An Oakland police dispatcher handles a call for service in the department's newly-renovated operationis center, Monday, June 30, 2014 in Oakland, Calif. The city spent $750,000 to upgrade computers, phone systems and ergonomics to create a more seamless response scenario between dispatchers and police officers in the field.
A computer system failure has forced call-takers in Oakland’s high-volume 911 dispatch center to resort to jotting down callers’ information using pen and paper, slowing the city’s ability to respond to emergencies.
The computer system failure marks the most noticeable lingering impact of a power outage that hit the 911 center on Thursday afternoon and created issues not fully resolved a day later. It has led dispatchers to re-route calls and respond to requests for help using handwritten notes and radios to reach officers on the street, said Sgt. Barry Donelan, president of the Oakland Police Officers’ Association.
City officials have given no estimate for when operations will be restored to normal.
The issues have threatened to further slow response times that have garnered intense scrutiny of late, most recently in an Alameda County Civil Grand Jury report that assailed Oakland’s inability to adequately respond to 911 calls.
The ordeal began with a power outage at 3:10 p.m. Thursday, when the lights went out for 10,800 residents across Oakland, according to Pacific Gas & Electric. Power was restored slightly more than two hours later, the utility provider said. The cause of the outage remains under investigation.
In a statement early Friday afternoon, the city said it took less than 10 minutes to restore 911 phone lines. The city first routed calls through the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office’s system while Oakland dispatchers relocated to a facility that was unaffected by the outage. At that point, the city resumed taking 911 calls from its residents.
Still, the city’s automated dispatching system — a computerized means of logging 911 callers’ information and dispatching first responders — remained inoperable Friday afternoon. As a result, dispatchers were “manually performing some functions which are normally automated,” the city’s statement said.
While the city acknowledged that its ability to route 911 calls was “slower than normal” on Friday, its statement stressed that all emergency calls were still being “answered and appropriately dispatched for police, fire and medical services.” The city’s non-emergency lines also were impacted Thursday, though it remained unclear whether they were once again fully operational a day later.
“If you call 911 and your call drops or you receive a busy signal, please hang up and call back,” the city’s statement Friday said. “Please only call 911 if you have an emergency.”
“We thank our community for their continued patience as we work to have systems fully restored,” the statement added.
On Friday, Oakland Police Department spokesman Paul Chambers deferred all questions about the outage and computer system issues to the city’s communications team. An Oakland Fire Department official could not be reached for comment.
Donelan said a set of backup generators failed during the initial outage, complicating matters.
He also lamented how the computer system failure had forced dispatchers to resort to a more rudimentary system for assigning officers to emergency calls. Dispatchers have had to take down information from 911 callers by hand using pen and paper, and then relay that information to police officers using radios. Donelan said he was uncertain how many calls had been left waiting and for how long, due to the computer system being inoperable.
“It brings everything to almost a complete halt,” Donelan said. “They’re running at a fraction of a percent efficiency.”
He criticized the city’s response to the outage, saying that “no one has any confidence” in the city’s leadership.
“It’s a desperate situation for public safety in this town,” Donelan said. “The officers are working hard, given how few there are and how big the demands are. And the dispatchers are toiling in a difficult environment in the dispatch center. There’s no concern for public safety amongst the leadership of this city.”
Check back for more information as this story develops.
Originally published at Jakob Rodgers