FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) — A Fresno County Grand Jury report says Fresno's emergency dispatch centers are understaffed and underfunded.
If they don't start doing more work with the few bodies they have, a grand jury reports they could lose out on funding in the future.
Dispatchers are supposed to answer 95% of calls in 15 seconds or less. The Grand Jury Report included a graphic showing how often dispatchers actually get to calls in that amount of time.
The best stats Fresno saw in the past decade was in 2015, where 87.8% of calls were answered on time.
The worst average was the most recent year on record: in 2017, just 72.8% of calls were answered in under 15 seconds.
"Once we hit kind of 10, 11 o'clock at night, everything happens, no one gets to breathe," says Noelle Vanwyk, an Emergency Services Dispatcher for the Fresno Police Department.
Being a dispatcher is no walk in the park.
"If you don't have the mindset and the personality for it, you're not gonna make it. We hear stuff that people don't want to hear everyday," Vanwyk adds.
Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer agrees that the job can be a lot of stress for dispatchers.
"Turnover is tremendous when you're talking about communication centers, because of the amount of stress involved."
Fresno can get as many as 3,000 calls into 911 in a single day.
Right now, the Fresno Police Department's Communications Center has 88 dispatchers, which includes six supervisors and seven temporary employees.
They'd need 43 more dispatchers to keep up with volume of calls they get.
"Unfortunately with the vacancies that we have, and the low staffing levels that we have, it's going to be very difficult to achieve that standard," Dyer explains.
The department asked for 13 dispatchers in fiscal year 2018, and got zero.
Mayor Lee Brand prioritized hiring new officers instead.
"If you could answer a call in 15 seconds, if you have nobody to answer the call, it does nobody any good," Mayor Brand says.
For the 2019 fiscal year, the agency asked for 17 extra dispatchers and got eight.
"The reality is, the City just doesn't generate enough revenue to hire enough police officers, and support staff like dispatchers."
The Grand Jury report says 57% of the calls coming into 911 are non-emergency or pocket dial calls.
The mayor and police chief are asking the public to only use 911 when it's really an emergency,
"When people want the police, often times, they just simply call 9-1-1. But that should be reserved for those instances where it's either an in-progress crime, or a life-threatening incident, or some type of medical emergency," Dyer says.
If it's something like a robbery that already happened, you should call the non-emergency line instead at 621-700.
If it's a city matter, like a dangerous pothole, or you see graffiti -- call 311 or use the FresGo app.
Otherwise, you could be holding up a dispatcher while someone with a real emergency is on hold.
There are 12 people going through background checks to become dispatchers.
The bad news is, the training process is very lengthy, so it could be almost a year before those new hires are answering calls.
Mayor Lee Brand also released a statement on the Fresno County Grand Jury report on the Fresno Police Department’s 9-1-1 Communication Center, you can read the full statement below.
“I appreciate the time and effort the Grand Jury spent on looking into the Fresno Police Department’s 9-1-1 Communication Center. Public safety is one of my very highest priorities as your Mayor and that’s why we launched our Fresno 311 system on March 11 of this year. Our goal is to reduce the number of non-emergency calls going to our 9-1-1 emergency system. I agree with the Grand Jury that addressing this issue would significantly improve the 9-1-1 service level. We are continuing to develop our Public Service campaign. Finding the funding necessary to expand our 9-1-1 facility and staffing will be a challenge. In summary, we take this report seriously and will respond appropriately once we have had the opportunity to have comprehensive discussions on how we provide top quality services to our residents.”
July 11, 2019
Fox 26 News
By Marie Edinger
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