DC Abandons ‘Thinking’ By Residents

In a remarkable shift that is contrary to most U.S. cities, the District of Columbia is now directing citizens to dial 911 for non-emergency incidents that involve the police, fire or EMS agency. The change is intended to eliminate confusion over which number–311 or 911–citizens should call. “We’re doing this so we can take the thinking out of the mind of the constituent,” said Janice Quintana, head of the District’s Office of Unified Communications. She said citizens frequently dial 311 for a non-emergency that is handled by the police, and then dial 911 when the police department doesn’t respond promptly. Since both 311 and 911 calls are handled by the same staff of dispatchers, she said the change would make the call-handling process more efficient. “In an emergency, (citizens) shouldn’t be thinking, ‘Should I call 911 or 311?'” Quintana said. [more]

It’s not clear if DC has a public education program for either its 911 or 311 systems, instructing citizens in what circumstances they should dial the two numbers.

Most cities limit 911 to true police, fire or EMS emergencies (life-or-death, in-progress, etc.), and direct non-emergency callers for those agencies to a 7-digit telephone number. City service callers are told to dial 311, in those 50 or so cities that have the service. Most 311 systems have call-taking staffs that are physically separate from the 911 system.

The District’s change now funnels emergency and non-emergency calls into the 911 system, potentially creating a mixed queue of telephone calls waiting for an available calltaker to answer. With no way to differentiate the nature of the waiting calls in the 911 queue (within the ACD system), a caller reporting an emergency could potentially wait several minutes for their call to be answered while non-emergency calls are answered by calltakers in the order they were received.