NASSAU POLICE 911 UNIT UNDERSTAFFED,
PLAGUED BY OVERTIME AND INEFFICIENCY, AUDIT FINDS

Comptroller Weitzman Finds System Handling
Too Many Non-Emergencies;
Countywide 311 Telephone System Urgently Needed

The Nassau County Police Department’s 911 operation is chronically understaffed and plagued by excessive overtime, inefficient use of personnel, and obsolete equipment that may compromise public safety, according to an audit report issued today by Nassau County Comptroller Howard S. Weitzman.

“Our audit of the police communications bureau identified personnel practices that waste millions of dollars a year and tend to hamper the department’s ability to respond to emergencies,” Mr. Weitzman said. The report suggests corrective measures that would result in potential savings of at least $2.8 million a year, “and likely much more,” he said.

The Police Department’s Communications Bureau, which manages the 911 system, coordinates all dispatch operations for the department, handling both emergencies and non-emergencies.

“That’s one of the major problems,” Mr. Weitzman said. “Nassau’s 911 system should be for emergencies only, not a funnel for all calls to the Nassau County Police as is currently the case. The Police Department needs to segregate emergency and non-emergency calls before they reach the Communications Bureau so that 911 operators are not distracted with routine matters while other callers with real emergencies are trying to get through.”

Use of obsolete technology is also a major concern, Mr. Weitzman said. He cited flaws in the department’s Computer Aided Dispatch system, which fails to automatically register phone number and location information from callers 35 percent of the time, and makes it impossible to measure police response time to incidents accurately.

Understaffing, Overtime And Inefficient Use Of Personnel

The audit, which examined the period from 2000 to 2002, found that expenses in the 217-person Communications Bureau rose approximately 15 percent, from $16.7 million in 2000 to $19.2 million in 2002. During the same period, overtime pay nearly doubled, from $964,000 in 2000 to $1.8 million in 2002. Most of the overtime is to cover absences by the Bureau’s 199 civilian employees. Three 911 employees earned over $100,000 in 2002; the remaining employees earned an average of $77,091 on an average base salary of $42,056.

“Some 911 employees have found an ingenious way to maximize their earnings without working additional hours,” Mr. Weitzman said. “They work overtime on one shift, then take their regular shift off on the same day by using a leave entitlement. One employee who the Bureau had designated as a ‘sick leave abuser’ was found to be the Bureau’s top overtime earner,” he said. That employee earned, with overtime, $125,285 in 2002. Among the audit’s other major findings:

• The Bureau is chronically understaffed, based on its own staffing guidelines, with eight to ten positions needing to be filled by overtime on every tour of duty. The Bureau averaged 4,794 hours of overtime per month during 2002, an increase of 50 percent above the 2000 level.
  
• More than half of the civilian employees – 101 out of 199 – receive extra pay (shift differential) for working day tours – in apparent violation of the CSEA contract. The overpayments cost the county nearly half a million dollars a year.
  
• The Bureau’s workweek is 4.25 hours less than that of Suffolk’s police communications bureau, which handles a similar workload. Factoring in meals, breaks and make-up days, the workweek is only 28.25 hours. The Bureau’s relatively lower productivity in terms of work-hours per week costs the county approximately $1.2 million per year.
  
• Seven sworn officers in the unit perform functions that could be handled by civilians. Potential savings: $355,166 per year, excluding overtime.

Mr. Weitzman said, “The Bureau needs to take a two-pronged approach to its personnel problems, not only adding staff, but also using existing staff resources more wisely. Chronic understaffing should be addressed in the most efficient way possible – by redeploying 911 operators who are currently assigned to administrative duties, and replacing them with appropriate personnel, freeing 911 operators to do the skilled work for which they were trained.”

Auditors found 21 trained 911 operators who were performing administrative functions not directly related to 911 operations. The report recommends redeploying 15 of them back to 911 floor operations, for a potential savings of about $214,000 per year, excluding overtime.

The 911 operators have been working fixed 12-hour tours of duty as part of a pilot program launched in 1994 that has remained in place ever since. Because the job is so stressful, however, employees are granted four half-hour breaks during the shift. When added to a one-hour meal break, employees work only nine hours during a 12-hour tour.

“Often, the half-hour break is taken at the start of the 12-hour shift, which only serves to highlight the wastefulness of the break policy,” Mr. Weitzman said. “The inefficiencies caused by these 12-hour shifts also contribute to the unit’s short 28.25-hour work week, which in turn means that more bodies are required to staff the phones.”

The fixed 12-hour tours also add to the stressfulness of the job and make it more difficult to attract new employees, since senior employees get the most desirable tours and new employees must work the least desirable ones. According to bureau officials, many prospective employees have been deterred from accepting positions, due to the prospect of having to work tours consisting solely of weekend nights.

NON-EMERGENCY USE OF 911 SYSTEM AND OBSOLETE EQUIPMENT

In addition to public safety risks associated with staff shortages, the review found that the system also suffers from a high level of non-emergency calls, some of which could be handled at the precinct level but are instead funneled through the 911 system. In 2002, there were nearly 46,000 calls (7.2 percent of calls received) categorized as non-emergencies that resulted in patrol cars being dispatched. Another 29,000 incidents (4.2 percent of the total) involved non-police matters, such as malfunctioning street lights. The report advocates the segregation of police emergency and non-emergency phone calls before they reach the 911 operators, by using a new countywide 311 telephone system. Development of such a system is included in County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi’s 2004 budget.

“We strongly recommend that the department use 911 exclusively for police emergencies,” Mr. Weitzman said. “Under the present system all non-emergency calls that require a police response are dispatched through 911, reducing the availability of 911 operators for emergencies.

“While the police department supports the proposed new 311-telephone system, it advocates using it only for non-police matters such as potholes or faulty street lamps, preferring to keep the system of funneling police non-emergencies through 911. The Department needs to find other options for handling police non-emergencies that do not involve the 911 operators. Our report says such calls could be handled by a new 311-call center as is now being done by New York City,” Mr. Weitzman said. In 2003, the NYPD transferred many of its “quality of life” hotlines to a new citywide 311 system.

The report also found safety risks from the use of obsolete equipment including:

• A computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system that is supposed to help speed the dispatch of patrol officers by automatically indicating the phone number and location of the caller, but which fails to do so 35 percent of the time.
  
• A 20-year-old police radio system that cannot communicate with those of other county, local, state and federal agencies and which does not make use of the latest available technology, including Automatic Vehicle Locator (AVL). As a result, dispatchers cannot quickly locate the nearest available vehicle, but must rely on officers in the field to call in their location as they respond to the emergency.

“In the current environment of heightened alert levels, where regional emergencies are a real possibility, our police must have the technology to communicate quickly with emergency personnel from other government agencies,” Mr. Weitzman said.

“The Police Department also needs to do much more to prevent false alarms,” Mr. Weitzman said. “In 2002, 99.4 percent of the calls dispatched by automatic burglar alarms in Nassau were false. These calls cost the county at least $7 million a year, but they have other more serious implications: they engender a high-speed response, increasing life-safety risks for police officers and the public, and they divert police from responding to real emergencies and crime.” He urged the adoption of strong “alarm abuser” legislation in Nassau, which could result in annual savings of at least $350,000 per year and possibly much more.

The full report may be downloaded, viewed and printed by clicking on the report title below.

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Nassau County Police Department Operational Review of Communications Bureau
( ~ 605 kB - 60 pages "pdf" file)