Delta mayor has lost confidence in E-Comm over missed calls to police

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Nearly 40 percent of Delta residents trying to reach police on non-emergency lines routed through BC’s E-Comm dispatch center abandoned their calls in the first half of this year, prompting Mayor George Harvie lost confidence in the management of the 911 agency.

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Harvie, in a letter to Public Safety Minister and Attorney General Mike Farnworth, called for “immediate action” to address the problems plaguing the BC 911 communications center.

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“There are unacceptably long wait times for emergency and non-emergency calls, and our problem is that it often leads to abandoned calls,” Harvie said.

Delta maintains a “no call too small” policy in its approach to community policing, but delays and missed calls “affect the adequacy of police resources and public safety strategies,” Harvie added.

In his Dec. 6 letter to Farnworth, Harvie noted that in 2021 even two percent of people who called 911 to Delta police hung up before receiving a response.

“My concern is that, in the last two years, they have not been living up to the contract” when it comes to the standards for responding to emergency and non-emergency calls.

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“As president of the police board and mayor of Delta, we need to make sure the province is listening,” he added.

Farnworth was not available for an interview Friday, but said in a statement that he is aware of the Delta Police Department’s frustrations.

The statement did not directly respond to emailed questions from Postmedia, but Farnworth said he is “pleased to see E-Comm acknowledge the problem and work on solutions,” which encouraged the agency to continue to do so with its others.” police partners”. ”

“Public safety is our top priority and we will continue to monitor developments in service delivery to ensure the demands for an effective 911 system are met,” Farnworth said.

E-Comm, which has struggled with staffing levels and increased call volumes during the pandemic and extreme weather events like the 2021 heat, knows it needs to improve those wait times, said Dave Cunningham, vice president of communications. from the agency.

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“The good news is that, overall, we are meeting our 911 emergency service goals,” something the public should have confidence in, Cunningham said.

However, he added that about 36 percent of non-emergency police calls to E-Comm are non-police matters, contributing to its deteriorating performance.

“When 911 call volumes are high, we have to prioritize our staff resources around the 911 response,” Cunningham said. “Unfortunately, non-emergency response times suffer.”

Last summer, E-Comm faced a staffing shortage that required an amount of mandatory overtime that the union representing its operators said put 911 as a lifeline “in crisis,” according to an open letter from Donald Grant, President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Local 8911, emergency communication professionals.

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Cunningham said Friday that E-Comm “still relies on overtime more than we’d like, particularly during busy holiday periods,” which they have tried to mitigate by placing an emphasis on calling on volunteers to work harder or encouraging the exchange of turns. .

E-Comm is also heavily recruiting new employees and working on hiring call takers strictly for non-emergency calls and finding technology to have those non-emergency service requests logged through online reporting forms that allow police to call back. .

“But there’s no question we need to improve that further,” Cunningham said.

He added that E-Comm has not been alone in struggling with call response times and “it’s a global challenge that we’ve heard many law enforcement agencies around the world are grappling with.”

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Delta Police Chief Neil Dubord said some non-emergency calls his department receives relate to the public reporting potential disputes between people and delays that increase the risk of those events escalating into violence.

Harvie, who worked on establishing E-Comm in 1999 as Burnaby’s deputy city manager, said he believes E-Comm’s tenure has become too expansive.

“When we formed E-Comm, it was never intended to cover the entire province,” Harvie said.

Delta police responded in December 2021 by launching a pilot project to answer their own emergency calls between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., which helped, Harvie said.

Now, Delta police are considering their options to withdraw from E-Comm to find another non-emergency service provider, similar to Surrey, Harvie said.

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