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 DC's crumbling 911 dispatch system have resorted to offering their staff an extra $800 a month just to turn up to work when they are supposed to.

The desperate move came after the number of dangerously undermanned shifts jumped from 24 percent in May, to 88 percent in July.

IT failures have stopped emergency calls coming through seven times so far this year including earlier this month when a five-month-old baby died during a two-hour outage.

And the system has become so unreliable that DC Fire and EMS has now created a shadow dispatch operation for the calls they need to deal with.

'Is it not wild to you that our first-responder agency has set up a workaround for our 911 call center?' demanded DC council member Brianne Nadeau. 'It's bonkers.'

Dispatch chief Heather McGaffin, seen here with Mayor Muriel Bowser, has offered her staff an extra $800 a month just to turn up to work when they are supposed to

The sprawling 911 HQ on St Elizabeth's campus in the south east of the city was dangerously undermanned 88 per cent of the time in July

News of the monthly bonus was revealed in an email to staff on Tuesday morning by Heather McGaffin, director of the city's Office of Unified Communications (OUC).

'Good morning 911 Team,' she wrote. 'Starting immediately all 911 employees who show up for all of their scheduled shifts will receive an $800 incentive for the month.

'Staffing is crucial to the success of our agency. Unscheduled call outs of all kinds are up and causing a hardship for fellow employees who are continuously getting stuck, coming in early, and being asked to come in on days off.

'The pilot is simple- show up for each shift you're assigned and receive $800 additional for the month. We start today for August.'

The offer has sparked outrage in a city where 321 callers hung up on Sunday alone when their call was not answered.

'I'm not sure if I want employees with chronic absenteeism to show-up when lives are literally on the line,' wrote one. 'Hire better people, increase base pay, improve training.'

The murder rate jumped 35 per cent to 274 in the city last year, and property crimes  rose by a quarter.

Levels have started to drop but the dysfunctional dispatch office has been implicated in a growing number of avoidable deaths.

A by-stander called 911 after seeing a Dodge Charger plunge into the Potomac by the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge in April last year.

But driver Timjuan Mundell, 46, drowned alongside his three passengers when dispatchers sent responders to a different bridge a mile upstream.

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

Former 911 interim director Cleo Subido found overhead screens that were supposed to carry local news broadcasts were tuned to sports events when she was appointed in 2020 

Council Member Charles Allen said the executive 'won't even admit there's a major problem'

Many were appalled that staff needed a bonus just to show up, bit others had some sympathy for the conditions in the 

Council Member Charles Allen said the problems in OUC have now reached crisis levels.

'Not a week goes by that I don't have a constituent reach out who couldn't get through, had to wait a long time for first responders to be dispatched in an emergency, or had the wrong – or no – response arrive on scene,' he said.

But the system has been notoriously bad for decades in a city which makes 1.8 million emergency calls a year.

As far back as 2008 firefighters were publicly complaining about dispatchers telling them 'S as in celery' when directing to S Street and 'Q as in cucumber' when sending to Q Street.

A 2021 review by the city auditor Kathleen Patterson discovered a catalogue of failings.

'We basically found a dysfunctional agency, all across the board,' she told Washingtonian.com.

First responders would routinely be sent to the wrong addresses because call handlers would chat to callers rather than use software to pinpoint their location.

While 'cliques, bullying, and uncorrected inappropriate behaviors' were endemic in the workplace.

'Lack of staff, lack of training, lack of use of technology, insufficient supervision, insufficient oversight of the chain of command. It might 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 overhead screens that were supposed to carry local news broadcasts were tuned instead to sports events.

She found supervisors playing staff off against each other, happy to tolerate poor performance, and resisting reform for fear of upsetting the office politics.

Last year she sued the city claiming in her lawsuit that city bosses 'repeatedly sought to conceal errors and mismanagement by OUC and to downplay serious, life-threatening—and often fatal—mistakes.'

Campaigner Dave Statter says he has some sympathy with the dispatchers at the sharp end of things.

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

'Many of those people were forced to work extended overtime on their shift. They're pretty beleaguered, and some of them have gone to other 911 operations.

'The problems at 911 really boil down to training and most importantly, leadership.

'They keep seeming to spend more time on covering things up rather than trying to fix them.

'The place has been in crisis for a long period of time. It's only getting worse.

'In fact, I've said for a while that this recent period is maybe the worst I've seen it 911 in the District in the more than 40 years I've covered it. It's in bad shape, and no one seems to be addressing it.'

As far back as 2008 firefighters were publicly complaining about dispatchers telling them 'S as in celery' when directing to S Street and 'Q as in cucumber' when sending to Q Street.

The system has become so unreliable that DC Fire and EMS has resorted to setting up a shadow dispatch operation for the calls they need to deal with 

An OUC spokesperson told DC News Now: 'We appreciate how hard our team at OUC are working and will continue to acknowledge and reward those efforts.

'Staffing is crucial to the success of the agency, and we will continue to explore ways to enhance agency performance while being good stewards of District resources.'

Councilor Allen said responsibility for the failings ultimately lies with Murial Browser, mayor of the city since 2015.

'The Executive won't even admit there's a major problem – but if it's true they're paying people $800 just to come to work, it's a clear admission that we have an agency badly in need of major changes,' he said.

'DC residents are shaken and don't trust that there's leadership and a clear directive to turn the agency around. That's a huge problem.'