For many years now, calling 911 in D.C. has sometimes added to the trauma already faced by someone in an emergency. With sharper questions and closer oversight looming, city leaders said they are making noticeable progress in at least one area.
Emergency dispatch centers around the country are dealing with staffing shortages, and for years, the District has been a shining example of that trouble. But after about a year and a half on the job, the director of D.C.’s Office of Unified Communications (OUC), which handles 911 call taking and emergency dispatching, said what used to be a severe staffing shortage is getting better.
“When I got here, there were 57 call taker openings, and that was just for call takers,” said Heather McGaffin, head of the OUC. “To date, we have 19, and we’ve made nine job offers. So the hope is we’ll go into October with just 10 positions to fill on call taking. And based on the process, we hope to have those filled by the end of October. (Then) they’ll be able to focus on dispatchers.”
Over the summer, the city announced hiring bonuses of $2,500 and $800 monthly bonuses for employees who showed up for every shift they were scheduled for. During the first month, 94 employees got those bonuses, which comes out to about two-thirds of eligible staffers.
“The folks who didn’t get it — we’re looking at that a little more closely … to see why, and to see if there are things that we could be doing to help them with the life-work balance or the wellness piece of it,” McGaffin said. “Being a 911 call taker is a really stressful and traumatic job, and so we want to make sure that our folks here that are coming to work every day are feeling supported.”
She said OUC is also looking at ways to offer pay raises to employees. McGaffin told WTOP that a study last year showed D.C. dispatchers were among the highest paid compared to other metropolitan areas. Now, they’re looking at neighboring jurisdictions to see how they compare.
In addition, overall call volume seems to be trending down this year after spiking by about half a million calls between 2022 and 2023. In a briefing with reporters, McGaffin described 911 call takers as overtaxed. In particular, McGaffin said the total number of 911 calls made in the city comes out to 11 per city resident. The calls they receive are also lasting longer on average.
“The thought is one of the call types that we’re seeing more and more of are calls involving mental health crisis,” McGaffin said. “It’s taking us longer to process those calls. We’re staying on the phone longer to really understand the nature of the situation to make sure that we’re sending the right resource.”
She also said the current 911 call dashboard on OUC’s website will be getting updated soon to provide clearer information.
Last month, the District also acknowledged aging technology and IT failures were to blame for a series of computer crashes earlier this year, including one in August when a small child ended up dying. McGaffin said there’s been no new computer outages since that occurred, and that the city has updated its training for when that kind of situation might happen again.
“We have updated training. All of the shifts have gone through training again,” she said. “Our working group with the deputy mayor’s office and DC Fire and EMS has been really intentional to keep that as a focus in their working group. And so we are practicing, we are teaching and we are doing a lot of training in controlled environments for that.”
She also told reporters OUC has hired more IT employees, too. So far, two full-time positions and one part-time position have been filled, with three more full-time candidates currently going through the hiring process.
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