About half of those who called 911 in DeKalb County in 2023 were put on hold, the worst hold rate of any agency surveyed in the metro area, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found.
The AJC examined data representing millions of 911 calls across Atlanta and the metro counties and found that an alarmingly high number of callers were left waiting for an operator to answer. At DeKalb County E-911, just 54% of calls to 911 were answered within 20 seconds last year. The industry standard is that 95% of calls should be answered by the 20-second mark.
DeKalb Commissioner Ted Terry met with the AJC to review data obtained through a records request, and he said it was the first time he had seen answer time data for the E-911 center. Terry said in his three years on the Employee Relations and Public Safety committee he was told answer times were improving.
“We were told everything’s going great. Response times are better, and staffing is doing good,” Terry said.
In 2020, everything was great, at least according to the report the county provided to the AJC. But in 2021, the percentage of people on hold more than 20 seconds shot up and got worse each year since. During the pandemic, 911 centers nationwide struggled to hire and retain staff, and DeKalb’s center was no exception. DeKalb County E-911 handles more than half a million 911 calls a year, second only to Atlanta in terms of call volume.
Out of the 21 agencies the AJC reviewed, not only did DeKalb County E-911 have the largest share of callers waiting on hold, but its officials also had the most trouble complying with laws that require public access to government records. Initially, a DeKalb spokesperson said the county did not have records that compared the county’s answer times to the industry standard.
After a month of back-and-forth with reporters, DeKalb officials provided documents that revealed about half of calls to the E-911 center took longer than 20 seconds to answer.
When the AJC showed Terry its findings, he requested an update on the E-911 center at a committee meeting in mid-March. County officials said they needed until early April before briefing the county commissioners.
”Nobody is infallible, but we need to be transparent,” Terry said. “I’m going to stay on this issue.”
In light of the problems, Terry said he plans to ask for quarterly updates about the E-911 center’s performance.
DeKalb’s slow answer times can have grave consequences.
In July 2021, Angela Monroe-Wood was hosting a barbecue in her Clarkston backyard when, without warning, 10 to 15 gunshots rang out. Someone shot her neighbor.
The 31-year-old dialed 911, as did several other partygoers. They all got the same message: the automated voice instructing them to wait for the next available operator. She stayed on the line for several minutes before a live human voice answered the call.
“Everybody is trying to get ahold of police, and everyone is on hold. So I’m just the first one to get through,” she told the operator, according to 911 audio, later pleading: “Can you send somebody as soon as possible?”
In Monroe-Wood’s case, she said her neighbor died after the gunfight. In hindsight, she believes that if 911 had picked up immediately, her neighbor might be alive today.
“Those precious minutes really could be the difference between living and dying,” she said.
