D.C. Council Bill Would Require Closer Oversight of 911 Calls

Washington -- A District of Columbia council member introduced a bill last week that takes a tough stance toward management of the city’s 911 emergency call center.

Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) said she wants to get rid of the kinds of delays and mistakes that sent emergency responders to wrong addresses or made them arrive too late to provide critical assistance.

“The standard for our emergency response must be 100 percent accuracy,” Pinto said as she introduced the Transparency in Emergency Response Act. She chairs the council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety.

A key part of the proposed legislation would require the Office of Unified Communications to publicly release audio and transcripts that might demonstrate dispatching errors.

Pinto said she plans to hold monthly oversight hearings of the agency and to make unannounced visits to the 911 call center every other week.

The legislation responds to audits from inside and outside the city administration that found systemic failures in the Office of Unified Communications. Chief among them is low staffing levels tied to pay and employee morale.

Last year, the 911 dispatchers sent firefighters to the wrong address for a call about a newborn in cardiac arrest, canceled a call over an unconscious child in a hot car and classified a call about a man who collapsed as a low priority. In all three cases, someone died.

Last month, firefighters arrived 23 minutes after the first call about flooding at a dog kennel. By then, 10 dogs had drowned to death in their cages.

Pinto said she plans the unannounced visits to monitor dispatcher training, check on staffing levels and to listen to concerns of employees.

Her bill would change an Office of Unified Communications policy that gave its management discretion over whether to publicly release records of 911 calls.

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