SF Emergency Dispatchers Struggle to Respond Amid Outdated Systems, Severe Understaffing

San Francisco emergency dispatchers — already dangerously understaffed and overworked — say that sporadic outages in their aging computer system are making their jobs even harder.

Under normal circumstances, dispatchers answering 911 calls type the information they get into the Computer Aided Dispatch System. That information goes to the dispatch center’s radio operators and emergency responders via the computers inside city police cars, fire trucks and ambulances.

But sometimes, like in the early hours of Thursday morning, the CAD system goes down, usually for hours at a time. When that happens, call-takers switch to handwritten notes, which other workers then run over to dispatchers on the radios, relaying the call information to first responders. All communications are then done over radio.

“A three- to five-minute call might end up being a five- to eight-minute call,” said Burt Wilson, president of the dispatchers union chapter. “So if you’re the next person, waiting for a dispatcher, calling 911, it could delay response to the calls.”

Some workers also have to be removed from their current assignments to run those notes back and forth. This could fall on supervisors or trainees, but in some cases, a dispatcher has to be removed from phone duty to run the notes, meaning calls get answered even slower.

“So it could work,” Wilson said. “But like I said, it’s just a little bit more tedious for us and a lot more work.”

Wilson said he believes there have been three outages in the past week, all lasting more than three hours, though he didn’t personally witness all of them. And this isn’t a new problem. News stories about CAD problems go back to at least 2011.

A system that is ‘end of life’

The Department of Emergency Management said the current system is functional but acknowledged it is “end of life” and said a replacement is coming.

“We know outdated infrastructure has limitations, and interruptions are unpredictable, which is why investing in new technology and infrastructure is critical and important,” DEM said in a statement.

The department aims to get the new system fully up and running by late 2026, according to a February memo (PDF).

In 2019, a DEM official told city supervisors the projected completion date was late 2023. It was unclear why the project was delayed three years, though the pandemic likely played a part.

The department has not answered questions about the frequency of outages or the process and timeline for replacing the existing system.

Motorola’s new system will cost $22.2 million, with another $22.6 million over 11 years to cover annual maintenance, according to a report from the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office (PDF). 

San Francisco first bought its current CAD system from Tiburon Inc. in 1999. Starting in 2012, the city contracted with the same company for upgrades and maintenance, with that contract being extended twice. It’s now set to expire in late 2027.

According to a 2019 report from the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office (PDF), DEM chose to contract Tiburon Inc. because upgrading the system would be cheaper than replacing it.

Not meeting standards

Even without unpredictable outages, city response times are not what they should be. San Francisco strives to answer 95% of incoming 911 calls within 15 seconds, but in February, dispatchers only managed that in 73% of calls. 

“We’ve been very open about not meeting those standards for the last probably year or so, but that is all about our staffing,” said Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director of DEM. The city has not met that standard since June of 2020.

Carroll spoke in front of the city’s dispatch center on Wednesday to celebrate its newly completed renovation, just one day before the most recent CAD outage. She said the city is working to increase staffing. A soon-to-start academy class, with 14 trainees, is the biggest the department has seen since the start of the pandemic.

The city said its goal is 160 to 165 fully trained dispatchers; currently, there are about 124. However, new trainees will need about two years to be fully ready for the job, and some of the current workers may retire or switch jobs in that time.

And while the department works to get fully staffed, dispatchers are working long days, in many cases involving mandatory overtime, to fill the gaps.

Valerie Tucker, who has been a dispatcher for eight years, said she works an average of 14- to 16-hour days, four days a week, and often comes in on days off to help cover for coworkers.

“It’s difficult. It’s not sustainable on any kind of long-term basis. And quite honestly, I think we are getting to the end of our rope on it,” Tucker said. “I basically wake up, come to work. I eat three meals a day here, brush my teeth and hygiene myself here occasionally, go home, get in bed, turn around and come back and do it all over again. That’s what my day looks like. That’s what I’ve been doing for pretty much the last two years here.”

Adjusting to outages

Dispatchers also aren’t the only city workers who feel hampered by CAD outages. Police access the CAD system from their cruisers and rely on that information as they respond to calls.

Tracy McCray, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, said an outage could present a safety issue for officers who can’t receive information in a timely manner. In some cases, police have even called off pursuits if the system is down.

“It’s not only tracking the calls for service … but our ability to access other databases like the DOJ database when we run people,” McCray said. “Well, if CAD goes down, we can’t do that. We can’t run people because there’s no access. So we don’t know who we may be dealing with on the street.”

An outage would also prevent officers from running a license plate to determine whether a car is stolen, McCray said.

McCray said that she thinks the outages have become more frequent since last year but did not provide concrete figures.

The department said in a statement, “Our dispatchers are trained and equipped to respond to 911 calls in the event of outages and service interruptions, which have not impacted the public’s ability to call 911 or our ability to dispatch emergency services.”

Wilson, the dispatch union leader, agreed that they are very used to adjusting to outages due to their frequency.

The fire department also has to adjust when outages happen, including having one person monitoring the radio at all times. But SFFD Rescue Capt. Justin Schorr said he doesn’t feel they impact their response times.

“It’s going back to how we used to do things before the computers came along and reminding ourselves that we can pass this information from A to B,” Schorr said. “It is so much more accurate to be able to do it on the computers now, but we still need to be able to know how to do it when the computers aren’t there.”