Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Metro answers 911 calls faster

The line beeped, and 31-year-old Cecilia Artil tapped a key on her keyboard at the Metro Police communications center to take the call.

"911 emergency, Artil, do you have a police, fire or medical emergency?" she said calmly into her headset.

It was 11:35 p.m. on a recent Saturday, and Saturday nights are always one of the busiest times at the center. Artil had spoken the same greeting several dozen times since her shift began more than three hours earlier.

This time the call was from a man with a deep voice who said: "I just got bit by a mosquito and it hurt."

Artil smiled, transferred him to a recording telling him to dial the nonemergency 311 line, then broke into laughter.

Last year, however, "mosquito man" would not have been as humorous because his would have been yet another call tying up the lines and keeping valid emergency calls on hold.

Last year only 60 percent of 911 calls to Metro's communications center were answered within 10 seconds and too many callers were getting recordings asking them to hold for an operator, said Deputy Chief Dennis Cobb, who oversees Metro's technical services division.

But now 90 percent of the calls to the 911 center are being answered within 10 seconds, and the average time a caller will wait to speak to a call-taker is seven seconds, officials said.

Those are milestones for the department that make Sheriff Bill Young "very proud," he said. Improving 911 service had been one of his main campaign promises to the public last year.

The center is more efficient and provides better service to the public now, but Young and others say the center still has room for improvement in various areas. Young said the most obvious example is the center's need for more Spanish-speaking call-takers.

The center has 68 call-takers -- the operators who answer the calls from the public -- and 76 dispatchers, the personnel who handle the radio communication with police. But only seven people who work at the center speak Spanish. Artil is one of them, and handles some calls in Spanish every day.

But the center often has more Spanish calls than Spanish-speakers to handle them, and in those cases the calls are transferred to a translation service that is on contract with Metro. That causes delays for the caller and delays police response.

In one recent high-profile example, Maria Door was asked to wait for Spanish translation when she called 911 last week to report that someone had stolen her car -- with her 7-month-old son in the back seat.

In Clark County, 17.6 percent of residents speak Spanish at home, according to the 2001 Census, which is the most recent data available. That's an increase from 2000, when the number was 16.5 percent.

When Metro has to transfer calls to its contractor for translation, it not only takes extra time, it also costs extra money: $2.50 a minute. Last year it added up to a total bill of about $300,000.

"The ability to speak Spanish is not listed as a job requirement, but we're trying to attract more" Spanish-speakers, Cobb said.

Patti McKim, a shift manager for the communications center, said officers with Metro's recruitment department have been going out to Hispanic community groups to stir their interest in working for the communications center.

The pay range is $33,611 to $49,752, and bilingual employees earn $46 extra every two weeks.

To date, however, the scarcity of Spanish-speaking call-takers is one reason Young doesn't "think we're there yet" with the 911 center.

"But I'm very optimistic, based on what is happening out there, that things will only improve," he added.

The keys to making the center more efficient so far have been the additions of more call-takers and additional overtime spending, he said.

"The staffing was dramatically altered out there since I took office," said Young, who took charge of Metro in January.

One change Young made not long after he took office was that he ordered Metro officers who are assigned to light duty for medical reasons to man the 311 nonemergency phone lines. Prior to that change, 911 operators were also often forced to field 311 calls in addition to the emergency calls.

Young said that the department was paying the light-duty officers anyway so by making them handle 311 calls "we're getting more bang for their buck."

An additional 20 call-taker and dispatcher trainees began orientation at the center last week, but it will be months before they are capable of handling calls on their own.

Training to be a 911 call-taker consists of two months of classroom time, which includes lessons on the law, Las Vegas geography and terminology, followed by six months in which a supervisor listens in on calls. Seventeen call-taker trainees are currently at this stage.

After that, they take calls on their own but remain on probation for four months.

The rookies in the latest class of recruits should see others following in their footsteps later this year.

The budget for Metro's communications center was $19.8 million in the 2002-2003 fiscal year but will be $22.9 million in the 2003-2004 fiscal year that begins July 1, Janelle Kraft, Metro's budget director, said.

The increase in the budget will allow Metro to hire 12 more call-takers and eight dispatchers in coming months, Kraft and Young said.

Young is also budgeting more overtime to make sure he has enough call-takers. Metro's communication center had added four to five call-takers per shift in November, but needed many of them to work overtime. Typically, the center has eight call-takers on duty, but on Friday and Saturday nights, the busiest times, between 18 and 21 call-takers are on duty, McKim said.

