Public Employee Press

Union raises the alarm
EMERGENCY at 911

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts called for a federal investigation when the city's new emergency 911 system suffered repeated breakdowns in life-and-death situations.

Emergency 911 operators in Local 1549 coped with excessive overtime and high stress as the New York Police Dept. launched the new system, which crashed several times after going online in late May.

Union officials were furious when the Bloomberg administration blamed the problems on front-line workers, pointing out that similar breakdowns occurred when 911 systems designed by the contractor, Atlanta-based Intergraph Corp., went online in San Diego, Calif., and Nassau County.

"With the history of this contractor, they should have foreseen these problems," Roberts said. "It is outrageous that they are scapegoating our members."

"The breakdowns show that the 911 system itself faces an emergency," Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1549 President Eddie Rodriguez said. "Public safety is at risk because of the substandard work of the contractor and because of severe understaffing, which could lead to tragedies."

Chronic understaffing

On June 16, Roberts wrote the federal Homeland Security Dept. - which contributed $300 million toward the project - asking it to investigate the new system, whose overall cost soared from $1.4 billion to over $2 billion. Chronic understaffing has nearly doubled the operation's annual overtime cost since 2008 to $4 million, with this year's bill projected to hit $4.5 million.

The administration "created a serious threat to public safety and wasted millions of dollars by contracting out the project to a firm that the city knew was implicated in breakdowns of similar systems," Roberts said. "Now the feds should ask why the mayor gave this contract to Intergraph despite warnings by his own Department of Investigations."

Experienced 911 personnel blame recent delays in dispatching ambulances on system malfunctions. As computers went blank at the Brooklyn call center in the days after the system was unveiled May 28, operators had to take information down on slips of paper that runners delivered to radio dispatchers.

Before, the new system was launched, DC 37 and Local 1549 raised the alarm about the risk to public safety caused by understaffing at the NYPD. Responding to reports of the problem from rank-and-file members, DC 37 Associate Director Henry Garrido and the local put together a team to deal with the emergency.

City Council Public Safety Chair Peter Vallone Jr. joined with the union May 22 for a City Hall news conference where they decried the public safety risk and called for the NYPD to hire at least 400 more Police Communications Technicians immediately. Janice Darden, chair of Local 1549's Police Clerical Chapter, urged the NYPD to reassign hundreds of Police Officers in desk jobs to law enforcement and replace them with new clerical workers.

"The city has to hire more 911 operators," said Vallone, accompanied by City Council members Robert Jackson, Gale Brewer and Elizabeth Crowley and Public Advocate candidate Cathy Guerero.

Between 2009 and 2012, 911 calls increased 20 percent while the staff fell from 1,300 to 1,160. The proliferation of cell phones and growing public concern about terrorist threats has driven up the call volume, but the NYPD has done nothing to address the increase.

"We are tired," said Police Communications Technicians Chapter Chair John Armstrong in a short but poignant statement that reflected the workers' frustration. "We are fed up. We are not machines. We are not slaves."

"We are sounding the alarm today that the city needs more 911 operators," said Roberts, who pointed out the millions of dollars of waste that Comptroller John Liu uncovered in the contracted-out project.

Stress kills

The NYPD, Rodriguez said, faces crises in the wasteful use of higher-paid Police Officers for clerical work and in the understaffing that has driven 911 operators to a "physical and mental breaking point."

The union's warning that the job stress could lead to human errors resulting in tragedies was supported by Joel Shufro of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health and nationally recognized stress expert Dr. Paul Landsbergis of SUNY Downstate Medical Center. Excessive stress can lead to heart disease, strokes, diabetes, depression and alcohol abuse.

Local 1549 Executive Vice President Alma Roper, who used to work as an operator, spoke eloquently of the workplace challenges and responsibilities PCTs face. Answering at least 10 million calls a year, operators are "the first of the first responders," she said. Because of understaffing, NYPD is ordering operators to put in up to 32 hours of overtime a week, she said.

"It is inhuman," Roper said.

At City Council hearings on June 5 and June 21, she pressed for additional hiring. At the June 21 hearing, Local 1549 leaders were joined by Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics Local 2507 President Israel Miranda and EMS Officers Local 3621 President Vincent Variale, who disputed the Bloomberg administration's attempt to blame ambulance delays on operator error.

At the hearing, NYPD Chief Charles Dowd said he believed additional 911 operators should be hired, but Deputy Mayor Casswell F. Holloway IV quickly interjected that he believed current staffing was sufficient.

Before the hearing, Roberts and DC 37 Sr. Associate Director Henry Garrido met with NYPD's top personnel brass, who are considering the union's proposal for additional hiring.

"Now is the time to stop putting the health and livelihood of the 911 personnel at risk while the communities in which we live are in danger of not receiving timely assistance when they call 911 for help," Roper said.