New oversight for DC’s 911 center; Pinto proposes more transparency legislation

WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — D.C.’s troubled 911 system will soon see greater oversight.

Councilmember Brooke Pinto is introducing legislation she said will improve performance, transparency and accountability.

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Pinto took a tour of the 911 center on Monday where she said staffing levels seemed decent, but the data shows that’s not been the case overall this summer. It’s one of the main reasons she’s cracking down on the Office of Unified Communications.

“This July alone, we only had 13% of our shifts that met the minimum staffing ratios that they were supposed to,” Pinto said.

It’s an ongoing problem at D.C.’s 911 center that worsened this summer, which Pinto plans to address.

“I’m introducing legislation to require public release of after-action reports following incidents that resulted in errors or a departure from regular protocol,” Pinto said.

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Her bill would also require the release of the computer-aided dispatch reports and transcripts and recording of the 911 calls.

Public safety watchdog, Dave Statter, is cautiously optimistic.

“In a sense, they are good things to have more transparency. But there are things that could have been done long ago and in the past, OUC as not followed the law. The law that Ms. Pinto created,” Statter said.

Statter is referring to Pinto’s Secure DC Bill that was passed six months ago.

It calls for key data to be published to a dashboard, including how long it takes for calls to be answered and how long it takes to get crews dispatched. That dashboard is still missing some of that data.

“We are very disappointed that that information is not public yet,” Pinto said. “We’ve followed up throughout the spring and the summer with, oh, you see, they told us that it will be live by the beginning of the fiscal year, which is this October 1.”

Pinto will be making unannounced visits to the call center every two weeks and holding monthly oversight hearings on the OUC.

“She really has to move the ball forward with these hearings to give new ideas and maybe a new structure to D.C. 911,” Statter said. “I’m happy to see the oversight hearings. I’d like to see a good hearing on the bill that Councilmember Nadeau introduced about removing fire and EMS from OUC and putting it back to the fire department. She has not allowed a hearing on that bill.”

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Statter said he’s concerned the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency is still in charge of authoring after-action reports.

“Two reports written over incidents in 2023 by HSEMA were cover-ups. They covered up the key material that said what happened in those incidents,” Statter said. That’s the District Dogs flood and when a car went into the Anacostia River killing three people and fire police, and EMS were sent to the wrong location.”

Pinto said the hearings will focus on recent failures from this summer, performance and transparency metrics and technology and multi-agency coordination.

“If you are a resident or visitor to Washington, D.C., you have a right to have a 911 call center that is 100% fast and accurate and transparent, and we are going to be working every single day with this agency to make sure that we get there,” Pinto said.

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