The former head of an emergency call center in Washington, D.C., will return to her top position just over a year after she resigned amid scrutiny of ineffective handling of 911 calls.
Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Thursday that she would reappoint Karima Holmes as director of the Office of Unified Communications, which fields all 911- and 311-related calls, despite her stepping down in 2021 following accusations that she bungled emergency situations, wasting valuable seconds due to struggles to locate callers.
“During her tenure at OUC, Director Holmes created infrastructural redundancy for the OUC emergency operations and launched the Office of Professional Standards and Development,” the mayor’s office said in a statement. “A seasoned public safety professional and a recognized emergency communications industry leader, over the past two decades, Director Holmes has served as executive director at emergency communications centers (ECC) across the U.S., where she overhauled their technical infrastructure and critical public safety programs.”
DC CORRECTS ‘DEFICIENT’ DATA, TEMPORARILY EASING MONTHSLONG DISPUTE WITH VOTER ROLL GROUP
As the director of the OUC, Holmes faced sharp criticism that the agency’s 911 call system fell below national standards and often had difficulty pinpointing locations to send emergency responders. These complaints led to an audit by the city, which found several areas that required improvement.
“The comprehensive findings include inadequate supervision of the call-taking and dispatch operations, inconsistent or ineffective use of call script protocols, inconsistent use of location determining technology tools to determine locations, and insufficient management follow-up on after-action reviews,” wrote Kathleen Patterson, auditor for Washington, D.C., in the October 2021 report prepared for the mayor and City Council.
Dispatchers would often send responders to incorrect locations, causing confusion and delays, the 114-page audit alleged. In August 2020, emergency responders requested help from OUC as it searched for three men who went missing after going overboard in the Potomac River. Although first responders requested extra help at Capital Cove Marina at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, the agency dispatched land units more than five miles away on a different river.
The report also found that dispatch times for high-priority calls were inconsistent throughout the district, with some areas reporting 20% slower response times than others.
Despite these challenges, the audit noted the “issues identified by FE regarding call-taking and dispatch operations can be corrected to improve service to residents and responders.” It’s unclear whether these problems have been remedied ahead of Holmes’s return to the agency or whether the mayor’s office considered these findings in her reappointment.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Washington reported 1,247,624 emergency calls and 2,822 texts to 911 in 2020, according to the latest data available from 911.gov. The district has also seen a sharp increase in crime over the last year, including a 14% increase in homicides in 2021 compared to the year before and an 8% increase in motor vehicle theft, according to year-end data from the Metropolitan Police Department.
Bowser’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
