By Robert A. Cronkleton
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Major changes to the way Kansas City handles 911 calls could be coming soon to address the growing problem of long wait times for people who dial 911.
The Board of Police Commissioners at its meeting Tuesday directed the Kansas City Police Department to call for an emergency meeting with the Mid-America Regional Council’s Public Safety Communications Board to discuss a new way for 911 calls to be handled.
The change the board is aiming to make would prompt callers to choose if they want fire, ambulance or police through an automated system. The hope is that this would route calls to the proper agency without callers having to wait on hold for a call taker.
“For too long, Kansas Citians calling 911 have experienced unacceptable wait times connecting to call takers, threatening health and safety,” Mayor Quinton Lucas said on Twitter Tuesday. “We expect to adopt soon a system immediately directing callers to their required emergency service: Police; Fire; EMS; Non-Emergency (311).”
A fast response when residents call 911 is a core, vital public service, Lucas said.
“In the coming weeks ahead, we expect to announce that you will never wait on hold to be directed to an emergency agency in our city again,” Lucas said in subsequent Tweet.
Growing problem
The time people spent on hold has been a growing problem. The average hold times for 911 are now 60 seconds, according to the latest data that was presented board of commissioners on Tuesday.
Some callers wait longer than that. Earlier this month, a woman waited on hold for four minutes after her husband was randomly attacked by a group of strangers ahead of the Luke Combs concert at Arrowhead Stadium.
In late May, Lucas said his sister was on hold with 911 dispatchers for five minutes before getting help for their mother.
The Mid-America Regional Council, known as MARC, serves as the coordinating agency for the Kansas City’s regional 911 system. It owns the equipment that allows a 911 call to get to the appropriate agency based on the location where the call originated.
In Kansas City, the primary agency is the police department. Currently, its call takers ask callers if they have a police, fire or medical emergency and route the call to the proper agency. The change being proposed would hopefully streamline and route calls to the appropriate agency through automation.
The system being used by MARC currently has the capability to automate the calls this way, but it has to be activated, acting Deputy Chief Gregory Williams told the board of commissioners.
In the past, changing to an automated system would have required all the local agencies in the regional 911 system to automate their calls as well. That is no longer the case, Williams said.
“With the advancement in technology, we can now separate that for just Kansas City, Missouri, and do that just for ourselves,” Williams said. “So that capability does exist.”
It needs the approval, however, of the MARC Public Safety Communications Board. Williams doesn’t expect there will be any issues in getting that passed.
‘Get this done now’
The next meeting is scheduled for late July. However, the board didn’t want to wait that long and approved a motion by Lucas for the police department to request a meeting sooner.
“You’re now directed by the entire board to please get an emergency meeting and get this done now,” said board president Cathy Dean.
The police department, in cooperation with MARC, also has requested software through the Jackson County 911 tax fund that would assist with 911 hang-ups, Williams said. Currently, call takers call back those numbers. Last month, there were nearly 22,000 hang ups.
The new software would initiate the call backs, asking if they needed a police, fire or medical response. If they do, the software instructs them to press 1 and stay on the line, which places them back in the queue, Williams said.
If no emergency response is needed, people are instructed to press 2 and the call is ended.
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