Following the release of a February audit of the Dane County 911 Center, the Public Safety Communications Center Board planned an initiative Wednesday night to better improve the handling of non-emergency calls that come into the Center.
Dane County Board of Supervisors Chair and 911 Center Board member Scott McDonell said there are several calls placed to the 911 Center non-emergency line every day, but they are not necessarily handled in the most efficient manner.
“A huge number of calls are coming into the 911 Center that are non-emergency calls,” McDonell said. “People simply dial a number that is the non-emergency number for a noise complaint [or other calls are] routed inappropriately.”
Capt. Carl Gloede of the Madison Police Department and member of the 911 Center Board said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald that a draft policy was presented at the board meeting Wednesday.
MPD spokesperson Joel DeSpain said the police and 911 Center Board are interested in finding a way to develop a protocol for non-emergency calls. With this protocol, people who are calling about a non-emergency incident could potentially go through a serious of set questions, and the 911 call-taker would prioritize and diagnose the issue to his or her best ability.
“We’ve been interested in the 911 Center developing protocol for non-emergency calls because some call sometimes develops into an emergency call even though, at the time, it may not seem that way,” DeSpain said.
Gloede said this draft policy is important because the 911 Center currently does not have a policy to handle non-emergency calls.
The phone number on MPD employee business cards directs the caller to the 911 Center’s non-emergency line, McDonell said. With this initiative, calls to police will be directly forwarded to the officers’ private lines so the 911 call-taker is not tied up on the phone.
“Basically, we asked the 911 Center to come up with a plan,” McDonell said. “You want to keep your non-emergency calls going to the 911 Center and that [means] actually dealing with this. These other calls are much better handled by call answering service.”
The 911 Center Board passed a referendum created by McDonell in the beginning of March regarding the Center’s handling of non-emergency calls.
In order to implement the recommendations in the audit, the referendum said the Center will have to work to limit the distribution of the Center’s non-emergency phone number and to “develop the parameters of how to handle the various types of in-coming non-emergency calls.”
According to an employee survey conducted in the second phase of the 911 Center audit, 63 percent of employees did not think the current process of answering emergency calls is efficient and effective.
“We have to work with police and [fire departments] to make sure everyone’s onboard,” McDonell said. “Everyone I know thinks we can do better, and we can do better.”
Gloede said the board and user agencies have been asked to review and provide input on the draft, which the board hopes to adopt by their May meeting.
