Troubled Dallas 911 System To Undergo Review

Dallas' troubled 911/311 system will be examined by a working group that will make recommendations for improvements, according to a memo by Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm.

Ms. Suhm recently sent the memo to the city's top leaders after a May 13 story in The Dallas Morning News that detailed numerous problems with the system Dallas residents rely upon for emergencies.

The News' story found that the 911 call center was understaffed and that operators scramble to handle massive numbers of calls and rush to get people off the phone so they can answer the next call. Dispatchers and police supervisors said they were getting a constant barrage of incomplete and sometimes incorrect information from the 911 operators, endangering the lives of officers and others.

City leaders also had been warned about the problems of 911 in internal police operational reviews, a City Council-commissioned efficiency study and in other memos, according to documents obtained by The News.

The group "will be charged with determining how best to provide the services that are offered through the current combined 911/311 system,'' Ms. Suhm wrote to the mayor and the Dallas City Council in a Thursday memorandum.

Under the system, emergency calls are made to 911. Dallas residents can call 311 for a variety of nonemergency matters, such as reporting code violations or loose animals.

"I want to make sure that both of them [911/311] are working the way they should," Ms. Suhm said. "We're going to spend some time looking at whether we would be better-served to separate the two of them."

In the memo, Ms. Suhm ordered the group to look at staffing, training, procedures, organizational structure and management issues related to the 911/311 call center operated by Dallas Fire-Rescue. She also has ordered the group to study the "best practices" of other cities.

Ms. Suhm wrote that the group would be on a tight timeline because she wants to incorporate their recommendations in the upcoming budget process.

Assistant City Manager Charles Daniels, who oversees the police and fire departments, will form the working group, which will include top police, fire commanders and city officials. As of Tuesday, no one from the call center had been named to serve with the group.

Joe Kay, acting assistant chief over the communications bureau for Dallas Fire-Rescue, said he had not seen the memo, but he said he welcomed a fresh look at the operation.

"It sounds like a start,'' said Mike Multop, a police dispatcher, who has said that he fears that the problems with the 911 system will get someone hurt or killed.

Police Chief David Kunkle said he believes residents would probably be better-served if the police ran 911, as is the case in many large cities. "Most of the calls [to 911] are police-related,'' he said.

Chief Kay said he doesn't believe it matters whether police or fire run 911 as long as there are good people running it.

"All it takes is common sense on running these things,'' he said. "If there's a problem, we need to identify it and try to fix it.''

Dallas Fire-Rescue officials have attributed many of the shortcomings to insufficient staffing.

Fire officials have said that when the fire department began operating the call center in 1995, there were about 170 operators. Today, there are about 130 operators, and total call volume has soared - roughly doubling the annual call load for the average operator.

Chief Kay has said that he believes the demands of dealing with 311 calls and water customer service, also handled by the call center, contributed to the problems.

He has said he needs at least 24 new positions.

After The News began looking into problems with the call center, fire officials made some changes.

Operators previously had been evaluated on how quickly they could complete a 911 call. Chief Kay eliminated that yardstick. The city also recently implemented a trial program in which some operators focus solely on 911 calls and others take only 311 calls. Previously, operators dealt with both, which meant they could have fielded one call about high weeds and another about a kidnapping.

Sgt. Paul Morris, a former communications supervisor who wrote several memos outlining specific problems with 911, said he hopes city officials are really serious about fixing the problems.

"I just hope it's not a little bit more lip service,'' Sgt. Morris said.

E-mail teiserer@dallasnews.com

"All it takes is common sense on running these things. If there's a problem, we need to identify it and try to fix it."

Joe Kay, acting assistant chief over the communications bureau for Dallas Fire-Rescue

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