COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SAFETY Remote location using Microsoft® Teams Tuesday, November 14, 2023 10:00 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR., CHAIR COUNCILMAN KENYATTA JOHNSON, VICE-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILMAN JIM HARRITY COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA
Good morning, everyone. This is the public hearing of the Committee on Public Safety regarding Resolution 6 No. 230640 and Bill No. 230510. Before we get started, I'd like to recognize Mr. Anthony Glass to read an important required announcement.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand that state law currently requires that the following announcement be made at the beginning of every remote public hearing as follows: Due to the current public health emergency, City Council Committees are currently meeting remotely. We are using Microsoft Teams to make these remote hearings possible. Instructions for how the public may view and offer public testimony at public hearings of Council Committees are included in the public hearing notices that are published in The Daily News, Inquirer and Legal Intelligencer prior to the hearings and can also be found on PHLCouncil.com. Everyone who has been invited to the meeting to testify should be aware that this public hearing is being recorded. Because the hearing is public, participants and viewers have no reasonable expectation of privacy. By continuing to be in the meeting, you are consenting to being recorded. Additionally, prior to Councilmember Jones recognizing Members for the questions or comments they have for the witnesses, I will note for the record at this time we will use the chat feature available in Microsoft Teams to allow Members to signify that they wish to be recognized. In order to comply with the Sunshine Act, the chat feature must only be used for this purpose. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Glass. Now, can we take the roll to establish a quorum. And will Members please say a few words so that your image will appear on the screen.
Good morning, Member Johnson. A quorum has been established so we will now proceed. Mr. Glass, can you read the title of the resolution to be heard today.
Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. I'd also like to note for the record that Councilmember Phillips is present at today's hearing as well.
Mr. Chairman, the resolution being heard before the Committee today is Resolution No. 8 230640, authorizing the Committee on Public Safety to hold a hearing to explore solutions to ongoing challenges facing the 911 unified call center and the Philadelphia Police Department's investigation into the police response to a 911 call about the first victim in the July 2023 mass shooting in Kingsessing.
I want to -- before we recognize the author of the resolution, I just want to commend her for staying laser-focused on the issues relating not only to that day but to the 911 process in general. I remember going on a tour of the old 911 facility with now Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker, who dove in to take notice of what some of the members of the 911 call response system were working under, and I'm glad that you've picked up that baton and have moved this issue forward. And with that, I recognize Member Gauthier.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I was on that tour as well, and it was really you who enlightened me to know how this system even works in the first place, so thank you very much for your leadership too. 911 is the bedrock of the City's entire emergency apparatus and the first step for our most sacred and solemn responsibility of keeping Philadelphians safe. It was with this in mind that more than three years ago this Committee zeroed in on many of the challenges experienced by 911 call centers nationwide, including here in Philadelphia, understaffing, low morale, poor retention and recruitment struggles. City Council and the Police Department have been working together to tackle many of these issues, but much work remains. Our ongoing gun violence emergency means that 911 dispatch experiences an elevated call volume and that residents need emergency services more often than ever before. Philadelphians need to know that when they call 911 they will receive help every single time. Because when people call 911, they are likely experiencing one of the most traumatizing and scary moments of their entire lives and we need to make sure that they feel supported and get the help they need. When the City fails to successfully respond to an emergency, neighbors lose faith in the City's ability to keep them safe, making it harder for us to combat gun violence and eroding the progress we've made to rebuild the essential bond between the community and the police. This summer we saw how problems with 911 can cause catastrophic consequences. On July 2nd, a Kingsessing resident called 911 after hearing gunshots. A 911 dispatcher erroneously logged the crime scene as North 56th Street rather than South 56th Street and deployed officers to a location three miles away from where Mr. Joseph Wamah, Jr. lay dead. 44 hours later Mr. Wamah's alleged killer returned to the scene and murdered four more residents, including a 15-year-old boy and wounded two more in the deadliest shooting since the Lex Street massacre. This botched 911 response cost the Police Department 44 hours it could have used to investigate Mr. Wamah's death before the shooter allegedly returned to the same spot and committed four more murders. In the wake of this shattering mistake, then Commissioner Outlaw pledged to conduct a thorough investigation and take action to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. And I look forward to hearing the results of these efforts today. I went to Joseph Wamah's funeral as well as the funerals of some of the other mass shooting victims and it broke my heart to see families grieving the loss of a loved one enduring even more pain, pain unintentionally inflicted by the City. I want to make it crystal clear that the goal of today's hearing is not to shame our hardworking 911 dispatchers, many of whom are Black women, or the Police Department. Rather we strive to fulfill Council's obligation to give our constituents the accountability and service they deserve and to provide the Police Department with the resources they need to respond to every 911 call quickly and successfully. I want to thank everyone participating in today's hearing for their partnership and collaboration, especially Majority Leader Jones and my fellow members of the Public Safety Committee. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Member. I recall us sharing a room 11 with District Attorney Krasner as we reviewed those audio tapes and the actual tapes from the shootings, and all of us were taken aback by the tragedy that happened. But what I remembered most is that people didn't sit in that room pointing fingers. Everybody wanted sincerely to point to solutions. And I think that is the spirit of what this hearing is today, how can we avoid that ever happening again and what do we need to put in place so that it doesn't, and that I think is always the best way to approach the imperfect in an effort to make it better. So with that, are there any other members of the Public Safety Committee that wishes to comment on this resolution at this time? (No response.)
