The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, in its recent editorial about the City and County of Honolulu’s 911 system, is absolutely right: All emergency calls must be answered. For us, with regard to this critical issue, the alarm bells are indeed going off.
It goes without saying that 911 needs to be a fail-proof operation. We need to make sure a system that receives nearly one million calls each year is serving the public as effectively as it possibly can — and the urgency of our improvement efforts must, and will, match the urgency with which people call 911 every day.
The vacancy rate amongst call takers and radio dispatchers for police-related 911 calls remains a critical issue — our staffing problems at the Honolulu Police Department extend well beyond the shortage of sworn officers. Many of our city departments are understaffed, but shortages amongst our first responder agencies have an outsized impact on public safety, our administration’s top priority.
Following the early success of our $25,000 recruitment bonus program for sworn officers, HPD is now working on a similar hiring incentive program for our entry-level 911 opera- tors. For those ready to serve, police leaders are working with the City’s Department of Human Resources to update testing procedures to better reflect the job’s current responsibilities — a process that is nearly complete.
The department is also in discussions with the Hawaii Government Employees Association on other solutions to staffing issues, including the possibility of re-hiring recently retired police communications officers on a temporary contract basis, to bolster staffing in the short-term.
Operationally, HPD has also committed to redistributing the number of call takers on any given shift to increase the number of people who are available to answer emergency calls. The impact this will have, especially during times of higher call volume, is meaningful to the public, since more people answering emergency calls obviously results in shorter — or eliminated — wait times when calling 911. This may result in longer wait times for non-emergency calls, but emergency calls must be the priority.
The automated callback feature the Star-Advertiser wrote about is already on its way, with the system — which will allow us to better address dropped or abandoned calls — currently in procurement. The department expects testing on that system to begin next month.
Once it is implemented, most 911 callers won’t notice anything different about the system. But if your call was dropped — or if you accidentally dialed 911, or hung up the phone before talking to anyone — the automated system will call your number back to determine if there is actually an emergency. If so, your call will be routed back to an emergency response operator; if the call was an accident or a misdial, the system will identify it as such, and 911 operators will no longer have to spend time calling that person back. In emergency situations, every minute counts.
To improve response times when call volumes are high, HPD is also exploring a new, automated emergency response system that would route calls to the appropriate first responder agency — freeing up more operators to focus on emergency calls from folks like Kenneth Jacob, the Waikiki resident who received an automated message after calling 911 during an assault.
We agree with David Shapiro that our 911 system — and our police force — are vital services that our residents and visitors can largely depend on. We must do whatever is needed to keep it that way.
Rick Blangiardi is the mayor of Honolulu.
