D.C. Councilmember Finds 911 Center Understaffed During Surprise Visit

Popping in unannounced Saturday night, D.C. Council Public Safety Chair Brooke Pinto (D) found “unacceptable” and “extremely dangerous” levels of staffing at the District of Columbia’s 911 center, the councilmember said during a livestreamed hearing Monday. Multiple members and witnesses voiced little if any confidence in the Office of Unified Communications or Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) fixing reported problems, which include blown addresses and delays answering calls and sending help.

Pinto made an unannounced visit to OUC during the overnight shift Saturday night, she said. “There were only three fire and EMS dispatchers" present, "when ideally there should be at least six,” Pinto said. Those staffers included just one EMS dispatcher handling the entire city, and there were only 15 call takers because another four were absent during that shift, said Pinto: There should be 18-20 for the shift. “Staffing has to be … the priority for this agency.”

Also, it’s "urgent that we learn what patterns of errors or systemwide failures have occurred" and how OUC is trying to fix them, said Pinto: The office must improve accuracy and transparency. The Public Safety chair announced last month that she would make biweekly, unannounced visits to the 911 center (see 2409090045). OUC has received much scrutiny over incidents where incorrect addresses and miscommunication prompted dispatching delays (see 2402080059).

OUC Director Heather McGaffin agreed the office was short-staffed on call takers Saturday night, though she somewhat disputed the exact numbers later in the hearing. For example, McGaffin said the evening goal is 17 call takers, so the office was short by only two. OUC made no errors during the night of Pinto’s visit, she said.

Councilmember Christina Henderson (D) said she’s not surprised that Pinto found an understaffed 911 center. Henderson cited a high rate of OUC staff absences and millions of dollars spent in overtime pay. What Pinto found at her unannounced visit was "incredibly revealing and disturbing,” said Councilmember Brianne Nadeau (D). "Until OUC is honest with the public about what's really going on and how they're going to solve it, the public is not going to trust them -- or really anyone up here" on the Council, she said.

The visit showed that staffing should be the top issue at OUC, said D.C. Firefighters Association President David Hoagland. Emergency call taking is a high-stress job requiring unique skills, he said. "Every day there's some sort of minor error” that occurs during 911 calls in D.C., including incorrect quadrants used in Washington addresses, said Hoagland. The recent implementation of a PowerPhone call handling system hasn’t resulted in “a marked change.” Hoagland believes there would be better outcomes if OUC staffers weren’t overworked. Having more of his firefighter members inside OUC could help support the office, he added. Also, OUC should consider firefighters’ training program as a model.

OUC has 83 call takers with 24 vacancies, and 91 full-time dispatchers with 18 vacancies, said McGaffin. In September, OUC met its minimum staffing goal for 29 of 54 shifts, with two to four employees away from the goal in 13 of the shifts, she said.

OUC recently added a full-time wellness coordinator to help with childcare, housing, transportation and other issues that might keep workers from coming to work, said McGaffin. In August, the office started offering $800 monthly bonuses for staffers with perfect attendance, she said.

McGaffin pointed to a surge in call volume and longer call durations putting more demand on her office. Those have included a growing number of mental health calls, which are more complicated to handle, and accidental calls from smartphones that detect falls and automatically dial 911, she said. "We do experience spikes sometimes,” including after many people hear gunshots, she said. “A lot of the complaints we get about long wait times are around those spikes.”

Henderson asked why OUC experienced 18 technology failures from December 2023 to August 2024, with one incident lasting more than 17 hours. Lindsey Appiah, D.C. deputy mayor for public safety and justice, said there were many different reasons, and only three could be called major events. Those three were the result of a fiber cut outside the building, a bad software patch by a different D.C. agency, and the global CrowdStrike outage, she said.

However, D.C. Council members and others noted the public's low level of trust in the city’s 911 center. "Residents' confidence in our 911 center has been shattered,” said Councilmember Charles Allen (D). "The erosion of confidence in knowing that someone's going to be there to answer the call is devastating and changing that is going to take a lot of hard work, and it's going to have to be a lot more than just optimistic talking points and press releases from the executive.” Allen slammed the Bowser administration for minimizing “public knowledge of internal agency dysfunction.”

“The time for letting OUC and the administration handle it internally has passed,” said Councilmember Robert White (D). The “operations failure” at OUC “puts our city at risk,” he said. “This is not a failure of a few individuals, but a systemic issue."

D.C. advisory neighborhood commissioners’ worries about OUC are deepening, said ANC 3C Chair Janell Pagats. “Neither the director at OUC nor the mayor is up to the task of addressing these chronic problems." Pagats supported establishing an independent task force to manage oversight. Keya Chatterjee, a public witness, agreed. “Obstruction and opacity [have] led to an incredible amount of distrust and lack of accountability."