911 Upgrade Is Hung Up 3 Years After Voter OK

More than three years after Los Angeles voters approved a $235-million bond issue to upgrade the city’s dangerously antiquated 911 dispatch system, record-breaking numbers of emergency calls are going unanswered by 911 operators.

However, city officials appear to be treating the festering problem as something less than a life-or-death emergency.

The Los Angeles Police Department is currently nowhere near breaking ground on two new communications dispatch centers, the central selling point of the successful 1992 bond measure.

In fact, the city has yet to sign the critical contract to develop a computer system that would link the dual facilities. Officials have not even decided on a site for one of the centers, planned for the San Fernando Valley.

The centers apparently will not be up and running until at least the turn of the century. While the bond measure included no timetable, it did pledge “immediate improvements,” and leading city officials say voters had every right to expect far quicker progress.

“It’s taken too long to implement, there’s no question,” said City Councilman Michael Feuer, whose district includes the Westside and the Valley.

Interim efforts to beef up the LAPD’s staff of 911 operators or to add incoming phone lines to the system have been stifled by city budget constraints and bureaucratic foot-dragging.

Making matters worse, the LAPD’s program to put more officers on the street has sapped the 911 system. In 1995, most experienced emergency operators were transferred to police stations so more sworn officers could patrol city streets.

Consequently, police say, the number of emergency calls to 911 abandoned by callers has soared. In 1995, there were nearly 200,000 of them through September--more than in any previous entire year. Nearly one of every three emergency calls was not answered within the city’s goal of less than 10 seconds--sometimes because the jittery caller hung up.

The situation is just as alarming for nonemergency and Spanish-language calls.

Nearly 40% of all calls that 911 operators transfer to secondary lines after judging them non-life-threatening are currently abandoned by callers who simply get tired of being on hold. Most of these callers wait at least 20 seconds, and delays of more than five minutes are not uncommon.

Only slightly more than half of the Spanish-language calls--including those for life-and-death emergencies--are answered in less than 20 seconds. Indeed, “some Spanish callers [are] waiting over 20 minutes,” according to a City Council report last summer.

A nationally recognized consultant who recently completed a study for the city Fire Department, which gets its emergency calls from the 911 operators, said he has never run across a dispatch system with an abandoned-call rate like that in Los Angeles.

“This is a very serious public safety problem that should be addressed immediately,” said the report by Carroll Buracker of Virginia.

Feuer said Los Angeles city officials often have problems fulfilling the promises made when seeking bonding authority to build police stations, library branches or other capital improvements. But a quick upgrade of the 911 system is essential because of the system’s critical nature and for the good of future bond measures, he said.

“There’s a lack of leadership,” said Feuer, who is seeking to establish a czar’s post for controlling bond measure construction projects. “If we’re ever going to get another bond measure passed by city voters, we have to make a radical break with our past.”

The city’s 911 system--the nation’s largest--has been considered outmoded, inadequate and understaffed since months after it was first installed in 1984.

In mid-1985, during the height of the Night Stalker serial killings, peak-time callers had to wait 30 seconds or more for an operator. From 1986 to 1994, the number of incoming 911 calls jumped 70%, with no staffing increase.

Bond measures to update the system were rebuffed by city voters in 1990 and 1991. But in the wake of the 1992 riots--when record numbers of callers found it impossible to reach an emergency operator--the Los Angeles electorate finally overcame its reluctance to raise taxes for public safety spending.

Proposition M, earning a 77% majority on the November 1992 ballot, authorized $235 million in bonds to be repaid over 20 years with increased property taxes.

In return, the city pledged to build two state-of-the-art dispatch centers--one in Westchester and the other in the San Fernando Valley. The dual-center approach was considered a safety feature in a city prone to earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Since the money was secured, the LAPD has begun buying new radios and upgrading its dispatch computer hardware and backup phone system.

However, planning and construction for the new dispatch centers, described in an internal document as the “hallmark project” of Proposition M, have been decidedly less than immediate.

As is customary, the LAPD established an in-house task force to oversee the work. But having seen few tangible results and critical of “weak project management controls,” City Controller Rick Tuttle wrote Police Chief Willie L. Williams last April urging that he establish a list of goals and management standards.

Williams wrote back more than a month later acknowledging that some delays were attributable to management. But he complained that progress had also been slowed by a “cumbersome and exhaustive system of regulations and review processes” within city government.

In one internal report, LAPD officials cited delays of more than two months for the review of various contract and bid documents by the offices of the city attorney and the city administrative officer. Those offices reported back to the LAPD that they had other, more pressing matters to handle first--such as preparing the annual city budget and handling legal claims against the city.

