Oakland, Calif., boosted 911 call response times, but still lags behind state standard

After upgrading its decades-old 911 technology this year, officials in Oakland, California, recently shared that 911 call answering times improved by 25% compared to last year.

The improvement claimed by the city comes after it spent $2.5 million to fill vacant dispatcher positions and to upgrade the equipment and software powering its 911 computer-aided dispatch system last September. Outgoing Mayor Sheng Thao shared on Tuesday that the Oakland Police Department last month picked up 71% of its 911 calls within the 15-second state standard, still lagging behind the standard set the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services requiring that 95% of incoming 911 calls be answered within 15 seconds.

In November 2023, Oakland was picking up only 46% of 911 calls within 15 seconds.

Problems with the city’s 911 system have persisted for the last several years. According to NBC Bay Area, Oakland’s 911 dispatch in June had an average 911 answer time of 50 seconds, which is the longest in California. Staffing issues, a widespread challenge for 911 call centers nationally, and the decades-old CAD technology were cited as contributing factors.

As a result of the slow times, California OES threatened to revoke Oakland’s funding for its dispatch center and reroute calls to another center in July of 2023 if it didn’t adhere to the office’s standard 911 answering times by the following year. Despite not meeting the deadline to improve its call answering time this past July, the state said it would work with Oakland, noting “noticeable improvement” in both staffing and call times at the center.

Efforts to upgrade the system have also faced issues over the years. The Oakland City Council approved a $12.8 million dollar technology upgrade for the city’s 911 dispatch center in 2017, but implementing the software was repeatedly delayed.

“What we did is we funded the largest public safety IT project, an overhaul of the infrastructure, in the past two decades. In the past two decades, there was no funding or investments into this kind of infrastructure,” Oakland Mayor Thao told NBC Bay Area Wednesday.

Thao said she hopes that the incoming mayoral administration will continue the work and help the city meet the state standard.

“Who’s to know,” Thao said. “I know that the 911 response world was one of my top priorities, and I would just hope that when new leadership comes in, that it will continue to be that way. You know, there are a lot of things that we invested in, and it’s actually working.”