Butt dialing adds to 911 workload

(CNS): Calls to the emergency service centre in Grand Cayman increased by more than 20.5% in the last financial year, the Department of Public Safety Communications has revealed in their annual report, but officials say the increase is down to “abandoned or hang-up calls” as a result of people butt dialling 911 or letting the handsets “bang around” in a purse or bag, inadvertently calling the emergency number.

But staff shortages and an increase in the real workload, as well the false calls, have not undermined the centre’s efforts to improve the response times. Over 97% of all calls were answered within 10 seconds and the average time it took to dispatch an emergency call in genuine cases was about a minute and a half, official have said in this year’s comprehensive and informative annual report.

Staff at the centre answered an average of over 8,000 calls per month, which is over 2,000 calls more than the outputs set out in the budget. The most frequent call made to 911 for police assistance is for reports of domestic violence, exceeding even that of motor collisions and thefts. Brush fires are the main cause of calls for the fire service, and unknown medical emergencies and breathing difficulties are the top two reasons for call-outs for ambulances.

Brent Finster, the director of the 911 service, said the answering and dispatch times were, for the first time, well within international standards established for emergency communications centres.

Aside from answering the 911 emergency number and dispatching fire, ambulance and police services, the safety department also manages the Electronic Monitoring Centre and the tagging programme. The centre dealt with 94 clients on remand who had been tagged with a GPS tracking device, per the instructions of the courts or police. The centre provided 50 reports to police about offenders being in violation of the tagging conditions.

Another responsibility for the centre is the management of the growing national CCTV network. There were 370 requests from police for copies of video images from the cameras. Assistant Director Julian Lewis said that police search CCTV video after a crime occurs and if they find something significant to the investigation they request a copy of the video. However, the police don’t have time to dally when it comes to seizing the images because after 60 days the video is automatically purged.

The 911 centre keeps a close eye on its own performance and Leslie “Lennox” Vernon, another assistant director, said 164 call reviews were completed last year to measure the performance of staff. The average score was 88.9%. The Electronic Monitoring Centre also conducted 120 case reviews with the goal of determining how well the EMC staff processed offender violation alerts. The average score reported was 92.2%, according to the report.

The department saw a as increase in complaints this year from four in 2013/14 to seven formal complaints from customers during 2014/15 but only one of those complaints was found to be substantiated. The founded complaint led to an apology by the staff member to the affected person.

Department of Public Safety Communications annual report for Fiscal Year 2014/2015