OPCD struggles with below standards response times

21st November 2013   ·   0 Comments

By Tom Gogola
Contributing Writer

The Orleans Parish Communication Dis­trict Board of Commissioners passed a $4.9 million budget last Tuesday as it grappled with numerous operational and political issues – most alarmingly, a dogged trend of below standard call-response times at the Chief Warren E. McDaniels Sr. 911 Center.

The board sparred over staffing policy and procedures, police private detail check-in calls at the center, and a proposed billboard site on the OPCD grounds, which house a state-run, city-staffed 911 dispatch center for New Orleans police, emergency services and fire department.

The national call-standard time is set at 95 percent of emergency calls answered within twenty seconds. Last November, the center met the standard on 28 days. This October, it hit the mark twice.

Board Chair Col. Terry Ebbert noted that the center had only met, and exceeded, national standards over a few weeks during Mardi Gras and the Super Bowl. “Increased staffing made it possible to do that,” Ebbert said, as he described the paradox of building a “world class” facility that “struggles on a day-to-day basis to put adequate people” in the call-answer queues.

Deputy Mayor Jerry Sneed told the board that the city would immediately make available funding to add three full-time call takers to the 45 now on its payroll. The city and OPCD are pursuing a consolidation option that could eventually strip the call-takers of their Civil Service protections.

City Information Technology and Innov­ation chief Allen Square studied the call-center’s chronically low answer-time numbers and told the committee in August the district needed 65 full-time call takers to consistently and effectively cover the call volume.

Sneed urged the state technocrats at the district to provide additional data into sick days and unscheduled, unpaid absenteeism at the call center. The city wanted to “insure people are coming to work every day like they’re supposed to,” before it could consider additional staffing beyond 48 full-time employees, Sneed said.

The year-to-date answer-time data showed a stark drop-off in answer times before and after Carnival and the Super Bowl: Seventy-one percent of calls were answered within 20 seconds in February. In March, the rate plummeted to 16 percent. Board members attributed this to employee vacations and other staffing issues that had left the center with 37 available call-takers in March.

The year-to-date data showed that the center fielded close to 10,000 more 911 calls in May than in February with fewer staff to answer them, and with the added tragedy of the Mother’s Day shooting that month.

Two board members noted that when you get twenty-five calls on a single shooting, someone is going to have to be there to answer call twenty-six.

The data showed how tragic “outlier” events can play a role in answer times. The center struggled mightily to keep up with the call volume after a call-taker was murdered and a dispatcher killed by a drunk driver in September.

The board revisited the contentious police detail calls, which Sneed defended as the “ultimate in community policing.”

Board co-chairman Brobson Lutz vigorously disagreed with Sneed.

Lutz was visibly stunned when OPCD deputy director Frith Malin told him the number of daily police detail check-in calls the 911 operators were juggling.

“500 a day?,” he said, before invoking the spirit of Jesus Christ. “We should call this the Private Detail Commission!”

A typical day at the center sees between 1,400 and 1,600 911 calls, Malin said. The detail calls account for over five hours of answer-time a day.

Sneed said that call-takers are instructed to hang up on detail calls when other emergency calls come in. Police commander Simon Hargrove said the Comp­uter Aided Dispatch system at OPCD “doesn’t work that way.”

Hargrove said given the technology and call-takers’ set-up at the OPCD, “they don’t know” if there is 911 emergency call overflow to answer when they are on a detail call.

The details calls are also intertwined into the daily rituals of the call-takers. One employee said the detail calls are considered as a relief valve from the ongoing daily stress of the job.

The call-time standard for emergency calls is also affected by call volume through seven-digit, non-emergency calls to the center – and by calls to 911 that should go to the non-emergency number.

Malin told the board the decision for policymakers, if they wanted to stem the call volume, was between better training for the call-takers, or a citizen-education campaign to encourage citizens to dial (504) 821-2222 for non-emergencies.

Call-taker trainees are given on-the-job instruction, and the board considered changing training procedures so highly trained staffers didn’t get bogged down in the real-time training sessions.

Board members also considered a pilot program to fully separate the non-emergency from emergency calls.

As consolidation talks bog down over the rights and responsibilities of critical 911 call-takers, the board said it would look into part-time contract work for trained retirees to fill in vacation and other staffing gaps.

The board also welcomed new member, Chief Administrative Officer Andy Kopplin, who replaced long-standing board member Dr. Julius Levy. Kopplin did not attend the meeting.

The board was updated on a battle over proposed billboard space at the corner of the complex. The city owns the land and wants to lease billboard space to MARCO, but OPCD has a lease for the land and wants to avoid examination by the State Legislative Auditor.

The city has presented a cooperative endeavor arrangement that would seal the deal with MARCO, but the district is concerned about the CEA being an end-run around state bidding laws.

The state attorney general may have to give his blessing for the billboard plan to go forward, said OPCD General Counsel Juan Lizarraga.

This article originally published in the November 18, 2013 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.