A criminal investigation is currently underway into the District’s 911 computer system outage that occurred this month and coincided with the death of a five-month-old child due to medical issues.
Multiple government sources told News4 that Washington, DC police are currently trying to determine whether the system was deliberately brought down or due to human error.
So far in 2024, there have been at least seven unplanned outages of the computer system that DC’s Office of Unified Communications (OUC) uses to dispatch fire trucks and ambulances. The tragedy that occurred during the outage in early August has put the problem and OUC under renewed scrutiny.
Tragedy in the Northwest
During the August 2 power outage, a five-month-old baby in a Northwest DC apartment refused to wake up from his nap.
Two family members said they tried to call 911, but were unable to get anyone to answer, according to an internal DC police report.
Instead, someone called for help outside a residence in the 3000 block of Connecticut Avenue NW and encountered a nearby federal police officer who assisted with CPR shortly before DC Fire and EMS arrived, the report said.
Eventually, the family reached 911 and the call center relayed the emergency call, according to a timeline released by the deputy mayor for public safety.
The fire department arrived and called an ambulance. The baby was taken to the hospital, where the baby was pronounced dead.
What went wrong?
According to radio traffic, firefighters performed CPR on the infant but wanted paramedics and an advanced life support ambulance to take the baby to the hospital. The dispatch center repeatedly tried to send a paramedic, but the paramedic was unavailable and was handling another call.
Frustration could be heard in the voices of the first responders.
“We have a toddler in cardiac arrest,” one said. “I’ve alerted everyone here on this channel several times… Do we have an ALS unit or paramedic that might be available?”
A few hours later, DC Police detectives and forensic investigators arrived at the building after being notified that the hospital had determined the infant was dead.
The OUC, which operates the system that failed on August 2, said it was still answering emergency calls at the time of the outage.
The deputy mayor’s timeline begins from when the family came through and apparently responded in a timely manner, but does not include the initial missed calls.
Three days after the outage, Washington officials said a technology supplier had mistakenly deployed a software update.
“The software update was not performed according to protocol and resulted in an outage that limited agency access to the system,” said a statement from the Office of the Chief Technology Officer in DC.
The contractor is no longer employed by the Washington DC government, the office said.
What happens if 911 computer fails?
When the system goes down, response teams must track hundreds of calls using paper and pencil, public safety officials told News4.
Insiders in Washington DC’s public safety departments say callers and dispatchers sometimes carry pieces of paper from one location to another within the dispatch center, using radio communications to make sure firefighters know where to go.
DC often points out that its 911 call center is the fourth largest in the country, receiving an average of one emergency call every three seconds last year.
On August 2, the 911 emergency number computer system went down for more than two hours.
Unanswered questions about 911 outages
On Monday, the spokesperson for DC’s deputy mayor for public safety confirmed that there have been seven outages in DC’s 911 system this year.
One was planned for a system upgrade.
There was an outage in July because CrowdStrike went down worldwide, officials said. Then there was an outage on Aug. 2 during the infant’s death, which was also blamed on an upgrade error.
On Friday, August 12, the 911 dispatch center’s computer system failed again. It was the second outage of the dispatch center in as many weeks. The Washington DC City Council said the outage was due to a “communications interruption” during which public safety officials in the nation’s capital “switched to manual calling” – using pen and paper.
A spokesperson told the News4 I-Team that the connectivity issues were “due to the performance of the hardware that hosts the Computer Assisted Dispatch software. The district is working to implement necessary monitoring and possible system updates.”
Monday’s statement did not say whether the work had been completed or whether a solution had been found.
The reasons for the other four outages remain unclear. In a confusing response on Monday, the spokesperson suggested that the four other outages were due to these connection problems – including the outage on August 2, which lasted more than two hours.
Heather McGaffin, DC director of the Office of Unified Communications – the person in charge of the 911 system – has not answered questions about the center for months. In previous statements, she said improving staffing would help improve performance.
Personnel issues
According to their own records, in July 2023, 33% of all 911 shifts did not have enough people on duty to meet the minimum staffing level. In July 2024, this figure had already risen to 88% of all shifts.
The staffing crisis has become so bad that the agency is paying its employees bonuses just for showing up for every scheduled shift.
McGaffin made the offer to employees via email on Tuesday morning.
“Good morning 911 team – Effective immediately, all 911 employees who show up for all of their scheduled shifts will receive an $800 bonus for the month,” reads the email, which News4 has seen.
“Staffing is critical to the success of our agency. Unplanned calls of all kinds are on the rise and are causing difficulties for our colleagues as they are constantly stuck, coming in early and being asked to come in on days off,” she continued. “The pilot is simple: you show up for any shift you are assigned and you will receive $800 extra for the month. We are launching today in August.”
Leak investigation, but no answers to the failure
The Washington, DC Police Department’s Internal Investigations Division contacted News4’s Ted Oberg on Thursday to find out how we knew about a family’s unanswered call for help.
News4 learned of the family’s unanswered calls through two public safety sources, each of whom had details of an internal police file. On Thursday, an internal affairs agent called Oberg to ask what information News4 had received and who had shared it.
News4 takes protecting sources seriously and Oberg did not respond. The internal affairs agent acknowledged that a response was unlikely but said the internal affairs commander had tasked him with investigating.
MPD and DC’s deputy mayor for public safety did not answer questions about the reasons for their investigation into the leak.
