Unanswered Calls Still Plague 911 System

More than 180,000 calls to Los Angeles’ overburdened emergency 911 system went unanswered last year and new phones installed to handle the crush of calls continue to sit idle because no operators have been hired to staff them, according to an LAPD report released Wednesday.

Additionally, about 27% of 911 callers had to wait 10 seconds or more before their calls were answered--a response time that was “below national standards, which call for 90% of all 911 calls to be answered within 10 seconds,” the report stated.

City officials asked the Los Angeles Police Department for an assessment of its 911 system because they are considering setting up a nonemergency phone system that would ease the burden on the current network. Police officials said nonemergency calls from people requesting everything from the correct time to directions to Dodger Stadium clog the phone lines.

Because nonemergency calls account for as much as 85% of the incoming calls, people with life-threatening emergencies are forced to wait for help longer than they should, authorities said. Many calls are abandoned, police said, when jittery callers get put on hold, hang up and redial.

According to the LAPD report, presented to a City Council committee Wednesday, nearly 9% of the 3.6 million calls to the system in 1996 were abandoned by the caller before an operator responded.

The number of abandoned calls and the response times have improved since 1995, police said. However, the improvements were largely because there were 1.2 million fewer calls overall. Officials said they did not know why the number of calls had decreased so dramatically.

The reduction in abandoned calls was also the result of new telephone equipment that eliminated an electronic glitch that caused “phantom” abandoned calls to be recorded in the system when in fact they were not true calls, officials said. Glitches still remain and may account for some of the abandoned calls, police said.

“We still think the number of abandoned calls is more than is appropriate,” LAPD Cmdr. Carlo Cudio said in an interview. “We need a boost in staffing.”

Cudio said he was not aware of a single incident in which an abandoned call or delay in answering the call resulted in serious injury to the caller.

Despite some improvements on 911 statistics, the emergency dispatch system is still beset with problems, including a loss of experienced operators. According to police, the city’s Central Dispatch System has had a 90% operator turnover rate in the last three years. Some veteran operators were reassigned to police stations so that more sworn officers could patrol city streets.

Currently, one out of every two new operators hired ends up quitting or getting fired, police said. In addition to the stress of the job, operators work in a darkened, windowless room, four floors below City Hall East.

“It’s a very difficult job,” said Cudio, who added that qualified candidates for the position are not easy to find. “We need people who can perform multiple tasks at the same time. They need to type, talk and read all at the same time.”

Cudio said part of the turnover problem is linked to poor job candidate screening done by the city’s Personnel Department, which has low standards for typing speed and does not test for English proficiency or multi-tasking ability. A spokesman for the Personnel Department said Wednesday that he would work with police officials to modify testing requirements.

City officials on Wednesday were particularly frustrated to learn that 44 operators to staff the 16 new phone consoles had not been hired, even though they specifically requested that the hires be made last year. The police report stated that the funding “did not materialize.”

Cudio said the city did not allocate the money in the budget and counted on receiving federal grant money to fund the positions, but those grants never arrived.

“We need real money . . . [and grants are] not real money,” Cudio said. Police officials said they were told the mayor’s proposed budget for 1997-98, which is expected to be released later this week, also calls for grant money to fund the positions.

On Wednesday, the council members on the Public Safety Committee addressed some of the problems facing the 911 system and discussed forming a task force to look into the benefits of creating a separate nonemergency phone system to ease the burden on the 911 lines.

Councilwoman Laura Chick, who chairs the committee, said she wants the department to come up with short-term solutions to the 911 problem while the issue of the nonemergency phone network is studied.

“How do you fix what’s going on now?” Chick asked police officials. “I’m not hearing any answers.”

Police said they needed the funds to hire more operators to staff the new phone consoles, which were fully installed last October and are largely unused.

The nonemergency system, which the public would reach by dialing a number such as 311, is being studied by law enforcement agencies nationwide. The 311 system currently is operating in Baltimore and officials there say the results are dramatic.

In the first three months of operation, Baltimore experienced a 20% decrease from the previous year in the call volume for its 911 system. Authorities here say the results might vary in Los Angeles, noting that the city has a larger and more diverse population.

“This is a crucial public safety item,” said Councilman Mike Feuer, who has been spearheading the nonemergency phone network proposal. “We have an opportunity to be on the cutting edge in this sea change in how we handle emergency calls.”

The department is pressing ahead on a massive overhaul of the emergency dispatch system.

That overhaul, which is being funded by a $235-million bond issue approved by voters in 1992, calls for creating two new dispatch centers and purchasing state-of-the-art telephone and computer equipment.

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Overburdened

A Los Angeles Police Department report shows that performance of the 911 system has improved since 1995, but tens of thousands of calls still went unanswered last year because callers hung up for undertermined reasons. Additionally, 16 new phone consoles go largely unused because the city has not hired the 44 operators needed to staff them.

TOTAL CALLS

1995: 4,841,800

1996: 3,638,005

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UNANSWERED CALLS

1995: 325,261

1996: 184,005

Source: Los Angeles Police Department

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Calls That Are Clogging the 911 Emergency System

Police say nonemergency calls account for as much as 85% of the calls to the city’s 911 emergency dispatch system. Such calls overload phone lines and delay service to people with true, life threatening emergencies. Here are some of the more unusual calls operators have fielded:

Caller: “I want to talk to Washington, D.C.”

Operator: “Do you have an emergency sir?”

Caller: “Yes, the president of the United States has got a bad problem. . . . I have official information that the Russians are going to use nuclear subs to destroy aircraft carriers.”

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Caller: “We have a strange experience outside my house . . . [there’s] a terrible, terrible odor that smells like urine. . . . My question is, ‘Is there any kind of drug that smells like urine?’ ”

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Caller: “For the third night in a row I’m hearing this constant loud music from a stereo.”

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Caller: “Yeah operator, I’m having problems with . . . a furniture store, they owe me and my mother money.”

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Caller: “Can you give me Water and Power?”