Some Pols Want UCT System Scrapped
Though he has continued to favor review before making any changes, many political and union leaders called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to immediately scrap the current Unified Call Taker (UCT) component of the city’s 911 system.
Advocates for changing this part of the Emergency Communications Transformation Program (ECTP) held a press conference last Friday, May 30, before a City Council oversight hearing on UCT and emergency response times. City Council Member Elizabeth Crowley, Chair of the Committee on Fire and Criminal Justice Services was joined by Public Advocate Letitia James in calling for changes to how dispatchers handle fire and medical emergencies.
Crowley, James and union officials for firefighters and dispatchers cite high response times to life threatening emergencies as the need for changes. Currently, UCT tasks 9-1-1 operators with collecting all incident information before allowing a caller to connect with fire or EMS dispatchers. As a result, UCT often wastes time by requiring NYPD and FDNY call takers to ask duplicative questions, advocates of change argue.
City political leaders like Crowley and James are frustrated by the current system, and so are union heads, including President of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, Steve Cassidy and President of the Uniform Fire Officers Association, Al Hagan. They charge the UCT system with resulting in fire units being sent to incorrect addresses or responding to inaccurate incident information and slowing the ability of FDNY and Emergency Medical Dispatchers to provide life-saving pre-arrival instruction to callers.
These leaders advocate simplifying the process by having operators direct calls for fire and EMS incidents by first asking “what is the nature of your emergency,” to determine if the incident merits police, fire or EMS attention. After determining the appropriate emergency response, fire, police or EMS, the operator would then immediately direct the call to a fire or Emergency Medical Dispatcher.
“This simple change to the call taking process could be achieved at no financial cost to the administration and was specifically recommended by the city’s own independent investigation of the 911 system in 2012,” Crowley said.
But instead of overhaul, the mayor has chosen a piecemeal review approach. First announced in March, First Deputy Anthony Shorris directed that a comprehensive review be taken of the entire 911 system, according to the mayor’s office. This initial phase was a comprehensive operational review of the existing 911 call taking process, the mayor said, and will be followed by a review of the 911 system since current protocols were put into place in 2009.
This most recent review was announced the same day of the council’s oversight hearing.
“The mayor has made it clear that a comprehensive review of the 911 system is a top priority for his administration to ensure we are providing the most effective emergency response to New Yorkers in need, and the FDNY is 100 percent committed to this goal,” incoming Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.
But more review is getting the city no place, according to some officials, including Cassidy.
“For over five years we have been telling the city that the UCT system is a failure and it has never worked,” he said.
“It’s time to finally pull the plug on this 911 system disaster. UCT endangers the lives of New York City Firefighters and the citizens we are sworn to protect.”
Hagan agrees the UCT system needs to be scrapped, and wants the city to implement the recommendations of a 2011 report by consultants Winbourne and Costas that called the system “dangerous” to citizens and first-responders,
The report was especially critical of the UCT component, the part of the overhaul that reassigned all calls dispatchers, who now forward information electronically to the Fire Department..
Crowley was no less harsh at the press conference last Friday. “Billions of dollars later, New York City is no safer than it was before the implementation of this pilot project,” she said. Current UCT protocol wastes precious minutes and makes it harder for call takers, dispatchers and emergency responders to do their jobs in life threatening emergencies where every second counts.”
During the City Council hearing, Crowley played the 911 recording of a nun in Staten Island that had to wait two or three minutes before being transfered to a fire dispatcher while a blaze was in progress, according to reports.
