At around 6:45 a.m. Friday, a man says three or four vehicles began to follow him to the 2800 block of Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland, attempting to rob him. The pursuit turned into a high-speed chase and ended with one of the robbers colliding with the man’s car, causing him to crash and rollover. Police said an armed robber got out of a vehicle and stole the victim’s belongings. The victim heard gunshots but was not injured, police said.
Police arrived at the scene within minutes. Multiple people who witnessed the violent robbery told NBC Bay Area they called 911 but couldn’t get through to Oakland’s Emergency Communication Center.
When asked about the department’s dispatcher staffing levels Friday morning, a city spokesman said Oakland police were dealing with another armed incident and their 911 center was below minimum staffing levels. Around the time of the robbery and crash, Oakland’s Emergency Communication Center had nine dispatchers working, which is three fewer than the 12 dispatcher minimum they were supposed to have around 7 a.m. Among the nine dispatchers, three were new trainees on their first week of training, the city said.
Staffing is a key factor to 911 answer times. In July, the NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit analyzed state data, showing Oakland had the worst 911 response time out of any city or county in California. The average answering time was nearly a minute long, while some Oakland 911 callers reported waiting 10, 15 and even 20 minutes for a dispatcher to answer. The state and national standard is within 15 seconds.
“Unfortunately, this is not uncommon,” said Oakland City Councilmember Janani Ramachandran. “I personally have been in that situation, witnessing accidents, being a bystander, calling 911 and having to wait on hold like all of the other bystanders in the same situation.”
Out of the city’s more than 75 communication dispatcher positions, Ramachandran said there are currently 14 vacancies. After numerous reports by the Investigative Unit and two scathing civil grand jury reports, Ramachandran released the findings of her deep dive into the city’s hiring practices earlier this month. She found Oakland’s Human Resources Department failed to process dispatcher applications for an entire year. About a thousand applications were missed while other city councilmembers and staff blamed Oakland’s 911 issues on staffing issues, encouraging people to apply to be dispatchers.
Earlier, a city spokesperson said Oakland has addressed the major oversight by assigning a dedicated analyst to process applications. The spokesman said that analyst has a clear chain of command. The city also said it contacted all of the applicants whose applications were overlooked. In November, the city hired four additional communication dispatchers. Eleven more are in various stages of training.
“I think the reality is we have a long way to go. These are incremental steps, not an overnight change and in my perfect world it would’ve happened a lot sooner and the city detected these problems a lot sooner,” said Councilmember Ramachandran. “I do applaud and recognize the efforts of our new city administrator in helping to get the technology we need to improve our response times as well as our H.R. department in recognizing that they had messed up for over the course of an entire year, from April 2022 until April 2023.”
Catch up on all the Investigative Unit’s 911 reporting: www.nbcbayarea.com/911
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