Denver 911 saw its highest call volume in at least five years in 2021 amid severe staffing shortages.

Police dispatchers in Denver are 71% staffed. For emergency communication technicians – the people actually answering the phone when someone calls 911 – Denver is 60% staffed. There are 13 technicians in training and when they graduate at the end of the summer, staffing will be closer to 75%.

Andrew Dameron, director of Denver 911, told the Denver City Council’s Safety, Housing, Education & Homelessness Committee on Wednesday that his department was greatly impacted by “The Great Resignation” of 2021. Many who left the department cited stress of the job and backlash or verbal abuse from callers. He also said with an increase in violent crime, the jobs just became more intense on a daily basis – and because of limited staffing, mandatory overtime has become a normal part of the job.

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Dameron said the city also struggled to recruit for its academy classes with annual applications down 35% in 2021. He also said hiring was hampered by the difficulties of taking a two- to three-hour proctored exam from home with intense requirements to make the exam as secure as possible. He said 70% of the academy’s applicant pool is lost at the testing phase.

Because of this, the department was able to temporarily remove the exam from its requirements, which he said he believes won’t impact the quality of dispatchers and technicians. Dameron said the department has no data showing that completing the exam leads to a higher quality technician.

“The test is designed to identify the skills needed to be successful within 911,” Dameron said. “However, our academy, which is rigorous and six months long because it has to be, also identifies those skills. If you don’t have them then, you’re not gonna make it through the academy.”

Looking at call volume, Denver tries to answer 90% of all 911 calls within 10 seconds and 95% within 20 seconds. Denver 911’s service levels dropped out of this range while struggling with staffing losses throughout the summer of 2021.

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“When you combine critical staffing losses, difficulty backfilling those positions with an increase in call volume, what you get is a decrease in our service level to the people of Denver,” Dameron said. “… We simply don’t have enough people to answer the phone fast enough. And to be clear and unequivocal, this is an unacceptable level of service to the people of Denver. Everything we are doing is to overcome the challenges that are leading to this.”

Efforts to improve staffing include raising starting pay to $24 an hour, fostering ways to improve workplace wellness, visits from the city’s nurse liaisons sharing city resources for staff and the creation of a new position intended to decrease 911’s workload.

This position is a work from home communications technician for nonemergency calls. Dameron said 57% of 911’s call volume in 2021 was from the nonemergency line, and offloading these calls to folks who don’t need as intense training can free up 911 dispatchers for emergencies. 

Looking for other ways to improve call mitigation, Dameron said Denver is also supporting a state task force looking to improve and find more appropriate responses to mental and behavioral health issues, providing training and education on Denver’s STAR program.

Dameron said he’s also excited to look further into expanding nurse line programs within 911. Many times, he said folks will call 911 when they’re in need of medical attention that isn’t an emergency, and sending an ambulance for an emergency room visit isn’t necessarily the best way to respond. He said they get about 1,600 of these alpha-level medical calls a month,

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“These are calls where there is no immediate danger, there’s no immediate threat to life, but the only option we have currently is to send an ambulance to the person’s house and get them checked out,” Dameron said. “A lot of times it’s an ambulance ride into the emergency room, and this is more response than these people generally need.”

He said some cities have partnered with organizations like Uber or Lyft to provide someone in this situation with a ride to an urgent care facility rather than an ambulance ride to the emergency room. He said this could save folks up to $1 million in unnecessary medical bills monthly and free up ambulances for emergencies. 

“The calls that fit this profile come most from the lowest income parts of our city,” Dameron said. “…These are folks who can least afford an ambulance ride to the emergency room, and often are calling 911 because they don’t have a better option. They just need to go see their doctor, but they don’t have a ride. They don’t have family, they don’t have a car, so they’re calling 911 because they know we’ll come get them.”