Nonemergency calls clogging S.F.’s 911 line
City officials rightly deserve blame for ignoring the continuing crisis at the understaffed, slow-to-respond 911 call center. But San Franciscans, you’re on the hook here, too.
Apparently many of you don’t know what the 911 emergency number is for, or when it’s appropriate to call it. Pocket-dialing your sister? No big deal. Pocket-dialing 911? That’s a problem.
Calling 911 because a homeless person is overdosing or behaving violently toward somebody else? Appropriate. Calling 911 because a homeless person is seated on the sidewalk outside your business? Not appropriate.
Calling 911 to ask for directions? To complain that a sanctioned fireworks show is loud? To gripe that your neighbor’s dog answered the call of nature on your lawn or that
your cat has gone missing? Seriously, people? Some of you are making calls like these. Stop it.
“People call for anything — like to check the time,” said Natalie Elicetche, a 911 dispatcher for 15 years. “I got one once asking how to bake a cake.”
Jasmine Pomeroy, who worked as a dispatcher for 11 years before, she said, reaching her breaking point and quitting in July, said she got a definite insight into human nature while on the job.
“People are calling 911 every day for things that are completely ridiculous — completely ridiculous!” she said. “Like, ‘My neighbor won’t stop parking his car on the sidewalk.’
“You don’t need me right now,” she said of such callers. “You need an adult babysitter.”
You’ll start hearing more about these kinds of ludicrous calls and how and why not to make them in a new public awareness campaign being launched with $250,000 in this year’s city budget.
Designed by the communications staff at the Department of Emergency Management, these ads come with the slogan “Make the Right Call.” They will be all over social media in October and plastered on Muni buses and shelters in November. Radio spots may come later.
“There is a clear need for a 911 public education campaign,” said Francis Zamora, spokesman for the Department of Emergency Management.
That’s an understatement.
Incredibly, only 60 percent of 911 calls dialed in San Francisco are about actual emergencies. A full 30 percent are accidental, a percentage that has shot up as smartphones have proliferated.
Here’s a head start on avoiding such an accident: Lock your cell phone so your rear end doesn’t call 911. Also: If you do call 911 accidentally, stay on the phone and say it was an accident. Otherwise, a dispatcher has to call you back, which takes up more time. A Google study of the city’s 911 center in 2015 found it took dispatchers an average of 1 minute, 14 seconds to deal with a callback after an accidental dial, which means they are that much slower answering the next call.
(My two cents: Whoever came up with the idea that business phones require 9 to dial out followed by a 1 before the area code has also contributed to this problem.)
The remaining 10 percent of 911 calls are those that should be made to 311 or the nonemergency line instead. That number, for the record, is (415) 553-0123.
So, San Francisco, stop and think before you dial. Does what you’re calling about demand an immediate police response or an ambulance? Then go ahead, call 911.
Or is it something worth a police officer’s attention, but not an immediate crisis, such as reporting an assault that happened the night before, a sketchy party next door, or seeking a wellness check on an elderly neighbor you’re concerned about? Call the nonemergency police number instead. (Those calls actually go to the 911 call center too, but they register as nonemergency calls, so dispatchers can deal with more urgent calls first.)
Is what you’re calling about a nuisance that doesn’t require police or emergency medical technicians, but demands the attention of a different city department, such as a tent encampment, graffiti or overflowing public trash cans? That’s when you call 311.
In May, Mayor Ed Lee issued an executive order demanding major improvements at the city’s problem-plagued 911 call center. Back then, dispatchers were answering just 75 percent of 911 calls within 10 seconds. Since then, response time has slowly improved; dispatchers are answering 82 percent of calls within 10 seconds during normal weeks.
The heat wave in early September, however, saw 911 calls skyrocket — and dispatchers answered just 69 percent of them within 10 seconds. That demonstrates that while the center is improving during normal times, it has a long way to go in dealing with citywide emergencies.
Even so, the 82 percent rate is short of the national standard of 90 percent, a target the center hasn’t met in more than five years.
Part of the problem is the low morale and burnout among dispatchers that is prompting so many, like Pomeroy, to quit. That means more are given mandatory overtime shifts to fill the gap, fueling even more burnout.
The staff is struggling to cope with a huge upsurge in calls that has paralleled the city’s swelling population. The center receives more than 1,900 emergency calls every day — 36 percent more than it received daily in 2011.
Part of that increase is calls related to homelessness that don’t involve a medical emergency or crime. Coded “915” to designate they’re about homeless people, these calls are usually complaints about tent encampments, loitering or even just a homeless person being present outside the caller’s house or business.
Back in August 2011, there were 2,788 calls to the 911 center coded 915 — an average of 90 per day. In August of this year, there were 5,761 such calls — or 186 per day.
The rise in complaints about homelessness makes sense considering the tent cities that have popped up like mushrooms in the past couple of years and the development that has pushed homeless people out of previously hidden spots and into the open. But while it’s understandable that those dealing with the problem are frustrated, that doesn’t mean it’s an emergency worthy of a 911 call.
Another part of the problem has come with the city’s increase in car break-ins. These calls to 911 are coded “852,” and while they’re a crime, police officers will respond immediately only if the break-in is in progress, there’s solid information about the assailant, or passports or weapons have been stolen.
If you return to your parked car to find that dreaded puddle of glass on the street below where your car window once was, it’s a bummer, yes. But not worthy of a 911 call.
The mayor has recently ordered 911 dispatchers to transfer calls coded 915 about homelessness and calls regarding car break-ins that aren’t in progress to 311. Still, it would save dispatchers time and free up phone lines if callers dialed 311 in those cases from the start.
I recently sat with some 911 dispatchers as they answered calls, and it was clear plenty of them didn’t merit an emergency dial.
Chong Hong, a new dispatcher who recently completed the yearlong training course, took calls in quick succession. “San Francisco 911,” he said upon answering each one.
One caller said there were tents blocking a sidewalk at the base of Potrero Hill. (You don’t say! Might as well call that the sky is blue.)
Another person called from the Western Addition to report three homeless people were in front of her business. “Can you send someone here?” the woman pleaded. “They’re standing up, and they have a bunch of stuff with them.”
Hong said dispatchers have their “regulars.” A man named Charles calls every single day to report a homeless man sleeping outside his building.
Pomeroy, the woman who quit in July, said it’s hard handling calls like these because dispatchers have to remain calm and polite, considering every word they say is being recorded. But they also are watching the screen above them flash with the number of 911 calls that are on hold, knowing some of them are surely far more crucial. Pomeroy said she’d seen up to 30 calls on hold at any given time.
“If there was common sense in the world that was operating on, let’s just say, a 75 percent level, this would not be the epidemic that it is,” Pomeroy said of the long wait times to get a 911 call answered.
“Staffing is an issue, but public stupidity is another issue. It makes me crazy,” she continued. “If your house is on fire, sure, call 911. If you’re not sure what to do with the tire on the sidewalk, don’t call 911 as your first choice.”
Maybe, just maybe, there’s somebody else with a more important call. It’s your call, San Francisco. You can keep the lines clear for true emergencies — or be stuck on hold when that inevitable emergency happens to you.