not true. They just want to see the lights and sirens.”

The Sheriff’s Department last month released an audit of a three-day period showing that only 1,430--or 28%--of the 5,077 calls were actual emergencies.

Medical or fire emergencies, which were immediately transfered to the county Fire Department, accounted for 15% of the calls. Non-emergencies and referrals to other agencies made up 31%.

The rest of the 911 calls--1,248, or about 25%--were listed as prank calls, including false crime reports, the Sheriff’s Department said.

5,500 Calls Daily

Los Angeles police said they receive about 5,500 calls daily on the 911 system. Prank calls are not tabulated, officials said. But 70% to 75% of the calls are non-emergencies, Musil said.

Citizens frequently complain when their non-life-threatening calls cannot be handled as emergencies and are instead dispatched according to priority. But mistakes in which emergency calls are erroneously believed to be phony are rare, authorities said.

Senitte, the state program manager, said 911 systems in California handle 30 million calls a year and only a handful of valid emergency calls go unheeded. “It happens only in very rare situations,” she said.

In the last two years there were only two justified complaints that Los Angeles police operators mishandled 911 calls, believing they were not actual emergencies, Musil said.

In each case, the operator was faulted for not getting enough information from the caller to realize that the situation was life-threatening. He said he knows of no case where an operator hung up on a caller reporting an emergency.

Capt. David Gomez of the Sheriff’s Department said there were two complaints in 1988 about the handling of 911 by sheriff’s deputies. But he declined to elaborate on the circumstances.