TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) -- The Tallahassee-Leon County Consolidated Dispatch Agency (CDA) has been under fire after sending emergency crews to the wrong location multiple times.
Director Tim Lee says his agency takes every call seriously, and with a group taking 750,000 calls each year, he says having no margin for error is ideal but unrealistic.
July 18, 2014 - Florida State Professor Dan Markel is shot inside of his car in his garage. It took ambulances 19 minutes to get to the scene, after a dispatcher processed the 9-1-1 call as a low priority. Markel died the next day.
November 22, 2014 - Leon County Deputy Chris Smith was shot and killed by a man the CDA knew had intentions of harming first responders. Dispatchers failed to notify Smith and his colleague of the danger at the scene.
September 6, 2015 - Calls come into the CDA about a crash at White Drive and Pensacola Street. A dispatcher sends Tallahassee fire crews to the wrong address, delaying their arrival. Three people were killed.
"There is no way to be 100 percent all the time," says director Tim Lee, adding that while the agency takes each case seriously, human error is inevitable.
"With the margin of error at zero, we take every single incident to heart," he said.
The CDA puts its employees through months of extra training to cut down on any mistakes. But in these three cases, those mistakes were tragic.
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In the case of Dan Markel, Lee says a veteran dispatcher misunderstood information from the 9-1-1 call, in turn making it a lower priority. But Lee says technology wasn't working as it should.
"The system at that time didn't propagate the proper information, and it wasn't transferred properly," Lee said. "It also allowed for an improper address to be added into the system."
Lee says the dispatcher was retrained with the CDA's Quality Assurance team, and the agency worked with Motorola to address glitches in the system.
"Anytime that you have new technology involved, anytime you have the ability for human factor, you're going to have bumps in the road," Lee said.
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The death of Deputy Chris Smith brought together members of law enforcement around the area, as they rode to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Wall to honor those killed in the line of duty.
In this case, dispatchers failed to warn Smith and his colleague of what they call a "premise hazard," a situation where first responders are in danger in a certain area.
"By the time it was realized that the premise hazard information hadn't been provided, firefighters and Chris Smith was being fired upon," Lee said.
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And in this latest incident, a dispatcher sent crews to this address, but he copied the wrong one, leaving them about 20 minutes away.
"There was a delay in Tallahassee Fire Department getting there to help in the extraction process," Lee said.
The director maintains emergency care was provided in time, with EMS crews on scene a few minutes after the call.
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In all three cases, the CDA says staffing was adequate to handle each emergency, but Lee admits he's not satisfied with only having 83 employees, when they can have up to 105.
"I'll be confident when we're at 100 percent and we've got people standing in line, and I think we're going to get there," Lee said. "It's just part of the hurdle to get there post-consolidation."
Lee says many of his employees have worked in public safety for years, but the pressures of the job and the scrutiny of being accurate takes a toll. During the June 2015, dispatchers were juggling several calls in a short amount of time.
"Every six seconds, they're turning around a 911 call," Lee said, "so the stress is very high, and the margin of error just induces that stress."
But despite the pressure, Lee says the agency won't stop looking for ways to prevent tragedies.
"That next phone call that they take, it may be their family member," Lee said. "It may be my family member, so they are going to continue to strive for excellence, and they're going to continue to come in every day and give every bit of effort to making sure things are done right."
Lee says he's confident the CDA will reach maximum staffing by the end of the year. The agency has been working with the local colleges and universities to recruit more applicants. He says a full staff will ensure better care and faster response to calls.
