An internal audit of the Fort Worth Police Department (FWPD) revealed that the department did not meet its own response-time goals in almost half of their high-level priority emergency calls. The audit also found that nearly a quarter of 911 calls were “abandoned” after no one answered for more than 15 seconds.
The city ordered the audit in the Summer of 2020 after nobody answered Fort Worth resident Jamie Haswell’s frantic 911 calls when her 2-year-old daughter stopped breathing.
“It just went to a recording,” Haswell told NBC 5 at the time. “Honestly, I thought my baby was dying in my arms.”
Haswell ran out of her house with her daughter and found a neighbor who was able to drive the two to a hospital.
Haswell’s daughter was diagnosed with a febrile seizure, typically harmless in young children, and is now doing fine.
Auditors reviewed call data from two randomly selected months, October 2019, June 2020, and June 2021, the month of Haswell’s unfortunate experience. The data showed that 23% of calls were “abandoned” in June 2021.
This was significantly higher than the two previously and randomly selected months, which both showed a consistent rate of about 9% of calls being “abandoned.” Auditors determined the spike in June 2021 was due to understaffing issues.
A 911 call is considered “abandoned” if it goes unanswered for more than 15 seconds and the caller hangs up before speaking to a dispatcher. In Fort Worth, callers are sent to a recorded message that urges them to stay on the line after their call goes unanswered for 15 seconds.
FWPD policy does require 911 dispatchers to try calling back twice if a call is “abandoned.”
When dispatchers do answer, and police response is required, the audit found that the FWPD achieves its response-time goal for only 54% of the highest priority calls. The FWPD’s goal for Priority One calls is 8 minutes and 54 seconds.
Priority One calls are defined as emergencies that pose an immediate threat to someone’s life, such as robberies, sexual assaults, and shootings.
For Priority Two calls, the FWPD’s response-time goal is 17 minutes and 18 seconds. Priority Two calls do not involve life-or-death situations but still require a swift response.
For the lowest level Priority Three calls, the department’s goal is 52 minutes. In both level two and three calls, the audit found that the FWPD arrived before its response-time goal 63% of the time.
Auditors defined response time as the time between when a 911 call is answered until an officer arrives at the scene. Auditors reviewed response-time data from over 300,000 calls from October 1, 2019, through December 31, 2020.
Auditors recommended that the FWPD create written guidelines for calculating its response times and routinely review them to ensure they remain adequate. The audit states the police department agreed with the recommendations.
Police Chief Neil Noakes issued a written statement in response to the audit, saying the city has made some recent improvements.
“We have since increased our efforts and pay to retain employees and hire new staff to fill our vacant positions,” the statement said. “We are starting to see positive changes as a result of these efforts.”