Ancient equipment, unresponsive leadership and rigid bureaucracies have made Chatham County’s 911 Center a toxic workplace, according to employees at the call center in a workplace survey conducted in December 2023.
The 73-page document, obtained by The Current, paints a more complex picture of challenges at the 911 center than its leaders have presented to the public amid growing complaints of unanswered emergency calls and dismal response times.
In a January workshop meeting, county commissioners demanded answers about perceived rising dysfunction at the emergency call center, which fields 911 calls, directs police, fire or medical services to respond, and relays preliminary information about the calls to those first responders.
At the time, Chatham County E911 Communications Director Diane Pinckney acknowledged that staff levels were not optimal and explained that 911 centers across the U.S. are short on call takers and dispatchers as a result of the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the workplace survey, however, dozens of employees working under Pinckney say it is the toxic workplace under her leadership that has created a vicious cycle of understaffing.
“There is no communication or trust between the operations team and the management team,” one 911 staffer wrote. “If you cannot trust the people you work under to have your back and to have your best interest in mind, why put forth my full effort?”
“Poor office culture leads to poor staffing leads to unapproved time off, leads to quitting, feeds into poor office culture,” another employee wrote in the survey, which The Current obtained in a public records request.
Other employees said they felt like 911 call takers were taking the blame for unanswered calls, when the issues are systemic and the real causes aren’t being communicated. 78 employees answered the survey in total.
“We NEED help. Tell the public the truth about what is going on in here,” a 911 staffer wrote, “We ARE mentally, physically and emotionally tired!”
Chatham’s 911 Center received approximately 307,000 calls each year between 2021 and 2023. But the number of staff working there has decreased, while the number of 911 calls dropped or unanswered increased, according to a recent Savannah Morning News report. In 2023, one-third of total 911 calls were unanswered or dropped, according to the newspaper. The sharp rise in 2023 coincides with the rocky rollout of the $6 million computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, meant to modernize county emergency operations.
It is unclear what steps county leaders have taken to address or respond to employee complaints.
County officials did not have any immediate response when contacted by The Current, nor would they make Director Pinckney available for an interview. Instead, a county spokesperson asked for questions to be directed to Human Resources and sent in writing.
When The Current provided an overview of the survey results to Chatham County commissioners, some did not see a need for urgent change at the call center.
In an interview about the survey, District 1 Commissioner Helen Stone said that she has toured the 911 center, spoken with Pinckney and feels like they are doing all they can.
“It’s just dreadful that we’re all in this position of being short staffed,” Stone said, “Whether it’s the police department, the Sheriff’s Department, the 911. Everybody is short staffed.”
According to District 5 Commissioner Tanya Milton, the county “recognize(s) what the deal is, and we’re trying to fix it.”
Conversely, District 6 Commissioner Aaron “Adot” Whitely said he has heard complaints like that aired out in the staff survey.
“I’ve shared them with our county manager,” he said.
Few employees to answer 911 calls
The 911 center was managed jointly by Chatham County and the City of Savannah under the Chatham-Savannah Metropolitan Police Department, following the merger of public safety services in 2005.
But by 2018, the 911 center was part of the messy city-county demerger, which occurred as a result of disagreements over police costs, response times and coverage.
By 2019, the county had taken control of 911 operations, and Pinckney — a 38-year veteran of the center and one of the first dispatchers hired there — was selected in June of that year to lead the agency by the prior county manager, Lee Smith. Tybee Island runs its own 911 operations while all other municipalities rely on the county’s emergency center.
The county’s center is housed in part of a county-owned building near the Chatham County Detention Center on Police Memorial Drive. “This facility was not built to house the 911 calls,” Milton said.
The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 led to more 911 staff taking time off and management increasing dispatcher’s shifts from eight hours to 12 hours, according to the survey.
Chatham’s 911 center has two to four people answering phones for 911 calls per four-hour shift, and they get quickly overwhelmed when multiple people call 911 for the same incident. In the staff survey, several call takers groused about how directors stay in their offices while they are in the other room being overwhelmed with emergency calls.
“There are times when we are extremely short and we are told to just do the best we can,” a call taker wrote, “If we can have management come in and assist with phones it would show that they are trying to help in the midst of our storm!”
“We’re literally struggling in the rooms to get the job done with so little staff. I can honestly say our own director and operation coordinator doesn’t know how to work CAD to even help us out in a time of need,” another employee wrote.
Policies worsen burnout, staff says
Other major issues raised by the survey include a lack of discipline for 911 operators who aren’t doing their jobs, old equipment, few training resources and policies around time off that worsen burnout.
The lack of discipline, the employees said, has created a situation where certain bad actors are not being punished. For example, many call takers or dispatchers complained of a new policy meant to crack down on absenteeism — requiring a doctor’s note for even one sick day taken. “It’s not fair to hold a whole department responsible for a few employees’ excessive absences,” one staffer wrote.
Only one employee can be off at a time and vacation has to be scheduled a month in advance. “It is very discouraging to see the administrative employees not miss holidays or special time with their loved ones while others are getting time denied for even 1 day,” one employee complained.
Staffers blamed the phone equipment for creating dead air with 911 callers and unintelligible transmissions from first responders out in the field.
Mental health counseling for 911 call takers and dispatchers, who deal with traumatic emergency situations over the phones, is non-existent, some employees said.
“We are never given debriefings like the police to provide some sort of closure. We worked our own coworker’s suicide while on shift with no relief knowing she was deceased,” an employee wrote, “We had to finish the shift.”
Solution for building underway
The only thing that 911 employees, directors and county commissioners all seem to be on the same page about is the building.
The building that holds the 911 office is cramped and dirty, employees said. The conference room doubles as the break room, they said. Even some of the toilets don’t work.
Commissioner Milton said there’s no sunlight that comes into the center, which she toured recently with other commissioners.
“For me, a dark room indicates some kind of depression,” she said.
Commission Chairman Chester Ellis said the groundbreaking to begin construction for a new Emergency Operations Center near the Savannah airport is set for late May.
“We are working every day to make progress and one of those progresses (is) putting them in a place where we can have the right facility and the right equipment to get everything and get all of our emergency operators in the right place at the right time,” Ellis said at his re-election campaign announcement on March 6.
But for some employees, having a new building won’t fix all their problems.
The culture at the 911 center needs to be addressed, they said.
“Hear our cry for help before the center is empty with no dispatchers,” an employee wrote. “We can talk about high call volume all day, but if the higher up is not there to help, they will never see” improvements.