On Thursday, Oakland leaders announced successful hardware and software upgrades to its decades-old 911 technology. As a result, they said Oaklanders should have a more reliable emergency calling system, and 911 answer times should eventually improve.
The move comes after a series of reports by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit showing Oakland PD has the worst emergency calling response time out of 440 911 centers across California.
As for Thursday, Oakland PD was picking up 51% of its 911 calls within the State’s 15 second standard. Oakland needs to be at 90%, according to the State.
NBC Bay Area has analyzed state data showing, as of June 2024, Oakland PD’s average 911 answer time was 50 seconds – still the longest in California. 50 seconds is more than triple the State’s requirement of within 15 seconds.
The second longest is CHP Golden Gate’s communication center, which serves a larger region and has an average answer time of 25.8 seconds. CHP Golden Gate has more than cut its response times in half since last year. Oakland’s progress has been significantly slower, according to the data.
At Oakland PD’s 911 center on Thursday, Mayor Sheng Thao, the city’s IT Director Tony Batalla and 911 manager Gina Cheng announced what they’re calling the first major upgrade to Oakland’s 911 computer aided dispatch system in more than 20 years.
But it’s been fraught with delays. Oakland city council initially approved the $12.8 million dollar upgrade back in 2017 – seven years ago.
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Since then, the project has been plagued by problems and was blasted in two Alameda County civil grand jury reports. One said, if the city keeps delaying the upgrades, it “risks catastrophic failure” and dispatcher “will be back to pen and pencil.” That happened last summer. Oakland blamed it on a power outage.
IT Director Batalla said the new system should help prevent a 911 outage like that again.
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“The infrastructure is running here in Oakland at a data facility called Digital Realty Trust. That’s a commercial data center facility. It’s built to withstand any kind of power blips. It’s highly secure, both digitally and physically. And what that means is that we’ve taken huge steps towards implementing reliable, secure, resilient infrastructure,” Batalla said.
