Kansas City Police Dispatch Crisis Exposed

This Sunday morning we want to share COMPREHENSIVE FIRST PERSON REPORTING on the crisis currently endured by KCPD dispatchers. 

Earlier this week, an excellent report about staffing shortage offers an important look at the situation and the numbers involved. 

Now . . . 

INSIDER TESTIMONY SHARES AN IN-DEPTH GLIMPSE AT THE KCPD DISPATCH CRISIS!!!

We'll let the note speak for itself but here's what we'd like readers to notice . . .

- Blackout times . . . Where NO POLICE RESPONSE IS AVAILABLE are increasing according to this insider. 

- As many other insiders have noted . . . The morale problem is real as management & workers seem to be at an impasse . . . 

- Staffing remains a major concern and the numbers are worsening.

There's a lot more detail here . . . We're grateful for the message sent our way in what might be the very best CITIZEN JOURNALISM we've seen so far this year

From The KCPD 911 Communications Center

I am a dispatcher with the Kansas City Missouri Police Department.

I've seen many different versions of our 911 Communications Unit. Right now it is, by far, the worst I have ever seen.

Let's start with the candidates they are recruiting and hiring. I have never seen the most incompetent and uneducated group come through our doors. They have no independent or critical thinking skills. We have call takers -that have made it out of training who get up and ask the supervisors how a call should be coded / prioritized / entered. This kind of thing takes them off of the phone temporarily. Which means there is one less person available to take a 911 call. Part of the vetting process of applicants is supposed to be a CritiCall test.  It is a computer based assessment that measures if an applicant has the aptitudes and skills required to be a call taker or dispatcher. I have taken this test before through other agencies and it includes everything including a spelling test, listening and comprehension, and multitasking scenarios. Based on what we have right now, my best guess is that they are omitting those portions of the test. Current call takers cannot spell past a 2nd or 3rd grade school level. It's so embarrassing to read half the things that are sent over to us dispatchers.

I've heard that out of 50 potential applicants, only 3 will actually apply. The department is so desperate that they will then take those 3, spend a full month teaching them how to enter calls / use the computer and then another 12 weeks working directly with an actual trainer. That trainer will sit with them for another 12 weeks. That is where problems 'should be' identified. When problems are addressed to the supervisors, they are ignored or swept under the proverbial rug. Oftentimes, they will even change the trainer and extend that person's training. It appears they want the numbers to look good for those Board of Police Commissioners meetings.  

Next, let's dive into the staffing. Kansas City Missouri is a large enough agency that we require to have call takers and dispatchers. Call takers just answer 911 and determine if they need Police or KCFD/EMS/Fire to respond. Currently we are approximately 26 employees short. You cannot be a Dispatcher until you have been a call taker. Dispatchers are dual trained, and therefore make more money. For a while (around 2012-2020) they were hiring applicants to be 'dispatchers' and paying them at a dispatcher's wage from day one. That wasn't the case over 20 years ago. You didn't get a dispatcher's wage until you got into dispatcher training. Once they passed call taker training, the intent was to get them trained to be a dispatcher. Since the unit has been understaffed for so long, it took a while before some were even allowed to go into the classroom training because we needed them to answer 911. Once they got to dispatcher class and then training on the radio that's when things got strange. If that person didn't pass dispatcher training, they were let go. Why?! They were getting rid of perfectly capable call takers because, "they were hired to be dispatchers... that was the deal..." Over time, dispatchers were put into the overtime rotation of covering the call takers because they were getting stuck with a lot of overtime. All the while the dispatchers were getting stuck with our own overtime crisis.  

Let's switch to the supervisors now. We have a total of 8 supervisors to cover 3 shifts. We should have 9. Three for each shift (Watch1, Watch2 & Watch3).  Of those 8 supervisors, only 4 know how to dispatch with our latest CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) software. All but one of them have been a dispatcher with our department before. As a matter of fact, it is a requirement to apply for that position. So when things get bad, we can't even depend on all of them to 'help' when we are short on dispatchers. We have an additional Supervisor that is over the training section. She has 2 dispatchers that teach the 4 week classroom parts of training. Those 2 dispatchers aren't required to help with the overtime. Why not? Neither are our supervisors. We have a few that will help, but they ALL should be helping. The way they determine which one of us dispatchers have to stay over or come in 2 hours early is based on the number of days it's been since the last time we worked overtime. Sometimes it's all 4 days. We're on the 10-4 plan. We work four 10 hour days. Twelve hours on those overtime days. We have a problem with them not helping. The newest supervisor hire was brought on from the Independence Police Department. He didn't have to learn call taking or dispatching CAD software. Our unit hierarchy is composed of Civilian Supervisors, 2 Captains, and a Major. Our LEADER has been heard saying he doesn't want to be in Communications. He is also under the impression that the training we do in the classroom for call takers isn't necessary. He said, "It's just taking calls.... how hard can that be?" Hand that guy a headset!

Our supervisors are rude, inconsiderate and overall lack empathy. The dispatchers are treated like monsters for asking for clarification on calls they send over to the dispatchers. We have been made the villains of the unit. They caudle the call takers. I  guess another word is enable. They say we don't need to question them when they are clearly making mistakes, sometimes it's the same mistake. Some are life threatening mistakes. Here's an example. If someone calls in a call to police a stolen auto report, and then a second call comes in where that same person calls back because there's now a fight (at the exact same location) and there's a gun involved. The call taker would see that there is already a pending call at that location (assuming it hasn't been sent on.) and they will add / attach the new call into the original one. They need to change the priority to reflect that. They "forget to," OFTEN - and then it will sit at the bottom of the pending calls, sometimes for hours. Then we get in trouble for not reading all of the calls and updates. Why are we tasked with doing their job?! It is always our fault and never theirs.

The overtime has several issues surrounding it. We have call takers and dispatchers in "groups" of 1-6. Those groups have a pre-set days they work and are off of work. Some supervisors have identified where a shift can be "top heavy" in one particular group resulting in another group having to constantly work overtime where the others are short employees. That supervisor is ignored. We have rules about granting a day off request. That is, only one person can be given a vacation day, resulting in one person being "hired back" / made to cover / stay over / come in early to cover it. We have supervisors that break that rule and cause more overtime. Then we have this minimum staffing number. Every shift has one for the number of call takers and the number of dispatchers they need at minimum to make the "boat float." Common sense and good judgement get thrown out of the window when it clearly isn't necessary to make someone stay over or come in. They get stuck with tunnel vision and a lot of the overtime budget is just wasted on nonsense.

Something else that needs to be addressed is not only the hold times, but what happens after the call is taken. It goes into a pending call for service que. We have 6 patrol zones (Center, Metro, East, South, North & Shoal Creek). All calls are dispatched based on the priority associated with that call type / description. Only priority 1 and 2 calls will be sent to another patrol zone for an attempt to get an officer assigned to it. There are many times when the city is "blacked out." That means there are zero officers available to go on ANYTHING. Priority or not. Gun involved or not. It happens more than they would ever admit in a BOPC meeting, if at all. I have seen calls hold for over 30 minutes that are considered priority 1 calls. That's where an ambulance is staging waiting for police (that's a whole new can of worms), a person armed with a gun, a domestic or general disturbance where someone is beating a spouse or other person. The call gets passed around to every dispatcher and all we can do is update the call, "no cars available Center zone" and so on, and so on. I've witnessed as many as 6 priority calls holding for officers to clear from whatever it is they are on. Officers aren't required to work overtime. They get asked if they'd like to stay. Dispatchers and Call takers are essential personnel - I think officers are too.
 
The general safety of our citizens is at risk daily. They have no clue how bad it is.
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