Police are trying to figure out if a 911 outage in D.C. was caused intentionally. News4 Investigative Reporter Ted Oberg reports.
A criminal probe is underway into this month's 911 computer system outage in the District that coincided with the death of a 5-month-old child in medical distress.
DC police are working to determine whether the system was taken down intentionally or through human error, multiple government sources tell News4.
So far in 2024, there have been at least seven unplanned outages of the computer system that D.C.'s Office of Unified Communications (OUC) uses to dispatch fire engines and ambulances. The tragedy that occurred during the outage in early August has brought the issue and OUC under new scrutiny.
Tragedy in NW
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During the outage on Aug. 2, a 5-month-old baby in a Northwest D.C. apartment wouldn't wake up from a nap.
Two family members said they tried calling 911 for help, but according to an internal D.C. police report, neither of them could get anyone to pick up.
Someone instead went to get help outside apartment building in the 3000 block of Connecticut Ave. NW and found a nearby federal police officer, who assisted with CPR in the moments before DC Fire and EMS arrived, that report said.
Eventually, the family got through to 911, and the call center dispatched the call, according to a timeline shared by the deputy mayor for public safety.
Firefighters arrived and started calling for an ambulance, and the infant was taken to the hospital. That was where the baby was pronounced dead.
What went wrong?
According to radio traffic, firefighters performed CPR on the infant but wanted paramedics and an advanced life support ambulance to rush the baby to a hospital. The dispatch center repeatedly tried to send a paramedic who was unavailable and still handling another call.
Frustration could be heard in the voices of the first responders.
“We have an infant in cardiac arrest,” one said. “I’ve made everyone aware of this multiple times here on this channel … Do we have an ALS unit or a paramedic that is possibly available?”
A few hours later, D.C. police detectives and forensic investigators arrived at the building after being informed that the infant had been pronounced dead at the hospital.
The OUC, which runs the system that went down on Aug. 2, said that 911 calls were still being answered at the time of the outage.
That deputy mayor's timeline starts when the family was able to get through, and appeared to show a timely response, but does not include the initial missed calls.
Three days after the outage, D.C. officials said a technology contractor incorrectly rolled out a software update.
“The software update was not done in compliance with protocol and resulted in a disruption that limited agencies’ access to the system,” the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer said in a statement.
The contractor is no longer employed by the D.C. government, the office said.
What happens during a 911 computer outage?
When the system goes down, dispatch teams rely on paper and pencil to keep track of hundreds of calls, public safety officials told News4.
Insiders in D.C.’s public safety departments say that means call takers and dispatchers sometimes walk slips of paper from one place to another inside the dispatch center. They use radio communications to make sure fire crews knew where to go.
D.C. often points out its 911 call center is the fourth-busiest in the nation. Last year, it took an average of one emergency call every three seconds.
On Aug. 2, the 911 computer system went down for more than two hours.
Unanswered questions about 911 outages
On Monday, the spokesperson for D.C.’s deputy mayor for public safety confirmed D.C.’s 911 system has had seven outages this year.
One was planned for a system upgrade.
An outage in July occurred because of the global CrowdStrike outage, officials said. Then there was the outage on Aug. 2, during the infant's death, which was also pinned on an upgrade glitch.
On Friday, Aug. 12, the 911 computer system went down again. That was the center’s second outage in as many weeks, and D.C.’s city administrator said that one was due to a “connectivity disruption” during which public safety agencies in the nation’s capital “transitioned to manual dispatch" — those pen-and-paper slips.
A spokesperson told the News4 I-Team connectivity disruptions “were related to the performance of hardware which hosts the Computer Assisted Dispatch software; and the District is working to implement the necessary monitoring and possible system upgrades.”
The statement on Monday did not say if that work is complete or if a fix had been made.
The reasons for the other four outages remain unclear. In a confusing answer Monday, the spokesperson suggested the four other outages are due to those connectivity disruptions — including the outage on Aug. 2, which lasted more than two hours.
D.C. Director of the Office of Unified Communications Heather McGaffin — the person in charge of the 911 system — has not responded to any questions related to the center in months. She has said in previous testimony that improving staffing will help improve performance.
Staffing issues
According to their own record keeping, in July 2023, 33% of all 911 shifts didn’t have enough people working to meet minimum staffing levels. In July 2024, that jumped to 88% of all shifts.
The staffing crisis has gotten so bad that the agency is offering bonuses to staff members simply for showing up for every scheduled shift.
McGaffin made the offer to staff members in an email Tuesday morning.
“Good morning 911 Team- Starting immediately all 911 employees who show up for all of their scheduled shifts will receive an $800 incentive for the month,” the email obtained by News4 says.
“Staffing is crucial to the success of our agency. Unscheduled call outs of all kinds are up and causing a hardship for fellow employees who are continuously getting stuck, coming in early, and being asked to come in on days off,” she continued. “The pilot is simple- show up for each shift you’re assigned and receive $800 additional for the month. We start today for August.”
Leak investigation, but no outage answers
D.C. police Internal Affairs contacted News4's Ted Oberg on Thursday trying to find out how we knew about a family’s unanswered 911 call for help.
News4 learned of the family’s unanswered calls from two public safety sources who each had details of an internal police record. On Thursday, an internal affairs agent called Oberg to ask what information News4 got and who shared it.
News4 takes protecting sources seriously, and Oberg did not answer. The internal affairs agent admitted an answer was unlikely, but said the commander of internal affairs assigned him to investigate.
MPD and DC's Deputy Mayor for Public Safety have not answered questions about why they are conducting a leak investigation.
