DC OUC Director Defends 911 Dispatching, Transparency
The head of the Washington, D.C.’s 911 call center welcomes a possible audit by the Office of the D.C. Auditor next year, amid a growing furor over reported dispatching problems. “I know what we do in this agency,” D.C. Office…
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of Unified Communications Director Karima Holmes said Thursday on WAMU(FM) Washington’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show. “It is not a systematic problem in D.C. 911. These things happen, but fortunately we have safety nets in place to make sure they don’t.” Holmes disputed 911 dispatch expert Dave Statter’s reports alleging frequent mistakes that others have also glommed onto in criticizing OUC and saying its errors could cost first responders priceless time answering emergency medical and other calls for help. “Sharing snippets of radio traffic and other incomplete piecemeal records just do not accurately convey the full picture here,” said Holmes. “Dave Statter is not my oversight.” The mayor, deputy mayor and city council oversee OUC and “have this information,” she said. “All of that gets investigated, and we do a full investigation” that includes the 911 call and what information the caller gave, she said. “Anytime an error is made, we address it.” A caller to the radio program identified as Christina said her daughter’s teenage friend watched her mother die from a heart attack as D.C. 911 sent responders to the wrong address. Holmes replied it’s a tragic situation, though she didn’t know the specific incident. “Things are hard,” she said. “People are in the middle of emergencies, and sometimes that address is wrong, and sometimes it is the call-taker” who “takes the call wrong.” Statter told the radio program he wants more transparency and accountability from OUC. Holmes told the D.C. Council only four times last year when dispatchers were sent to incorrect addresses and 21 times in five years, but Statter “can show 38 bad addresses since December,” he said. OUC recently responded to our Freedom of Information Act request for records on previous 911 dispatching issues (here), and Thursday we sent another FOIA request for records on three late-August incidents. OUC responded more than 24 hours later to our request for comment on our Wednesday report about those three incidents: “We caution against the use of publicly available partial records of emergency operations as they generally do not include the full emergency response and may inaccurately present critical variables such as the nature or fluidity of the emergency, the engagement between the caller and call-taker, and/or the extent or duration of the dispatch,” a spokesperson emailed.