Polk: Most 911 calls not vital

County officials ask residents to think twice before dialing the emergency hotline.

The purring ring of the phone repeats several times as someone waits for someone to pick up on the other end. On the line can be all variety of local residents who need help. They’ve been involved in a wreck on the roadway. They’ve come home to their home being robbed and need an officer to come right away. A family member is suffering from an immediate medical problem. The kitchen is on fire.

It isn’t an easy job to hear Polk County residents during the most distressing times in their lives. That job is made harder when dispatchers answer the phone and the person on the other end asks when McDonald’s will be reopen since, during that particular call, it was closed during the middle of December’s snowstorm. Polk County Public Safety committee members couldn’t believe their ears when they heard the story related by Public Safety Director Randy Lacey.

“I’m absolutely serious,” said Polk County 911 Director Crystal Vincent in confirmation.

Vincent said a lot of people call 911 for reasons that aren’t related at all to an emergency at all, tying up the line and time of dispatchers at the 911 operations center. She and other Polk County officials are asking the public will heed her call to decrease the volume of unnecessary calls into the emergency and non-emergency lines of people seeking help in areas where they might see a disaster occurring in their personal lives, but could be better served by other 24- hour services available.

Dispatchers consider an emergency call to be one where someone needs immediate assistance to seek aid in injury or medical emergency requiring an ambulance (think a heart attack or stroke, an an example) or when law enforcement is needed for an immediate response to protect lives or property.

A call that isn’t an emergency can range in reasons. For instance, customers of the Polk County Water Authority who seek to report outages when the office is closed have a specific emergency number in place to call, 770-715-2593, and only for immediate water line breakages overnight or on weekends. Or additionally, people who need help finding out about the status of loved ones in the hospital should call the Polk Medical Center information line at 770-7482500. Dispatchers can’t help when the satellite signal is bad. They likely won’t know who to call to extend the time of an overdue library book. And don’t waste their time inquiring about a number for Domino’s.

( See the list of nonemergency numbers in the sidebar with this story to seek information or assistance that aren’t 911 related.)

Non-emergency, or what internally are called administrative calls, are a serious problem for the agency that is already having issues with staffing problems.

Vincent has three open positions for dispatchers at Polk County’s 911 office. Two trainees are soon going to be added to the rotation of employees who answer calls and send emergency personnel to scenes, but they are currently unavailable to work regular shifts until their training time is up. She’s also interviewed for one of those positions as well, but hasn’t filled the vacancy.

As of her report to the county Public Safety committee meeting in mid-March, 911 dispatchers had taken in more than 1,600 calls during the first half of the month and those were answered by only three people working during a 12 hour shift.

The total for the 2018 Fiscal Year was at 20,180 call and rising as of Vincent’s latest report.

Call volume increases during large scale emergency situations when people seek to learn more but don’t have an immediate source of reliable information. Take for instance the lock down situation that occured in the Polk School District in February. Parents flooded the dispatchers with calls looking to find out the status of their children despite messages and robo-calls put out by the district.

Though understandable why callers sought help from 911, dispatchers during large scale emergencies need to spend their time on the real problem at hand and respond to requests from first responders.

Especially since those dispatchers spend long hours on the job and aren’t paid nearly enough. Vincent said starting salaries for 911 dispatchers currently sits at $10.59 an hour.

“I can’t get qualified applicants to fill these positions I have open,” she told the committee. A problem faced by all the departments in the county government, from law enforcement to the Public Works.

Polk County Commission Chair Jennifer Hulsey — who is also the chair of the Public Safety committee — said that it is a problem the county is working on now that they have voted to increase all employee salaries by 75 cents, and are undertaking an employee pay evaluation to be conducted by the Carl Vincent Institute at the University of Georgia.

It is a problem however that Polk County Public Safety Director Randy Lacey said is one the current board didn’t create.

“This has been a long time coming,” Lacey said during the committee meeting.

One way the county immediately will seek to decrease call volume is by tackling the problem internally. Queries on the non-emergency line into 911 from law enforcement and other first responders also take up time from dispatchers handling emergency calls, and one that the heads of various agencies said they would caution officers and deputies to utilize wisely.

Polk County Police Chief Kenny Dodd and County Assistant Manager Barry Akinson also put forth an idea of having a specific hotline with a non-published number to provide law enforcement a way to call in. The idea is to have a number not available to the public for non-emergency calls over with queries when radio communications are down for a variety of reasons, or to seek assistance with computer aided dispatch while out on patrol.

County Manager Matt Denton also said it might be useful to have an automated message on the already public non-emergency line answered by dispatchers to cut down on the number of calls coming into 911 as well by pointing callers in different directions.

For now, tack up a copy of the list of numbers included in this story to help decrease the call volume to 911, and make sure that someone who really needs the help can get through to a person on the other line as fast as they can.