Written in Blood

I apologize for those expecting Part 2 of my stress discussion but a current event is lodged under my skin.

Deficiencies aren’t new to Public Safety Telecommunications. Centers have been working with too few people working too many hours with sub-par equipment for years. Years. Cincinnati (OH) and their issues might be all over the news right now but they aren’t an exception.  Currently only 93 of the 107 telecommunications positions needed to be fully staffed are filled. This didn’t happen overnight. These seats have been vacant for a while. And the equipment? We make jokes about how often our equipment fails and most of us have horror stories about how we’ve had to overcome significant failures in life or death situations. Of course, now Cincinnati city council and other municipal leaders are focusing on getting that equipment fixed and those empty seats filled. Why? Because 16-year-old Kyle Plush died after calling 911 twice. Trapped under the third seat in his Honda Odyssey he reached out for help. The first call generated officers scouring the area for him. At that time, they didn’t know what the vehicle looked like. It wasn’t until his second call begging for someone to come help him and leaving a heartbreaking goodbye to his mother that the vehicle description was given, to 911. In an unbelievably tragic chain of events, for a variety of reasons that critical information never made it to the field where officers cleared the scene unable to locate. Later that night, Kyle’s father went to look for him and found his child dead, crushed to death. No words can express the absolute devastation this incident created not only for Kyle’s family and community, but through public safety telecommunications centers everywhere. And apparently it had to happen for city leaders to finally do something about critical issues within their communications center.

In the weeks following the Plush tragedy, after the 911 operator was put on leave and then returned to the center, the people who had the power to make changes to the issues historically plaguing the center finally decided to do something. In the public spotlight, it was time to address the understaffing and technological failures that 911 dispatchers had been dealing with and asking for help with for years. It makes me so angry that their pleas had to be covered in a child’s blood to finally be heard. After the emergency meetings, the municipality put together a 911 Action Plan based on their current deficiencies such as “oversight, technology, staffing, working environment and training.”

These are the exact details of the plan:

• Research, via visits, the "finest emergency call centers in the country." Completion date: Nov. 1
• Look at bringing back the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials – International for a refresh report, which would include recommendations. Completion date: Aug. 1
• Review the headsets issued to operators to see which is best. Completion date: Sept. 1
• Hire 30 new people, the number needed to be at full staffing after promotions, retirements, transfers and resignations. Currently, the center can staff up to 107 employees, with 93 jobs filled. Completion date: May 1, 2019
• Answer over 90 percent of 911 calls in 10 seconds or less. In 2016, the percentage of calls answered in 10 seconds or less was 56 percent. No current percentage was given, though a report says the center is "more effective in this area." Completion date: Jan. 1, 2019
• Add supervisors and trainers. Currently, 11 people supervise 100 employees over every hour of the week and one employee is dedicated to training. Completion date: Various, all by Jan. 1, 2019
• Evaluate 12-hour shifts, the shift the majority of the operators work, to see if it's best for citizens. The operators voted for that shift duration because it allows for the most off days. Completion date: Oct. 1”

This is a great plan. An amazing plan actually. What’s distressing about it is all of these deficiencies were years in the making. One decision stacked on another decision stripping the emergency communications centers of their funding, their ability to hire and retain staff, and lowest bidder technology put Cincinnati in the bind that made this plan a necessity. Supporting the center and its employees should have been done from the beginning every day so that this action plan and the Plush tragedy didn’t have to happen. But it seems to be common practice that we do more with less every year. Burned out operators working tons of mandatory overtime, faulty equipment and unqualified supervisors are no longer rare but the norm. When I left 911 dispatch 13 years ago, the majority of my co-workers loved their jobs and felt secure and supported. Now, those that are left seem to be just counting the days until they retire. They feel ignored by city leaders. And they aren’t asking for luxuries. They are asking for adequate staffing and quality equipment that works all the time. The same things that Cincinnati was asking for.

So at least one agency will finally get some changes, especially the necessary number of employees to do this life or death job safety. One down. Thousands to go. Hopefully, it won’t take thousands of citizen or field responder deaths for someone to do something about this shortage. I have to ask: Is it going to take a tragedy at my former department for them to get those in charge to care and do something? Will another child have to die? Will my partner have to be ambushed and murdered? Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic that it will take less. For this, I apologize to both our internal and external community. We’re doing the best we can with what we have. Until things change, know we sit here under the headset heartbroken that our best isn’t going to be good enough.