DALLAS - City of Dallas officials responded to concerns over recent problems with the 911 call system.
As previously reported, a 911 call taker in DeSoto waited more than two minutes for a Dallas dispatcher to pick up the phone. A woman made the call and it took two minutes and 30 seconds for the call to be connected to another jurisdiction's 911 call center.
"Come on Dallas, answer the phone," the operator could be heard saying as he waited for the call to be answered in Dallas.
It was the latest in a series of problematic 911 call responses.
"We are focused on implementing improvements to the city's 911 call center and overall operation," read a statement released by the city late Wednesday night. "The circumstances surrounding the call you are referencing are still being determined and we don't know when we might have complete answers… It appears, at this point, to be an anomaly."
Last week, Mayor Mike Rawlings said such 911 system problems are "unacceptable." He said the goal is to answer each 911 call within 10 seconds.
"I know our numbers show the average call is picked up in 4.6 seconds," he said. "We make our goal 80 percent of the time. But for those [calls] that don't meet that goal, we're changing things in a significant manner to make that happen."
