A slew of unplanned computer dispatch outages, major staffing shortages and a criminal probe are hanging over Washington, D.C.'s 911 center. As police continue to investigate one of those outages, which coincided with the death of a 5-month-old baby, District officials spoke to reporters Monday about the issues that have plagued the call center.
For the first time since the severity of D.C.'s 911 outages came into focus, District leaders are finally trying to explain why it's happening — and it appears there’s no quick fix.
The computer system that's used to dispatch police, firefighters and paramedics has had 18 disruptions since December, City Administrator Kevin Donahue said. Of those 18 incidents, eight were widespread, and six of them affected dispatching.
Donahue said the computer dispatch system usually has just one or two outages per year.
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Heather McGaffin, director of the District's Office of Unified Communications (OUC), spoke to reporters for the first time Monday about the issues that have plagued the 911 call center. The News4 I-Team requested comment and interviews with McGaffin for months.
"Being in the nation's capital and being the call center for the nation's capital, a lot of folks are looking at us," she said during Monday's news conference. "So, I think what happens is when we have these issues, these mistakes, when we're doing things, there's a lot of hyper-focus about what we're doing."
An internal review by D.C.'s OUC hasn't identified a common cause for the trouble, except for the acknowledgement that they have "old equipment that can't handle the demand" of a system that gets 1.8 million emergency calls per year.
D.C. fields the highest number of calls for police, fire and emergency medical services per capita in the U.S., Donahue said.
"We want to make sure we maintain confidence with residents that they can call 911 and get a timely, high quality response," he said.
DC officials release updated timeline of family's emergency call during 911 outage
The most serious outage was on Aug. 2, as a family tried to call 911 when they couldn't wake their 5-month-old baby from a nap — and no one answered their call.
On Monday, D.C. officials acknowledged for the first time that the family initially called 911 at 12:39 p.m. that day, but their call was never picked up. D.C.'s 911 computer dispatch system was offline.
The family eventually got through at 12:51 p.m.
The city says the family was working in other ways to get help during that interim period, insisting there were no other unanswered calls. D.C. officials previously said all 911 calls were taken while the computer system was offline.
The baby later died. It's unclear if a faster response would have made a difference.
D.C.'s police department has launched an investigation into this specific incident, seeking to determine whether it was human error or a nefarious act that brought down the system.
Mayor Muriel Bowser explained why she wants the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to question the employees involved.
"Human error happens; let's just face it — and quite frankly, I think that's what we think it was; it was an error," Bowser said. "But we have to be able, the director of OUC, of our technology office at MPD, to tell me it was human error."
Government leaders have said that a software test was supposed to go out to three to four people that day, but instead, it went to everyone with an OUC device, shutting down the system for two hours.
McGaffin said Monday the issue was a "system mistake."
"No one person did anything in this. If one person had done something in this, I would be holding them accountable. They wouldn't be answering 911 calls or dispatching," McGaffin said.
When it happened, the screens in the 911 center went dark, cutting off real-time information on which police and fire units were available. Staffers were forced to rely on a handwritten form that had to be run from place to place.
DC 911 director seeks new hires to help with staffing shortage
Staffing at the OUC remains a major issue. According to records, 33% of all 911 shifts didn't have enough people working to meet the minimum staffing levels in July 2023 — and one year later, that shortage had jumped to 88%.
Call takers are supposed to be trained quarterly on the 911 center's policies and procedures, but some have had their training postponed because of staffing problems.
The OUC is aiming to fill 22 open 911 call taker positions by the end of this month, McGaffin said.
"We have 22 openings right now for call takers. We have 63 people going through background checks. So, 22 people will start at the end of this month, and then, from that, we will fill the 19 vacant dispatcher positions from a promotional process," she said.
McGaffin said the biggest obstacle in hiring more employees to fill open 911 call taker positions is the time it takes to do background checks and the psychological process to make sure prospective employees are a good fit for the often "traumatizing and tough job."
She said since May 2023, the OUC has been able to shorten the hiring process from nine months to about three months.
McGaffin also spoke about employees' long shifts, saying there are more human errors when employees work past their 12-hour shifts to make up for staffing shortages.
"Ideally, once we're fully staffed we would certainly look at even reducing the shift hours from 12 to either eight or 10, which the employees have expressed they would really love and enjoy, but we need full staffing to be able to do that," she said.
$800 'show up to work' bonuses wildly successful, official says
The staffing crisis got so bad that the agency began offering bonuses to staff members simply for showing up for every scheduled shift. Those recently enacted bonuses have been "wildly successful" in getting staffers to work all of their scheduled shifts and boost morale at D.C.'s OUC, an official said.
McGaffin made the offer to staff members in an email Aug. 13.
“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,” said the email from McGaffin, which was obtained by News4.
"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 in the email. "The pilot is simple- show up for each shift you’re assigned and receive $800 additional for the month. We start today for August."
The announcement of the bonuses came less than 24 hours after News4’s I-Team reported that staffing at the call center hit dangerously low levels.
911 computer system upgrades sped up
The District has started making upgrades to the troubled 911 computer dispatch system.
A third party review of the 18 outages over the past nine months identified different "root causes," Donahue said. Some of those root causes were tied to old computer equipment that has been unable to keep up with the complex needs of the 911 center.
The District had money set aside in next year's budget to significantly upgrade the computer system, but started the project early in light of the recent troubles.
"Right now we're seeing work done to procure and replace some equipment that we slated to replace in October," Donahue said.
