Fort Worth police work to fix staff shortages, delayed 911 response times, department says
The Fort Worth Police Department has more than a dozen vacancies in the division that oversees 911 calls — a shortage which contributes to a lag in response times to emergency calls, the department said Thursday.
A city audit published Dec. 30 found the Fort Worth Police Department fell short of its response time goal for 46.36% of high-priority emergency calls between October 2019 and December 2020. According to the police department, the problem is due to a shortage of call-takers at the 911 call center.
The 911 call center, which makes up the Police Communications Division, is run by one police officer and 119 civilian staffers, the audit report says. From October 2019 to December 2020, call-takers at the center answered 1.2 million calls from residents each calendar year.
As of Thursday, the police department said, the call center had 18 vacancies. The department has an additional 41 vacant civilian positions and 71 vacant police positions. Forty-five officers graduated last week from the training academy, Lt. Chris Daniels said in an email Thursday, but those officers are still going through 3 ½ months of field training with training officers. They are responding to calls, Daniels said, but are under close supervision and direction.
In June, police responded to criticism about 911 response times and said the call center had a staff shortage. In a statement, the department did not specify how many vacant positions the department had at the time, but said FWPD “has taken several steps to fix the immediate staffing issues as we implement long-term solutions to prevent our call center from ever being in this position again.”
Salary increase for 911 workers
With support from the City Council and department staff, Daniels said Thursday, the department raised communication employees’ salaries by $6 an hour across the board in November. The raise brought the entry-level starting salary to $25.08 an hour. People can apply for the positions on the city’s job board website. Vacancy numbers on the job board might not reflect all current vacancies since postings are taken down once a certain number of people apply. The job will be re-posted if none of the applicants qualified for the position.
The raise allows the department “to retain our veteran employees and make Fort Worth more attractive to persons seeking employment in the career of Emergency Communications,” Daniels wrote.
The department also worked with Tarrant County 911 to develop an automated system that transfers 911 calls appropriately, Daniels said, which made the call system more efficient.
When a person calls 911 or the police department’s emergency number, their call is directed to a call-taker at the 911 call center. The call-taker collects details, assigns the call a priority and transfers the call to dispatchers. Dispatchers contact police or other emergency responders and direct them to the scene.
The Fort Worth Police Department’s response time goal for “priority 1” calls is 8 minutes and 54 seconds. According to data in the audit report, Texas’ four other largest cities had faster response time goals.
However, Dallas and Houston calculate their response times differently; those police departments start the time when a dispatcher sends an officer to the scene. Austin, San Antonio and Fort Worth response times are based on when a call-taker receives the initial 911 call. Austin’s response time goal for “priority 1” calls is 8 minutes and ten seconds, and San Antonio’s goal is six minutes and 45 seconds.
“Each city is unique in geography,” Daniels added, “therefore it would not be prudent to adopt another city’s matrix.”
Recommendations to police
The auditor’s report made two recommendations to the police department. First, the report said the department needs clear, written policies on response times, which the report says it does not have. The policy should include how those times are calculated and how often police response times are assessed.
The police department agrees with the suggestions, Daniels said, and is in the process of creating written protocol to meet those recommendations.
The audit report also noted an increase in abandoned calls in June 2021. From October 2019 to June 2020, about 8 to 9% of calls were abandoned, the audit report said. In June, 23% of calls were abandoned by callers.
Call response times from June 2021 were analyzed separately due to a “publicized incident” that month, the audit report said. On June 21, NBC DFW reported that a Fort Worth mother called 911 after her daughter stopped breathing, but nobody answered. The woman’s daughter survived, but her story called attention to a growing problem.
A call to 911 is considered abandoned when the caller hangs up before the system connects them to a call-taker. This can happen for a number of reasons, Daniels said. When a person hangs up and calls 911 a second time, this generates an additional call by the system. All calls are answered in the order they are received, so if a person hangs up and calls back and there are calls in the queue, they could possibly be behind someone who called after their original call, Daniels said.
