A union representing 911 operators says that Nassau County’s call center is dangerously understaffed days after a mom and son became the latest callers to be put on hold while making an emergency call to report a bank robbery.
James Breidenbach and his mother were headed out to lunch Sunday when they stopped at a Massapequa bank. That’s when they say they saw two armed, masked men heading inside.
Breidenbach called 911 and was promptly put on hold. He was the second Nassau County 911 caller in a month to complain about having to wait to get through to report an emergency.
“It was as if I’m calling Direct TV or Time Warner Cable and getting a message, ‘Please hold on the line, the next available operator will be with you momentarily,'” Breidenbach said.
As Breidenbach was on hold, he says the two men held up the bank and were able to escape.
“We were getting frustrated. It’s an emergency,” he said.
CSEA Union, which represents 911 operators, says that the problem of understaffing has been a problem for a long time.
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“There’s just not enough operators being assigned to the duty of 911 call taking,” Gary Volpe, vice president of the CSEA Union, said.
A photo from the 911 call center provided by the CSEA Union shows just one operator on duty during an early morning in December.
The union also provided a computer screenshot from a night in February when six 911 calls were on hold at the same time.
“It’s a public safety issue — very real,” Volpe said.
Both the union and some Nassau County legislatures are calling for hearings on the issue.
The push comes the same week that Gov. Cuomo announced $10 million in grants to help improve the 911 system statewide. Nassau County will get about $140,000 of that money.
Breidenbach says his experience demonstrates that something must be done fast.
“To me it’s critical. I think I should not have waited that long,” he said.
Nassau police didn’t respond to a request for comment, but in the past the police commissioner has insisted that 90 percent of all 911 calls in Nassau County are answered within 10 seconds or less.
