In a new study published in Criminology & Public Policy, Suffolk University sociologist Jessica W. Gillooly and NYU law professor Barry Friedman examine how 911 rules shape public safety outcomes. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork in Denver and San Francisco, they conclude that “these tools, as currently structured, are poorly suited to handle the uncertainty, subjectivity, and ambiguity that characterize many street crisis calls.” Without better guidance, they write, “dispatch staff routinely work around the rules to attain the response they believe is most appropriate.” The full study—and their article about their study published in Vital City—is worth your time, but here some of their key findings:
- Rigid Rules Miss The Reality Of Crisis Calls: City leaders, the authors write, “have relied too heavily on coded instructions and rule-based protocols to guide call diversion decisions, without paying sufficient attention to the design of these tools. They have adopted rigid, formulaic protocols that are ill-equipped to handle the uncertainty, subjectivity, and ambiguity dispatch workers routinely face.”
- Frontline Staff Are Often Forced To Improvise: “Given that the protocols failed to provide dispatch staff the guidance they needed—and even mandated responses they felt were wrong at times—call takers and dispatchers felt forced to make additional judgments on their own to implement alternative response appropriately… Sometimes, dispatch staff reframed the information callers reported…. to ensure an alternative response was sent when they judged it to be necessary. Other times, however, they gave up on the goals of the new programs, bypassing the protocols and defaulting to the police… In the absence of more thoughtfully designed guidance… call takers and dispatchers sometimes develop workarounds to justify sending an alternative to police response when their protocols would advise otherwise, whereas at other times they retreat into old habits and send the police when unnecessary….”
- Smarter Guidance Can Strengthen Public Safety: The researchers call for a “two-pronged approach that dispatch agencies can use to improve call diversion guidance. First, they can refine existing protocols and decision trees by grounding them in the experiential knowledge of frontline staff. Second, they can supplement these tools with more flexible forms of guidance — such as organizational value statements or collaborative decision-making frameworks — to aid decision making when protocols reach their limits. Together, these changes can produce guidance that is more responsive to the realities of dispatch work and better aligned with the goals of public safety.”