PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia police have adopted new standards for answering 911 calls, after an address mistake last July caused police to miss an early warning that might have prevented a mass shooting in Kingsessing.
Police officials testified at a City Council hearing Tuesday on the dispatch system along with residents and dispatchers, themselves.
On Oct. 2, as groups of looters robbed Center City stores en masse, Walt Weber told council he watched a similar situation in his West Philadelphia neighborhood — car loads of people shattering windows and walking out with merchandise.
“People were loading their cars like they were checking out from a regular store. No one was in a hurry. Clearly, no one felt that they were in any chance of getting in any trouble,” he recalled.
Weber understood because he’d been calling 911 for two hours with no police response and mounting irritation from dispatchers.
“One dispatcher said, ‘This is a very dangerous situation. What do you want police to do about it?’” he testified.
Resident Theresa Armstrong said she’d called 911 on multiple occasions when there was no response.
“I know they have their hands full but I have a sense that I’m not safe. It feels like there’s no care for the citizens,” she told Council.
Dispatcher Tomasz Rog shared the other side of the story — the view from within the 911 call center where dispatchers struggle under a nearly unbearable workload.
“Some of the numbers, in 2019, we had 346 homicides; 2020, the first year of COVID, that jumped by 40% to 500. After that, we have not been below 520. Homicides do not include shootings. That’s 2,200 to 2,500 a year. That’s not including aggravated assaults including firearms. That’s 4,000 a year,” he detailed.
“That doesn’t include rapes, robberies. Kias and Hyundais, the last two years — hopefully the city is aware of this and maybe files a civil suit against the carmakers. I dispatch, in the mornings, multiple officers to homes for reports of people breaking into Kias and Hyundais, stolen car reports in reference to Kias and Hyundais, investigate autos for abandoned Kias and Hyundais on the highway. So I understand the frustration about response time but the response time can only be controlled so much by dispatchers.”
Even the Kingsessing mass shooting, he said, was one of 20 this year.
At the same time, Rog testified, veteran dispatchers left in droves during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re at a point where 70% of this room has less than three years on, so they can’t even begin to understand certain instances because they haven’t processed them yet,” he said.
Police officials agreed that the department needs urgently to recruit more dispatchers and do a better job of retaining them. They recommended a higher pay scale for dispatchers and agreed with Rog that the department should find ways to promote dispatchers to higher level jobs.
Staff Inspector Joseph McBride said the department is also working to address the trauma of the job itself.
“You can tell them over and over again what a mother sounds like when their child’s been shot and that scream, that blood-curdling scream, but until you hear it live,” said McBride, “it's very, very different.”
In the meantime, Police Commissioner John Stanford says the department has adopted new measures specifically in response to the Kingsessing shooting, in which officers were sent to North 56th Street instead of South 56th Street to investigate a report of a shooting and missed the first victim of alleged shooter Kimbrady Carriker, who is charged with returning to the neighborhood the next day and shooting four more people.
He said the greeting to 911 calls has changed from “What is your emergency?” to “What is the location of your emergency?” with a follow up question about whether the address includes a direction indicator such as North, South, East or West.
Stanford said the department is working on more changes, including pre-formatted questions, which it hopes to have up and running in Jan. 2025.