After months of problems, the Dallas Police Department is trying to reassure city leaders and the public that they're actively working to reduce wait times when people call 911.
During a City Council briefing Wednesday, DPD revealed the average wait time jumped from nine seconds in January to 44 seconds in February, then 57 seconds in March.
"I can only imagine if I was being assaulted or if someone was trying to kick my door in -- if I call 911 and I had to wait a minute or longer," said Councilman Casey Thomas II.
Officials point to a technical glitch that affected T-Mobile customers, which they say generated a high number of abandoned 911 calls during those months. As a result, the entire system would become backed up.
"T-Mobile applied some network changes," said William Finch, Chief Information Officer for the City of Dallas. "After these changes were applied, no abnormal call spikes have been detected since."
While that's resulted in shorter wait times this month, Interim Police Chief David Pughes told council members the ordeal shed light on another glaring problem.
"The call spikes we experienced really exposed the lack of staffing [at the 911 call center]," said Pughes.
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The department's budget allows for 101 call center employees. But for each of the last three years, they've been well short of that number. Staffing levels in 2017 have not surpassed 80 percent.
"We just were not aggressive enough in our hiring," said Pughes. "We weren't doing enough to recruit and we did not do enough to make sure we got those people on board."
"Hopefully there's a culture change here," said Mayor Mike Rawlings. "That when we commit to hiring people, that they're actually hired."
Pughes says the department is making a change, pointing to a recent job fair they hosted that specifically targeted call center recruits. Nearly 900 people turned in applications. Pughes says they've already whittled down that group to about 480.
"We have no doubt we'll be able to fill all the vacancies just with those people," said Pughes.
Pughes says it will take about two months to get new hires into the 911 call center. In the meantime, he's resassigned 39 officers to the call center to provide additional help. Once the new hires are trained and up to speed, those officers will return to their normal jobs.
