People can argue about what comprises a city’s “core services,” but few would dispute that handling police emergency calls, the 911 system, is at the top of the list.

That is why it’s so appalling to hear stories like the one that Kenneth Jacob, 75, shared with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. And such a case should set off alarm bells in the mayor’s office, and among all the Honolulu Police Department brass, to get this fixed.

On March 23 at 9:51 a.m., Jacob, a Waikiki resident, had called 911 through his cell automatic system on the Ala Moana bridge over the Ala Wai Canal. A man had attacked Jacob, who had said he had no cigarette to offer him. Jacob suffered an injury on his temple and three broken ribs.

What he got for his emergency call was an automated message saying that no one was available to answer it. Unbelievable.

Just how frequently such a message plays is unknown: HPD Capt. Matthew Kurihara, who heads the department’s communications division, said that such occurrences aren’t tracked. But even once is a sufficient signal of a problem to be addressed, with urgency.

Further, not tracking the calls for help and not knowing the scope of the problem is simply unconscionable — given that many 911 calls could well be the difference between life or death. It should be standard operating procedure for a call center — let alone one as vital as 911 — to statistically track its calls on such things as wait times, volume and average length of call. All these help to evaluate staffing decisions, as well as the city’s emergency responses.

Covering the duty of response to 911 calls is a problem in many cities, to be sure. HPD is not the only police agency nationally to be struggling with staffing shortages. But Honolulu, and all counties, could be doing more to meet the challenge.

For one, they should move faster to implement upgrades that would reduce strain on the workforce. One of the problems is the abandoned calls from people who hang up and require a callback. HPD indicates that these calls represent about 20% of 911 call volume.

Other cities’ systems have an automated abandoned callback feature that allow 911 personnel to focus more time on callers with actual emergencies.

The Kansas City, Mo., Police Department is one that rolled out its automated abandoned callback feature in March. It will automatically return a phone call to people who have hung up before a call-taker could answer. Using the software, the call center still makes contact with each caller, but call takers no longer manually make the calls.

HPD should accelerate its own plans to add the upgrade here. And it could do more to advance Honolulu 311. This mobile application enables people to easily report nonemergency issues, lessening the strain on 911.

A public educational campaign could promote this 311 helpline and other alternatives to dialing 911 in nonemergency situations. The public could be directed to online options (www.honolulupd.org/police-reports), and encouraged to create an account at HNL.info. That site offers emergency messages, traffic and weather advisories in real time, diverting more calls from the 911 system.

But none of these changes will work without a commitment from the top. Mayor Rick Blangiardi needs to put a priority on finding a solution to the bottleneck of calls to 911. It starts with exploring more efficient ways of redirecting nonemergency calls, and then making the upgrades that have been successful in other cities.

The city hopes its hiring incentives can address the staffing shortage, which clearly is a big part of the problem. But right-sizing the staff will take time, and improvements need to be made now.

About 1 million calls come into the 911 system annually. Keeping that system running well is critical to each of those callers, and to the entire state. In the City and County of Honolulu, it falls to the mayor to assure the public that this part of the public safety net is intact — first by making sure that it is.