The additional call-takers have in turn helped reduce the number of 911 calls because fewer people are making multiple calls to the center. In the past, because calls weren't being answered quick enough, a caller would hang up after not getting an answer or after being put on hold, only to call back again.

"People thought it was the luck of the draw, like they were calling Ticketmaster," Young said.

The center received 791,150 calls on the 911 line in the 2002-2003 fiscal year, which ended May 31. That's down from the 928,368 calls logged by the center in the prior fiscal year. About 168,000 of that year's tally were abandoned calls, meaning the call-takers heard only silence when they finally were able to pick up the line.

And of the 75,000 to 80,000 calls on the 911 lines each month, about 2,500 are not emergencies, McKim said.

The proliferation of cell phones also has driven up the number of calls the center receives, and many of them are duplicate calls -- different people reporting the same vehicle crash, for example. Fifty-one percent of last fiscal year's calls came from cell phones, McKim said.

"When the 911 system was originally designed, nobody had cell phones," Cobb said. "The (designers of the) system didn't contemplate everyone having a phone strapped to their side. People calling from home -- OK, we can handle that."

About 10 people called 911 within seconds of each other when they heard the sound of gunfire near Lake Mead and North Jones boulevards shortly after 11 p.m. May 31, and that resulted in some callers being put on hold.

"But we clear them pretty fast," Artil said explaining that as soon as she finds out the caller is reporting something that has already been reported, she quickly thanks the caller and disconnects the line.

When callers are put on hold, it's usually for less than a minute, Artil said.

Originally from California, Artil lived in Las Vegas for a year before becoming a call-taker with Metro in June 2001. Before that, she worked as a dispatcher at McCarran International Airport.

Because she was new to the area, learning the lay-out of the city -- as well as everything else associated with the 911 job -- was challenging.

"It's a lot of information to take in all at once," she said. "It was very stressful."

Five to 10 percent of those who go through the academy don't make it through probation, Cobb said, adding: "It's a pretty difficult thing to remain calm" when talking someone through an emergency.

Call-takers can experience an "emotional afterburn," in which they feel haunted by some of the calls they handle.

"You've got to just let it roll off you," Artil said. "But the hardest calls are ones involving children or where you can hear children in the background. It gives me an appreciation for my own life."

Artil sits in a cubicle during her shift and faces two computer monitors, one showing incoming calls and the address of the caller on the left, and another in which she enters what the caller says on the right. It also shows if any prior calls came from that address.

A man called shortly before 10 p.m. and said a boy riding his bike through an apartment complex at Tropicana Avenue and Jones Boulevard had been hit by a car. The boy could be heard moaning in the background.

After Artil asks the man some questions, she connects him to medical dispatchers.

"My kids hate the fact that I work here," she said, because she keeps them on a tight rein.

Sometimes people call in with outlandish claims, such as the Spanish-speaking woman who calls often to say people are performing black magic on her and when she looks in the mirror she sees a dog face.

"She always calls and gets me because I speak Spanish," Artil said. "She gets angry because we never send anyone out to her house. I say, 'Why don't you talk to your priest?' "

Every few months a man calls from a cell phone and whispers, "You can't find me!"

"It's just a waste of our time," she said.

After taking a call from a Popeye's chicken patron reporting a fistfight in the parking lot followed by one from a woman who said she can't control her son and a man who thought security guards at a nightclub were not letting him in because he is Middle Eastern, Artil picked up a call from a screaming mother.

"I'm at home with my infant and someone is trying to get into my house! Please send someone!" she cried. A baby was wailing in the background.

"You need to be as calm as you can for yourself and for your child," Artil told the woman. She asked the woman questions in rapid-fire succession -- the color of her house, whether she has a car parked out front, if she's in a safe place in the house.

Artil's manicured fingernails flew over the keys. Every few seconds, as the woman gave her more information, she hit a key and sent it over to the dispatcher in charge of the area of West Cheyenne Avenue and El Capitan Way, the area from which she was calling.

On the other side of the room, the dispatcher radioed the information to the Metro officers in that area.

"Are you sending someone?" the woman screamed desperately. Artil told her the officers were on their way, and a police helicopter would soon be searching her neighborhood. Artil stayed on the line until she heard the officers knocking on the woman's door.

Some calls can be difficult, she said,"and then you get calls like the mosquito guy and it makes you laugh."

"I've always wanted to do this," she added. "It's exciting, I think, and it's also very rewarding to know you're helping people."

archive