House Commerce Republicans Probe DC 911 Dispatching Issues

Reported 911 dispatching issues in Washington alarmed Republican House Commerce Committee ranking members. Greg Walden of Oregon from the full panel, Communications Subcommittee's Robert Latta of Ohio and Environment Subcommittee's John Shimkus of Illinois asked District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) Thursday for a briefing “to better understand the failure of the ... emergency dispatch system, including whether the 9-1-1 system played a role,” the members wrote Thursday. Not everyone welcomed what they consider politicization.

The Office of D.C. Auditor seeks proposals for a systemic review (see 2009250069). House Commerce Republicans praised the planned audit, seeking to be involved as they work to spur next-generation 911. “It’s critical that we understand whether these dispatching failures are a result of technological errors in the 9-1-1 system or rather a result of mismanagement, failures in training, or other procedural problems within the Office,” they wrote.

Reports of OUC making duplicate dispatches and sending responders to incorrect addresses are “alarming and unacceptable,” wrote the Republicans, citing two articles in Communications Daily and other reports. “These failures have had tragic consequence.” The OUC says it gets 1.4 million calls and dispatches to nearly 1 million emergencies yearly, and strives to get every call right, but “it appears that the District’s results are trending in the wrong direction at the wrong time,” when the country faces COVID-19 and some seek to defund the police, the letter said.

Congressional interest in the “hyperlocal issue” surprised D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission 4B06 Commissioner Tiffani Nichole Johnson. “Obviously, they’ve deemed that it is as critically important” as local communities do, she said in an interview. Johnson wishes they were “a little more proactive prior to some of the deaths and unfortunate near-misses that occurred,” hoping this puts more pressure on OUC to improve now.

Johnson could have done without the condemnation of “defund the police." The ANC commissioner supports reinvesting some police funding in community services. Johnson saw including that separate issue as “a last ding, but it really did not need to be there at all.”

Politicization concerns ANC 4B01 Commissioner Evan Yeats. Yeats trusts the D.C. auditor to do a “fair, independent and impartial” review, he emailed. “They should allow her work to proceed and wait for the results -- rather than trying to politicize the process months after it's begun.” Local officials secured the audit without “interference from Congress,” he said. “If these Congresspeople truly were concerned they would've fully funded DC like a state in the COVID-19 relief bill.”

“It’s not surprising DC 911’s failures have attracted outside attention,” emailed local 911 expert Dave Statter, who flagged many of the apparent 911 dispatching errors. “This is a District of Columbia problem and must be addressed by DC’s leaders.” Bowser, interim Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Roger Mitchell and D.C. Council Public Safety Committee Chairperson Charles Allen (D) haven’t acknowledged problems at OUC, he said. Bowser, Mitchell, Allen and OUC didn’t comment Thursday.

Editor's note: This is part of an ongoing series of articles about D.C. 911 dispatching problems. To read previous top news stories on this, see here, here, here and here.