Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Burned out in Broward: 911 system needs fixing now
“911, what’s your emergency?”
Frantic callers across Broward hear a version of that question hundreds of times a day from the county’s highly trained 911 operators. But the true emergency is in the 911 system itself, where a crisis has been festering for far too long.
Sun Sentinel reporters Eileen Kelley, Brittany Wallman, Lisa J. Huriash and Spencer Norris have documented in frightening detail how calls to Broward’s 911 centers go unanswered — 14,505 calls in February alone. In one of the most tragic cases, an unresponsive three-month-old Deerfield Beach infant died on New Year’s Day when eight critical minutes passed before someone answered the telephone.
The newspaper found that abandoned calls, which are disconnected before they are answered, increased 26% from 2019 to 2021. Last year there were 116,755 abandoned calls, the equivalent of one every three minutes every hour every day of the year.
The three regional 911 call centers operated by the Broward Sheriff ’s Office are dangerously understaffed because the system is plagued by low pay and high turnover. BSO officials say the COVID19 pandemic has resulted in even more employees quitting sooner for more prestigious law enforcement jobs or better pay elsewhere.
Operators routinely work 12-hour shifts by choice, and at times as long as 16 hours by choice, according to BSO officials.
“We are burned out,” Sheriff Gregory Tony told county commissioners Tuesday, as he and two top aides fielded a volley of questions about how they plan to address a problem with life-and-death consequences.
What’s especially troubling is that this is not a new crisis, as this newspaper has documented the system’s shortcomings for years:
Broward’s emergency 911 system still troubled (2015).
Broward’s 911 dispatch system is improving, but still struggling, officials say (2016).
Broward 911 centers short-staffed, audit says (2019).
These unresolved failures are a microcosm of the story of Broward County itself, where inefficiencies in government become chronic and linger, year after year.
For residents, it’s a depressingly familiar cycle. A tragedy or journalistic exposé briefly grabs the bureaucracy’s attention, and table-pounding politicians express requisite outrage and demand action. Soon the crisis fades from view as another problem takes its place and not much changes until the next tragedy or exposé.
This is a defining characteristic of a county with a lack of strong central political leadership, too many fiefdoms and a disconnected electorate. It’s a prescription for too little accountability.
The 911 dispatch system is chiefly
Tony’s responsibility, but he shares it with 29 of the 31 cities in Broward. The sheriff ’s budget is set not by him, but by the nine county commissioners, who rightly
second-guess the sheriff ’s spending decisions, as they did Tuesday. Commissioners don’t like being blindsided by a crisis not of their making.
The sheriff has budgeted 449 full-time positions for 911 operators, but only about 370 are filled. So, commissioners asked, why not take the money budgeted for those unspent positions and give everybody else a big pay raise? The answer, from the county administrator, was that it would cause salary inequities elsewhere in the sheriff ’s office.
Recruiting and retaining better-paid 911 call specialists must become a more urgent priority, immediately.
The BSO website features a help wanted ad for a 911 dispatcher, known as a regional communications operator, at a starting salary of $37,947.82. That pay scale is estimated by BSO officials as at least $10,000 a year less than for the equivalent job in the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office, which makes no sense whatsoever.
The job has become so stressful that the Florida Legislature must consider improving the pension benefits for 911 call-takers, the same as for other categories of first responders. Yes, that costs money. But the system needs changing, and quickly.
One of the new commissioners, Jared Moskowitz, a former state director of emergency management, pinpointed the county’s glacial pace of response to problems that has long been its trademark.
“I just don’t want this to fall into the regular County Commission process that I see here, where six months from now we’re work-shopping it,” Moskowitz said.
Tony will report back to commissioners at a meeting May 10. A few weeks later, he and the county commission will hold a workshop on the sheriff ’s budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The sheriff promises a comprehensive plan to address the problem.
In fairness, this problem is not unique to Broward. Other major metropolitan areas are struggling with high turnover in their 911 operations, including Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte and Richmond, Va., to name a few.
Public safety is by far the largest share of the county’s operating budget, which is paid for largely by property taxes paid by homeowners. There are complicated factors at work here, but Broward deserves better than a broken 911 system.
This is an emergency. The first duty of government is to protect the public. When that fails, government itself fails.