Crime-ridden San Francisco’s 911 dispatchers answered just 72 percent of calls within 15 seconds in October, alarming new statistics show.
The number, released by the Department of Emergency Management, is the lowest of any month in the past six years, and short of the department’s goal of 95 percent.
Emergency workers Tuesday blamed the dip on a decline in the number of full-time dispatchers since the COVID-19 pandemic, and a simultaneous rise in the volumes of calls.
‘It’s dire straits for sure around here, and it’s not getting any better,’ veteran dispatcher Valerie Tucker told The San Francisco Chronicle in an interview this Tuesday.
Currently, nearly 2,000 calls come into the department a day – a number that averages out 81 calls per hour.
an Francisco’s 911 dispatchers answered just 72 percent of calls within 15 seconds in October, alarming new statistics show
Currently, nearly 2,000 calls come into the department a day – a number that averages out 81 calls per hour.
Emergency workers Tuesday blamed the dip on a decline in the number of full-time dispatchers since the COVID-19 pandemic, and a simultaneous rise in the volumes of calls
Outlets such as the Chronicle have previously reported on the city’s acute staffing shortage, and still-being-considered strategies like giving dispatchers the same distinction as emergency workers like police, given their city status.
Dispatchers, meanwhile, have long called for additional staffing. The current crush of calls, have forced many of them to work mandatory overtime – often for months at a time, several told the Chronicle.
‘In 15 seconds I can start CPR instructions, get NARCAN administered, give choking instructions to a new mom or dad,’ Tucker said of the waning response rate percentage.
‘I can prevent a suicidal person from harming themselves because I say their name and they no longer feel so alone.’
Her boss at the city-run DEM, Mary Ellen Carroll, however, sang a different tune.
She said she was ‘optimistic’ things would improve in the New Year due to recent department changes such the addition of an internal recruiter, and increases to workers’ base pay to $104,000.
Moreover, the position only requires a high school diploma, and comes complete with union benefits.
Further sweetening the pot, she said, is an effort to expedite the background checks dispatchers face, which is already in the works.
‘There’s nothing more important for me right now, as director of this organization, than to work on this issue,’ said Carrol, who was appointed to her post of executive director in the summer of 2018
At the time of her appointment, staffing in her department stood around 280 – more than double the number of full-time dispatchers today.
The number, released by the Department of Emergency Management , is the lowest of any month in the past six years, and short of the department’s goal of 95 percent
From March 2020 to December 2022, staffing experienced a dip from 155 to 123 – nearly 40 short of its goal of 160 fully trained employees.
In her interview Tuesday, Carroll said the number has since risen to 126, along with 14 trainees – ‘incremental progress,’ she said.
Tucker, however, said she and others are feeling the burn from the seemingly never-ending flood of calls, which plummeted in 2020 and 2021 but have since returned to pre-pandemic rates.
As call volumes rise, response times have only gotten slower, the statistics now show – and Tucker told the Chronicle she and her fellow dispatchers, after months of working longer hours and getting fewer breaks, are on the verge of burnout.
‘Most of us in the room are starting to [ask], is this worth it?’ Tucker said, as the city continues to grapple with persistent, now yearslong rash of crime.
Tucker added she fears the inability to keep up with the flood of represents a new status quo – one created by the pandemic that, like the San Francisco’s crime situation, is now the norm.
President of the San Francisco dispatchers’ union Burt Wilson, a current dispatcher, also spoke to the publication, and detailed plans he said are currently in the works to address the city’s hiring timeline.
Outlets such as the Chronicle have previously reported on the city’s acute staffing shortage, and still-being-considered strategies like giving dispatchers the same distinction as emergency workers like police, given their city status
From March 2020 to December 2022, staffing experienced a dip from 155 to 123 – nearly 40 short of its goal of 160 fully trained employees
As this occurring, crime continues to remain an issue in what was once the crown jewel of the Bay Area
Wilson said a still-being-considered bill that would reclassify dispatchers as public safety workers could help alleviate the dispatcher shortage.
San Francisco’s hiring process currently takes an average of 255 days to secure a dispatcher – a timeline further hampered by the time it takes to train them, which officials have said takes about a year.
Worsening matters is staff are not coming in to replace retiring or tired workers fast enough, all said – spurring Carroll to tell the paper she will support ‘anything that is going to bring people to the field and keep the really good people that we have.’
When contacted by The Chronicle, the office of Mayor London Breed did not say why it has not reclassified 911 dispatchers as emergency workers – a designation held by cops and firefighters that parlays to better benefits and a generous pension.
Of the understaffing issue, Spokesperson Jeff Cretan said, ‘it’s not just a local issue. This is a national issue.
He then reportedly reiterated how his boss remains ‘focused’ on improving the response time issues.
As this occurring, crime continues to remain an issue in what was once the crown jewel of the Bay Area.
According to statistics covering the entirety of this year up until this past Sunday, robberies saw a 14.2 percent increase from last year, and a 15.6 rise in rapes.
Homicides also remain unchanged from last year at 53, eerily close to the number of homicides reported at the close of both 2022 as in 2021 – a total of 55.
That followed a 56-year low recorded in 2019 when 41 people were killed in the city, a number that, like much of the other crime rates, appears to be a thing of the past post-pandemic.
Somewhat pessimistic, Wilson said of city officials: ‘They know it’s a problem.
‘But until somebody important gets killed or hurt, they’re not going to address it.’