911 Answer Times: Unnecessary calls frequently delay dispatchers

The amount of time it takes dispatchers to answer a 911 call from someone in Colorado Springs versus El Paso County versus Pueblo varies significantly.

Call volume and staffing are huge factors in the difference from one to the next, but there’s one issue that dispatchers in all call centers have in common, accidental or unnecessary calls that don’t involve emergencies at all.

CSPD recently shared a few recordings with KRDO.

They include a man calling 911 from his broken cell phone to ask the time, a woman calling to complain about her breathalyzer to start her car not working, and a man calling to complain about a restaurant not giving him the amount of fish he expected.

Luckily, those calls are rare.

However, the Colorado Springs Public Safety Communications Manager says there are plenty of other non-emergency calls that tie up calltakers and dispatchers.

Renee Henshaw says one of the most common is the so-called “butt dial”.

“The phones that go in people’s pockets and people’s purses and children’s backpacks at school, the old phones that parents give to their children to play with. I don’t think what some people realize that is that if there’s a battery and there’s power to it, it can dial 911 whether you have a service provider attached to it or not,” she explained.

Ben Bills with the El Paso Teller County 911 Authority said the impact of those calls is substantial, because the dispatcher is required to call back and make contact with the person on the other end of all accidental dials.

“That’s one person that’s out of play who can’t answer other emergency calls, whether that call is an emergency call or not,” he said.

It happens a lot.

In less than hour at the El Paso County call center, one dispatcher took two calls from toddlers playing with their parents’ phones, requiring her to stay on the line until a parent explained there was no emergency.

Another dispatcher took an accidental cell phone dial and hangup, and then spent more than four minutes trying to first convince the man on the other end she was not a scammer, then verify there was no emergency.

EPSO spokesperson Natalie Sosa is a former dispatcher, and knows the frustration well.

“They’re still considered 911 calls for us, and so we still have to take time to call those people back and make sure they’re not having an emergency,” she said.

At the Colorado Springs call center, calls like that can strain an already limited staff.

“Pretty much takes one employee their sole focus for the day is calling back those calls that people have hung up on,” says Henshaw.

Yet another problem is callers who think their situation is an amergency when it’s really not.

“What’s an emergency to me, may not be an emergency to someone else,” says Sosa.

“Like the car break-in,” adds Bills, “if someone’s not around, it’s not a true emergency unless the suspect’s there or you just saw it happen. But people say ‘I need the police, I’ll call 911’ rather than look up the non-emergency number and maybe keep those 911 lines free.”

He also points out the often redundant calls that come in following a car wreck or another type of incident witnessed by a large number of people.

Bills says if in doubt, go ahead and call 911, but if you see people on their phones crowded around an emergency scene, you can probably assume someone has already called and you don’t need to tie up more phone lines, potentially delaying first responders being sent to the scene of the next emergency.

Part of Bills’s job is educating citizens, especially kids, on the right and wrong times to call 911, to ensure each call center can respond to real emergencies as quickly as possible.

Click here to read Part 1 of our special report, to find out which agencies have the fastest and slowest answer times in the area.