Public Employee Press

Roberts: Feds should investigate the mess at 911

By JANE LaTOUR

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts called for federal and local investigations of the city’s problem-plagued 911 Emergency Response System and demanded a thorough audit of spending on the project to merge the police, fire and ambulance call-taking and dispatch systems.

The Emergency Communications Transformation Project is two years behind schedule, and a $730 million cost overrun has raised its price to $2 billion.

“I am here to tell you that the transformation has failed,” Roberts told a Dec. 10 City Council hearing that was called after reports implicated delayed Fire Dept. responses in six fatalities in Brooklyn and Queens.

Her testimony blasted the city for “blaming our members for the problems with the new 911 Unified Call Taker system” and cut to the core of the problem by pointing out that “failures by contractors” had left the system in disarray.

She urged the City Council to investigate “where the mayor and his highly paid contractors screwed up” and asked Washington to examine the misuse of Homeland Security funds in the new system.

“With huge budget gaps, layoffs of vital school and social service employees and service cuts in our transportation system, city employees and the general public are suffering too much already. Why should they be burdened with $2 billion of waste on overpriced outside contractors who have completely botched the job on our critical emergency response system?” Roberts asked.

Assistant Associate Director Henry Garrido and Local 1549 Executive Vice President Alma Roper joined Roberts at the joint hearing of the City Council committees on fire services, public safety and government technology.

The mayor’s representative at the hearing, Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler, ignored the problems and claimed that the system’s error rate was under 1 percent. Captain Alexander Hagan, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, called city reports of lower response time “statistical trickery.”

No problem, says Skyler

Speaking shortly after the fatal fires, Skyler claimed that the new 911 dispatching system is “working just fine.”

That was news to Roper, who worked for 20 years as a 911 operator, dispatcher and supervisor. She said the incidents involving delayed response time had led to “a misleading focus on human error,” and charged that the problems were built into the so-called Unified Call Taking system “that is unified in name only.”

Roper provided expert testimony about the problems the Police Communications Technicians face doing their jobs as first responders while using a dysfunctional system. “Seven days a week, 365 days a year, my members are there — handling 13 million calls for assistance annually,” she said. She said management’s “failure to tap the firsthand experience and expertise” of the union members prevented progress.

Garrido laid out the history of the problems of the Unified Call Taker program, from the first botched bid in 2003 through November’s fatal failures.

“Never since the opening of the 911 system in 1968 has the system had such frequent breakdowns. Now, after frequent complaints from FDNY personnel, we are seeing the public being put at risk,” he told the concerned City Council members.

He pointed out that, “The Bloomberg administration ignores the warnings of the workers on the front line.” As long as the mayor’s office could spin the stories its way for the media, he said, “All was right with the city.”

“Now is the time to stop placing blame and get down to business,” said Roper. “These attacks have added stress to a job that is already highly stressful and demanding.”

“Everybody is pointing the finger at our members,” said Local 1549 President Eddie Rodriguez. “But what are they doing to fix the system?”

Next issue: How the system causes mistakes, according to union members and New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez.