艾琳·赫弗南（Erin Heffernan）
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
(MCT)
3月14日。路易斯 - 城市领导人正在攻击警察在人手不足的911调度中心的加班工作，这是针对近几个月来仍被搁置的圣路易斯911呼叫者中40％的尝试。
Under the plan, the 10 newest graduates from the St. Louis Police Academy and seven experienced officers who volunteered are undergoing a month of training to be able to answer 911 calls.
公共安全总监丹尼尔·伊索姆（Daniel Isom）上周告诉《迪斯特省》（Daniel Isom）上周告诉《迪斯特省》（Daniel Isom）上周，该部门的警察学员是一项针对18至20岁的人，他们还太年轻而成为警官的培训计划也接受了911次电话的培训。
The news comes more than six months after St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones pledged to reduce 911 delays in the city. That pledge followed reports in the Post-Dispatch and other local media about callers with emergencies like fires, break-ins and shootings who were put on hold for 10 minutes or longer.
今天,圣路易斯的911服务仍远低于national standards, while progress on Jones’ proposed fix of combining the city’s police, fire and EMS dispatch centers has come slower than administration officials expected.
在过去的一年中，持有时间尚未显示出显着改善。
The police department’s goal is to answer 90% of 911 calls within 10 seconds, in line with minimum industry standards established by the National Emergency Number Association.
Monthly totals over the last six months averaged only 60% of 911 calls answered that quickly, including September when nearly half of 911 calls were put on hold for at least 10 seconds.
In February, the number of calls picked up within 10 seconds ticked up to 68.17%. About 4.4% of 911 calls last month were put on hold for at least two minutes.
Dispatcher staffing has grown worse this year.
Today 37% of police dispatcher positions are vacant, with 53 of 84 positions filled. That’s compared with a 30% vacancy rate in July. Three of 12 management positions also are open.
Isom has said that hiring for the positions has been like “one step forward and two steps back,” as experienced dispatchers leave for better paying jobs elsewhere.
“Unfortunately there’s just a trickle of job applicants coming through,” he told the Post-Dispatch. “It’s not just dispatchers, it’s a product of the job market right now.”
琼斯政府希望，尽管反对代表民用警察调度员和警官的工会的计划，但与警察填补差距有关。
军官介入
Cadets have already started taking 911 calls, while some police officers remain in training, Isom said.
The officers were taken off their assignments for training, but will only take 911 shifts on overtime, or if there is an emergency shortage of call-takers, Isom said.
Traditional dispatchers will continue to manage the sending of officers to calls on the police radio, Isom said.
The police department sent an email to officers Dec. 17 asking for volunteers for the training. That same day, the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association’s business manager Jeff Roorda sent a letter on behalf of the civilian dispatchers, whom the union represents, to interim Director of Personnel Sylvia Donaldson.
Roorda petitioned Donaldson, who was tasked with managing the city’s employment system, to stop the plan and negotiate with the union.
罗尔达写道：“尽管工会希望看到警察911人员的严重危机，但这不是一个好的解决方案，实际上，这是彻头彻尾的危险。”
罗尔达说，与他们在旁边工作的调度员相比，官员的加班时间是加时赛的三倍。
Roorda写道：“在对911呼叫的偶然撞车事故中，以比长期专业投诉评估员的付款要高得多的费用要高得多的偶然性撞车事故后，纽约市无法找到这笔钱来向警察支付加班费。”“如果纽约市有钱可以花在加班费上的高昂加班工资上，以便在911中心提供拼凑的保险，为什么不通过支付调度员和投诉评估者的竞争工资来完全解决这一危机？”
Dispatchers got their first substantial raise in years in February 2020 when then-Mayor Lyda Krewson raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour for all city employees, bringing the starting salary to $31,200 from $25,870.
The city in February 2021 approved another pay bump, raising the starting salary to $38,000.
But the latest wage increase applied only to new employees. While entry-level salaries jumped by thousands, many dispatchers with five to 10 years on the job still make about $40,000, not much more than those going through dispatchers’ 11-month training period.
Merger plans
The Jones administration announced a plan in August to improve 911 service by eliminating a longtime bottleneck created by the city’s three separate 911 centers for police, EMS and firefighters.
But six months later, a plan that officials at first expected to take weeks is still in the works.
今天所有911电话首先拨给警察911中心。然后，在警察911调度员留在线时，对EMS和消防员的呼吁进行重新路由。
琼斯在新闻发布会上宣布，她将将三个中心合并到云杉街1225号的警察调度中心。琼斯（Jones）列举了她的经验，等待着枪声为911。
“After years of neglect, it’s no secret that our 911 system needs our support,” Jones said at the time.
The change has been debated in the city for at least 15 years as a way the departments could better coordinate response and stop competing against each other for dispatch employees.
While initial targets of finishing the consolidation this fall were not met, Isom said that the city cleared one big hurdle of the plan this month.
The city personnel department earlier this month approved a plan to move all EMS and police dispatchers under the same “public safety dispatcher” job classifications, opening the possibility of cross training dispatchers to take calls for both and evening pay disparities.
Merging the classifications comes about a month after Jones appointed a new interim personnel director, John Moten Jr.
The change also alters qualifications for the lowest level of dispatcher, eliminating the need for at least one year working in customer service or previous experience as a dispatcher, Isom said.
“We wanted to create an entry-level position to open it up to more people,” Isom said. “If we had a retired teacher that wanted to be a dispatcher, they may not qualify under the old qualifications.”
Fire dispatchers will remain under a separate classification, Isom said.
St. Louis Chief Dennis Jenkerson had voiced concerns in city public safety meetings about the need for the fire department to retain some control over its dispatch staff.
A mayoral spokesman told the Post-Dispatch last week that the salaries for the new public safety dispatcher job classes have not been decided. Fire equipment dispatchers have a starting salary of about $50,000, while dispatchers for police start at $38,000 and EMS start at $33,000.
Isom said the city is still preparing to move all fire, police and EMS dispatchers into the same office, but is waiting on some furniture and equipment to arrive before the move.
The unions representing fire, police and EMS dispatchers have complained that they have not been consulted about the potential consolidation.
罗尔达在今年秋天给人事董事的一封信中写道：“市长的'行为'方法肯定是命运的。”
Emily Perez, attorney for the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 73, told the Post-Dispatch in an email last week that the fire union had not been given a copy of plans to consolidate, and representatives had not been consulted.
“The union is fully supportive of modernizing and streamlining the city’s dispatch services,” Perez wrote, adding that the union would like the city to follow its charter and get input from stakeholders “including the unions that represent members who will be impacted.”
Long term, the city’s merger plan announced in August aimed to shift all dispatchers to a shared, up-to-date software system and build a multimillion-dollar facility to house them.
From design to completion, the project was estimated to take about three years and cost $32 million.
A measure allowing the city to sell as much as $50 million in capital improvements bonds could help fund the project.
The measure is on the ballot for the April 5 municipal election.
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