The District’s new 911-311 system will provoke massive call volume and delays as an undermanned, inadequately trained staff struggles to handle a wave of new service requests, employees of the Office of Unified Communications said Thursday.
Mayor Adrian Fenty rolled out the two-number system this week, retiring 202-727-1000, the longtime direct route to the mayor’s call center. Instead, residents are now asked to dial 311 to obtain city services or to call in a police report. Dial 911 for any incident that demands a police, fire or medical response — emergency or not.
“It’s an accident waiting to happen,” Tiffany Hooper, a 911 call taker at the Unified Communications Center, told the D.C. Council’s public safety committee. “Why not stop it before it happens?”
Hooper and call taker Alexandria Jones charged that a system in which emergency and nonemergency calls are dialed into the same number, 911, may put people’s lives in jeopardy. Already, they said, many callers are purposely dialing 911 just to avoid the lengthy automated 311 prompts. The communications team is badly understaffed, they charged, and the former 727-1000 call takers have not been adequately trained to handle public safety calls.
Both call takers said they feared retaliation for testifying before the panel, chaired by at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson. Janice Quintana, director of the Office of Unified Communications, pledged there would be no retribution. Quintana said neither Hooper nor Jones “have their information correct.” The office is “fully ready” for the changeover, she said, and with 311 handling all calls for information and city services, the 911 call takers can “focus completely on our citizens’ need for public safety response.”
Ward 7 Councilwoman Yvette Alexander questioned the need to “reinvent the wheel,” while Mendelson said he is “exploring options to unwind this trouble.”
“This change is going to reduce the responsiveness of 911 to handle true emergency calls where seconds count,” he said.
