Vacancies plague DeKalb 911 center

By Megan Matteucci

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The DeKalb 911 center is so understaffed that dispatchers sometimes can't take bathroom breaks, county officials say.

Almost a third of the 122 jobs assigned to the center are vacant, and the county is investigating complaints of slow ambulance response times even as it seeks to hire 31 officers and seven supervisors for 911 dispatch. 

Meanwhile, records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show six dispatchers were disciplined from May 1 to June 8 for failure to show up for work and other violations.

County officials have said they hope to address these problems with additional staff and training, but that will take several months.

“It will take about six months to get the positions filled. For now, we’re using overtime to cover it,” Police Major James Conroy told commissioners.

More than 300 people applied during the last hiring round from June 7-11, a county spokeswoman said.

However, it will take several months to sort through those applications, test candidates and conduct background checks. Applicants must pass a written test and attend an eight-week academy where they learn police radio codes and how to operate the dispatching system. They then will spend another eight weeks working with a communications training officer.

Commissioner Sharon Barnes Sutton said she understands the need for training but has asked the county to speed up the hiring process.

“We have to make sure the citizens are protected,” said Sutton, chair of the commission’s public safety committee. “I don’t think we can just wait and the process creeps along.”

There will be no cost to the taxpayers since their salaries are covered by 911 funds charged on phone bills.

Public safety director William “Wiz” Miller said the staffing has gotten so bad that the county is forced to pay dispatchers overtime.

“Sometimes we’re at a situation where the operators can’t even use the restroom,” Miller told commissioners.

In addition to the staffing shortages, Miller said, the dispatchers are already stressed by the nature of the work – about 100,000 emergency calls a month. He hopes to add two workers per station and more supervisors to enable the dispatchers to seek help when they are overwhelmed.

“Additional staffing will allow us to have two operators at a station to alleviate the stress,” he said.

A county investigation found three of the dispatchers, along with a Care Ambulance crew, were to blame for a 22-minute response to an injured teenage soccer player on May 7.

Records show the dispatchers were each suspended one day after they didn’t enter all of the information from the caller into the computer system or relay it to dispatchers.

Another dispatcher was suspended four days after she was 46 minutes late for work and did not notify her supervisor. That was her fourth such violation in 36 months, records show. Another dispatcher was written up for being an hour and 45 minutes late and one for being rude to a caller, according to records obtained by the AJC.

When a worker is late that usually means another must stay and work overtime to cover the phones, officials said.

The county said it hopes to alleviate one of the 911 center's problems by the end of the week when it finishes manually checking thousands of addresses in the 911 computer system. Some of the addresses were deleted during an April software upgrade.