St. Louis Police Constrained by 911 Call Center Shortage

Police were kept from doing their job, because the city didn't have enough 911 call takers and dispatchers. St. Louis police were routinely told to limit activity amid dispatcher woes this summer

The police couldn't request warrant checks or run license plate numbers, because of 911 staffing problems.

You can click thru for the details, but it came down to the fact that they were not paying enough.

In an effort to fill dispatcher vacancies, city officials gave dispatcher salaries a big boost in July. As a result, by Sept. 8 they’ve received more than 100 new applications, hired 26 and welcomed back three who previously quit.

Answering 911 calls is a high stress job, and 911 call centers go out of their way to make it a miserable work environment with procedures. You are talking to people on one of the worst days of their lives: women who have just been assaulted, mothers whose children are not breathing, etc. You cannot expect to fill those positions if you don't pay enough, and yet organizations all over the country have - for years - not paid enough.

And of course, the first thing to fall by the wayside under these conditions is "broken windows" policing.

Schroeder said there’s no hard and fast rule, but when officers receive memos to limit interactions with the public, they would likely pursue only more serious observed crimes like robbery or motor vehicle theft.

So if you called 911 in St. Louis over the past year, you would have gotten a substandard response, both in terms of answering the calls, and in police response. If you lived in St. Louis during that time, you could be assured that police were not working at 100% efficiency. (And that doesn't even consider the St. Louis PD was understaffed by about 23 percent.

This kind of thing seems to be prevalent across the Blue Cities.

I'm going to miss living in a civilized society.