Since last spring, LAPD officials have made progress setting up the framework for establishing the new dispatch centers. However, they will not come close to making Tuttle’s goal of being operational well before the turn of the century.

“It’s a very complicated system we’re asking them to put in,” said Cmdr. Carlo Cudio, the head of LAPD communications programs. At best, he added, LAPD officials “hope to have” the centers open in 2000.

Cudio said it will take at least two years to develop the dual computer system once a contract is signed. City officials must also still choose a site for the Valley facility.

Initial plans called for the center to be constructed next to the West Valley police station. But police officials now believe the site is too small and are concerned about opposition from neighbors averse to parking congestion.

In late 1995, Mayor Richard Riordan’s office suggested an alternate site owned by Coast Federal Savings at Roscoe Boulevard and Fallbrook Avenue in West Hills. A proposal to negotiate for the property--which Riordan’s office estimated could cost at least $4 million--was pulled off the Police Commission agenda last month because a Riordan-appointed commission member works for a law firm that has represented Coast Federal.

To avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, the proposal will be heard instead today by a committee of City Council members.

Meanwhile, the city’s 911 problems dramatically worsen.

In all of 1994, a record 190,982 emergency calls were abandoned. In 1995, that record was broken by the end of September.

The increase resulted even though the city was receiving nearly 10% fewer calls than in the previous year.

In addition, nearly half a million nonemergency calls were abandoned from January through September 1995, as were another 80,000 Spanish-language calls. Final statistics for the year are not yet available.

Police officials believe that most emergency callers who hang up in frustration quickly redial and eventually get through. “They get a recording and [just] don’t get the message that they should hang on because their call is in line to be answered,” Cudio said.

Officials acknowledge, however, that they really have no idea whether some unanswered calls result in unnecessary trauma, or worse still, death.

“We’re a bit handicapped in knowing what’s going on out there,” said Capt. Thomas D. Elfmont, who runs the city’s 911 dispatch center.

Efforts to answer emergency calls more rapidly have progressed slowly because of budget constraints.

The current 911 dispatch center, which will be closed once the two new ones are in operation, consists of 60 consoles staffed around the clock by about 400 operators in a darkened, windowless room four floors below City Hall East. The LAPD has been granted permission to add 16 consoles, but has met with delays in recent months in winning City Council approval to actually free the $300,000 needed for purchase and installation.

Staffing for the new consoles--as well as adequate staffing for the existing phone lines--is also up in the air. A Police Commission-approved proposal to increase the 911 staff by 161 bilingual operators and 16 supervisors--the level police say is necessary to rapidly answer all 911 calls--has languished for months before the City Council.

Requests within the LAPD last year to transfer more than 100 sworn officers on light-duty status to the dispatch center have also yet to be fulfilled. Only one such officer is currently assigned.

Much of the city’s recent focus on the 911 system has dealt with improving the quality of services provided to non-English-speaking callers. In September, Riordan approved City Council action calling for the LAPD to try to seek more bilingual 911 operators and supervisors.

However, no funds were set aside for hiring new or additional operators.

LAPD officials say the problem of abandoned calls was further exacerbated in 1995 by the need to hire new operators to replace veterans reassigned to police stations.

“They’re all young people here now who have virtually no experience,” said Cudio. “I think 66% have less than two years. They’re doing a good job, but they don’t have the requisite experience.”

To help ease the burden on the 911 operators, the LAPD is looking into the idea of establishing an easy-to-remember citywide phone number that citizens could dial for nonemergency services.

Cudio believes that the number of unnecessary calls to 911 could be significantly reduced with a single, seven-digit number free to callers in all three of the city’s area codes, 213, 310 and 818.

Yet in an era of instant communications, phone company officials say they have no way of locating such a number.

“We can’t do a computer search in multiple area codes for a phone number that is unassigned,” said Linda Bonniksen, a Pacific Bell spokeswoman. “We’d have to literally assign people to manually purge, in this case, 21 million phone numbers.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

On Hold

In the first nine months of 1995, more 911 emergency calls went unanswered by city 911 operators than in any entire year previously. In addition, more than 185,000 calls took at least 20 seconds to answer--more than double the city’s goal of less than 10 seconds.

*--*

911 Emergency 911 Emergency Calls Received Calls Abandoned 1992 2,552,531 174,567 1993 2,435,963 148,672 1994 2,339,290 190,982 1995 1,546,030* 198,641*

*--*

****

1995 Breakdown

Number answered in 0-9 seconds: 1,069,235

Number answered in 10-19 seconds: 92,403

Number answered in 20 or more seconds: 185,751

Number abandoned: 198,641

Total 911 Calls Dialed in 1995*: 1,546,030

* Through September 1995

Source: Los Angeles Police Department