Crime-ridden Washington DC offers 911 dispatchers $800 bonus just for showing up to work as chronic absenteeism forces fire department into drastic move: ‘It’s bonkers’

The bosses in charge of Washington DC’s collapsing 911 dispatch system are offering their staff an extra $800 a month just to show up to work when they’re supposed to.

The desperate measure came after the number of services dangerously understaffed rose from 24 percent in May to 88 percent in July.

There have been seven IT outages this year that have prevented emergency calls from getting through. Earlier this month, a five-month-old baby died during a two-hour outage.

The system has become so unreliable that DC Fire and EMS has set up a shadow reporting system for the calls they handle.

“Don’t you think it’s crazy that our first responders have come up with a temporary solution for our 911 call center?” asked Washington, D.C., City Councilmember Brianne Nadeau. “It’s insane.”

The news of the monthly bonus was announced in an email to staff Tuesday morning by Heather McGaffin, director of the city’s Office of Unified Communications (OUC).

“Good morning 911 Team,” she wrote. “Effective immediately, all 911 employees who show up for all of their scheduled shifts will receive an $800 monthly bonus.

‘Staff are crucial to the success of our agency. Unplanned calls of all kinds are commonplace and cause problems for colleagues who are constantly stuck, arriving early and being asked to come in on days off.

“The pilot is simple: show up for every shift you’re assigned and get an extra $800 for the month. We’re starting today for August.”

The offer sparked outrage in the city, where 321 callers hung up on Sunday alone because their phones were not answered.

“I’m not sure I want chronically absent workers reporting for work when their lives are literally on the line,” one person wrote. “Hire better people, raise the base wage, improve training.”

Last year, the city’s murder rate rose 35 percent to 274, while property crimes rose by a quarter.

Levels are beginning to drop, but the poorly functioning reporting center is being blamed for a growing number of preventable deaths.

A bystander called 911 after seeing a Dodge Charger plunge into the Potomac River near the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge last April.

But driver Timjuan Mundell, 46, drowned along with his three passengers when The dispatchers sent emergency workers to another bridge, a mile upstream.

And on August 2, a five-month-old baby died of cardiac arrest after waiting 15 minutes for a response in the Woodley Park district when the dispatch system was thwarted by what was described as a botched software update.

Councillor Charles Allen said the problems at OUC have now reached crisis levels.

“Not a week goes by that I don’t encounter a voter who couldn’t reach me, had to wait a long time for emergency services in an emergency, or received the wrong kind of help or no help at all,” he said.

But the system has been malfunctioning for decades in a city that handles 1.8 million emergency calls each year.

As early as 2008, firefighters publicly complained that dispatchers were telling them “S” (for celery) when they dispatched to S Street and “Q” (for cucumber) when they dispatched to Q Street.

A 2021 investigation by city auditor Kathleen Patterson found a series of deficiencies.

“We have essentially found a dysfunctional agency, on all fronts,” she said. Washingtonian.com.

Emergency services were often sent to the wrong addresses because operators talked to the caller instead of using software to determine the caller’s location.

While ‘cliques, bullying and inappropriate behavior that goes uncorrected’ were widespread in the workplace.

“Lack of staff, lack of training, lack of use of technology, lack of oversight, lack of chain of command oversight. It would be easier to say what we didn’t find,” she said.

Cleo Subido, who was appointed interim director in December 2020, found that the huge screens that were supposed to air local news broadcasts were instead tuned to sporting events.

She saw managers pitting their staff against each other, tolerating poor performance and resisting reform for fear of disrupting office politics.

Last year, she filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging that city officials “repeatedly attempted to cover up errors and mismanagement by OUC and to minimize serious, life-threatening, and often fatal mistakes.”

Campaigner Dave Statter says he understands the operators who are having a hard time.

“They know how desperate it is in there,” he said.

“A lot of these people have been forced to work extended overtime during their shifts. They’re in a lot of trouble and some of them have gone to other 911 operations.

‘The problems with 9/11 really come down to training and, more importantly, leadership.

It seems like they’re spending more and more time covering things up than solving them.

‘The place has been in crisis for a long time. It’s only getting worse.

“I’ve been saying for a while that this recent period may be the worst I’ve ever seen in the District in the 40-plus years I’ve been covering it. It’s in bad shape and no one seems to be doing anything about it.”

An OUC spokesperson told DC News Now: “We appreciate the hard work of our team at OUC and will continue to recognize and reward those efforts.

“Staff is critical to the agency’s success. We continue to look for ways to improve agency performance while making good use of the district’s resources.”

Councilman Allen said responsibility for the shortcomings ultimately lies with Murial Browser, the city’s mayor since 2015.

“The board won’t even admit that there’s a big problem, but if it’s true that they’re paying people $800 just to come to work, that’s a clear admission that we have an agency that’s in dire need of major change,” he said.

“The people of DC are shocked and don’t trust that there is leadership and clear direction to turn the agency around. That’s a big problem.”