Los Angeles’ Missing Number

Dallas has it. So does Chicago, the District of Columbia, Las Vegas, San Jose and San Antonio. Baltimore was the first major city to have one. New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani finally wants one. Houston has one on the drawing board. But Los Angeles, still struggling with upgrades to its emergency call system, does not have an easy-to-remember 311 number to handle nonemergency calls to the police and direct citizens to the proper city departments.

Los Angeles’ 911 system is such a mess that last year 12 out of every 100 calls were abandoned because the callers gave up hope of being answered. On top of those nearly 220,000 abandoned calls were more than 100,000 emergency 911 tries in which it took between 11 and 20 seconds for a dispatcher to answer. In the years since 1990, only 1995 was worse.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Even technologically challenged Los Angeles city government, which is in its ninth year of trying to fashion an upgrade for its 911 system, can start small and eventually solve its problem.

Dallas and Chicago have accomplished in different ways exactly what Los Angeles requires, and more. Dallas has a flexible system of cross-trained 911 and 311 operators who can switch over to whichever emergency number is receiving the brunt of the calls. Moreover, Dallas 311 puts callers in direct contact with the city department that can best handle the nonemergency request, such as the removal of an abandoned or stolen car or reporting a malfunctioning street light.

Los Angeles need not try to launch a fully loaded system such as Dallas’, says City Councilman Mike Feuer; it could start with a cheaper system that is easier to install and can be upgraded incrementally. This month, Feuer says, city officials will hear some estimates concerning what kind of 311 system could be installed under a limited budget.

In Chicago, the 311 system has worked so well that callers may be almost too reluctant to dial 911 to report anything other than a threat to life. That’s a situation that would please 911 officials in Los Angeles, where widely varying estimates of the level of nonemergency calls range upward from 25%.

This is not a problem that can be laid just at the feet of the Los Angeles city government. Callers who clog 911 lines with noise complaints, requests for trash collection schedules and barking-dog reports have played a substantial role in creating delays for people calling with real emergencies.

Until a working 311 system is in place, Angelenos should record, or better yet store in their phones, the correct nonemergency number. They can start with 1-877-ASK-LAPD.

Even if a 311 system is through some miracle approved in a timely fashion, that still leaves the failure of Los Angeles to build a new 911 emergency system funded by a $235-million bond passed by voters way back in 1992. The problem is the same one that has hounded other city bond efforts: poor planning, a lack of technical expertise and failure to tie contracts and payments to deadlines and actual results.

Now, Mayor Richard Riordan and the City Council need to make sure that the current work on the 911 system is headed in the right direction, with adequate safeguards for the city. A true 911 emergency is bad enough without having to wait on the wrong side of the line, listening to the telephone ring and ring and ring.