It might be responsible for emergency services in Washington, but the District of Columbia’s 911 call center remains a complete joke. Just not a very funny one. The Office of Unified Communications has been notoriously defective for years. But Mayor Muriel Bowser doesn’t simply not care — she remains devoted to hiding her key leadership failure from the public.

The OUC remains beholden to the mayor’s policy of secrecy and deflection over its failure. The evidence for this enduring failure remains both anecdotal and statistical.