ST. LOUIS — A rush of new hires is giving the city’s beleaguered 911 dispatch system something it’s been short on in recent years: hope.
City officials say that since they gave dispatcher salaries a big boost in July, they’ve gotten more than 100 new applications, hired 26 and welcomed back three who previously quit, enough to fill more than half of the vacancies in dispatcher ranks.
If that trend continues, the city could be well on its way to fixing one of its thorniest and most embarrassing problems.
“This is a big deal,” said city Public Safety Director Charles Coyle.
For years, residents have been frustrated with minutes-long holds, departing dispatchers have raised the alarm about a balkanized, understaffed system — and people have died waiting for help. Multiple mayoral administrations have tried to fix the problems, boosting pay, adding technology and proposing reorganizations, only to have response times fall further and further below national standards.
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But Coyle told the Post-Dispatch this week that the recent raises and the hires that followed are signs of progress.
“This is what the issue is. We don’t have enough staff,” he said. “Each day we add more people, the closer we get.”
Coyle added caveats: Answering 911 calls is stressful work, and some of the newcomers may change their mind about the job once they get into it.
It can also take months before call-takers are ready to handle duties managing police call assignments and radio traffic, so about dispatchers covering multiple police districts at once won’t go away overnight.
Still, any good news about the city’s 911 system is welcome after the struggles of the last few years.
National standards say 90% of all 911 calls should be answered within 10 seconds. But in 2018, just 80% of calls coming into the St. Louis police department’s 911 dispatch center met the standard. In 2019, 70% did. And in 2020, the figure dropped to 64%.
The decline tracked with an increasing number of vacancies among dispatchers, who departed complaining of low pay, long hours and a lack of appreciation from city leadership.
Meanwhile, residents reported calling 911 to report gunshots, overdoses, and crimes in progress, only to be greeted by an automated message stating that all operators were busy.
In early 2021, officials under then-Mayor Lyda Krewson responded with increased salaries for police dispatchers and an administrative change giving calls to 911 priority over calls to the police nonemergency line. Previously, all calls had gone into the same queue.
A few months later, newly elected Mayor Tishaura O. Jones announced plans to tackle what she described as a larger structural problem: separate dispatches for police, fire and EMS.
Officials explained that for years, all 911 calls had come into police, requiring an extra step when callers needed fire or EMS services.
Bringing all dispatchers under one roof would streamline handling of calls and reinforce beleaguered police dispatcher ranks with the fire and EMS divisions.
But hopes for an orderly shift ran aground in negotiations with labor unions, who wanted pay increases for dispatchers and more input on the plan.
Meanwhile, service continued to worsen. The percentage of calls to police dispatch picked up within 10 seconds dropped below 60% for months in mid-2022.
And tragedies began to hit the news. After a storm dropped a tree on a car in the Grove in early July, people reported struggling for more than an hour to summon help for a woman dying inside. A few days later, a woman sued the city alleging her husband died waiting on hold for crucial minutes as he bled out from an accidental gunshot wound.
That same month, officials announced new raises they said would turn the tide. Starting salaries for most police dispatchers jumped to $47,000 from $41,500. Starting EMS dispatcher pay rose to $47,000 from $32,000.
The salaries are still almost $10,000 below starting pay for dispatchers in St. Charles County — at $56,000, the highest in the area.
Still, the boosts here seem to have worked: In the weeks since the increases, St. Louis officials say they have fielded more than 100 new applications, hired 18 new police dispatchers and eight new EMS dispatchers.
Some of the new EMS dispatchers are already in training, and 17 of the police recruits will start in the classroom this month. The three returning police dispatchers can jump right back into the rotation.
And Coyle said his team has 15 more interviews in the next week or so.
“We’re on a full-court press,” he said.
