This is a view of the dispatch floor equipped with state-of-the-art equipment at the St. Joseph County Public Safety Communications Center in Mishawaka. Staff file photo by Greg Swiercz
When she called 911 to report an emergency, South Bend resident Kimberly Majewski couldn't believe how difficult it was to get someone to answer.
"Once, I had to call three times to get through," she wrote on The Tribune's Facebook page. "Two of the times the phone just rang a few times and hung up. Good thing I was able to call three times in a row. Not some scared child or person being beaten."
A dispatcher's union says roughly 10,000 emergency calls went unanswered last year because of a staffing shortfall it says violates its contract with St. Joseph County.
That's about 7 percent of the 140,000 emergency calls made countywide in 2016, according to a recent study by the South Bend Office of Innovation.
"Unanswered calls" are cases in which dispatchers were too busy to answer phones and callers hung up.
When that happens, dispatchers return calls as soon as possible. Information isn't available on how many of the 10,000 callers misdialed or hung up because they changed their mind.
The chronic problem in St. Joseph County of unanswered emergency calls has continued this year at the county's new consolidated 911 center in Mishawaka, which opened in January.
That is because there still aren't enough dispatchers to answer calls, said Michael Clayton, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 164 union, which represents county dispatchers.
"The problem is that this is still happening every day," Clayton, a dispatcher, said. "We don't want people to call 911 and think, 'Are they going to answer this time?' We want to get people the help they need in a timely manner, and that's why we keep saying we need the staffing."
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