Hearing none, Mr. Glass, can you announce the first panel to testify.
Yes, Mr. Chairman. Our first witness will be Teresa Armstrong.
Good morning. Please state your name for the record and begin your testimony.
Okay. My name is Teresa Armstrong and what I have to present is actually an incident that occurred just yesterday, last night actually where my son's car was hit and the same car that hit his car crashed into a building and we called 911. The problem with that is that we sat and we waited for the police because they said the police will be there. So we waited and we waited. After minutes, we called 11 again and we were able to speak to a 12 dispatcher. And the dispatcher was 13 kind of cold, like when my son 14 explained the situation, what had 15 occurred, it was a male, he seemed 16 kind of disinterested. So after that 17 call, we waited yet another 20, 30 18 minutes waiting outside in 19 30-something degree weather, we 20 waited. So my son called again. He called the 18th District. That's what he was recommended to do, so he called the 18th District. The person seemed like they were interested, at least writing a report or something, so they put him on hold for a very long period of time. And then when they reconnected with my son, they stated for him to either -- and this was after 9:00. It had to be about 10:00 -- after 10:00, close to o'clock last night, that he can 8 come to the police station and, you 9 know, it was already late. 10 And the person presented 11 themselves like they were going to do the report, but after they put him on hold and came back, they like changed their mind and they just wanted to get him off the phone. And they said call 911 again. But when my son called 911 again, they stated that someone was dispatched. We sat in the car for over an hour in the cold. No one ever showed up at all, no one. So we ended up giving up, you know, in dealing with the situation which we're dealing with right now, but also in recent past because I have had neighbors that tend to be a nuisance blasting music and things of that sort and I had called 911 where no one had showed up. And not only that, when I would call 911 it would take -- I don't know, it would take so much time for someone to answer. I mean that's a problem. That's still a problem. And when they say, well, we'll send someone out there, and a lot of times they're like it's no big deal like, okay, we'll send someone out, kind of cold, you know, and that also is an issue. And then when the police would come -- this was recent, I have a Ring camera where I recorded when the police would show up -- they would pull out in front of the address and just drive off, don't even get out of the car. It was clear on the video that I have that the noise, you can hear it all outside. They never got out the car. They just drove off. It's gotten to the point where I don't feel that I'm going to have any help when I call 911. Will they come, won't they come? Does someone have to be murdered which did occur next door to me, someone was murdered. Police did come. It took a little bit of time, but police did come. It was a murder right next to where I was sitting in the house right next door. So it's like I have no faith that the police are going to show up. The dispatchers seem to be like it's no big deal, like it's just okay, hurry up, get off the phone, you know, type of attitude, type of tone. Yet there are a few that are concerned, and I'm sure they dispatch to whoever that's nearby. But the police don't seem to show up. I mean, I don't know if there's another crime going on. I don't hear any police sirens racing to anything so I don't know what is going on. And I don't feel safe. I don't feel safe because what if I was in a predicament with someone who's about to harm me, shoot me or stab me and I'm calling 911 and no one shows up. No one answers the phone. But what I would like to see happen, you know, for things to kind of return back to how it was, when you dial 911, someone immediately picked up the phone and they would ask, they would dispatch someone, the police would be there, but that has not been the case. That has not been the case. I don't feel safe.
I really don't. It could be daytime. I don't feel safe in my own community because the police are just not there. You call 911, it's like wow. No action, no anything. And I'm very, very concerned about that. So I mean I have different instances that have occurred, but these are the main ones. Just with the fact that no one's answering the phone, at one time I had to call like three or four times just to get someone to pick up. And I'm like, this is crazy. I live in West Philly where it's shootings and crime occurs on a regular basis around here. And I know there's usually police over at Sayre High School. They be sometimes in the parking lot. I know there's usually a police officer in the vehicle up on 60th and Market Street and I know they have their hands full. But stuff happens not only there, it happens all around this whole area, stuff is going on. And people dialing 911 and the police don't show up. I don't know what is going on. I have no idea, but I have a sense that I'm not safe because someone -- the police may not show up or maybe they don't -- it feels like there's no care for the citizens. For me as an individual, but I believe in citizens as a whole in this community, the police should be an entity that you can count on for emergencies, for safety.
Let me first say that we are sorry on behalf of the City of Philadelphia for your experience, and that a part of why we're having this hearing is to try to get clarification on how 911, how police respond to various levels of calls that might require different levels of intensity. But I can tell you from the tour that we had over with the 911 dispatchers is that they do care. They care enough to come to work, they care enough to do so during COVID. But what we have to do is figure out where in this system that we can be more responsive to your calls and your needs. So I just want to thank you for your testimony.
Good morning. Can you state your name again for the record and please begin your testimony.
Okay. My name is Maria Rodriguez. I'm the daughter of Wilfredo Rodriguez and my predicament occurred on July 16, 2023. Apparently my dad lives alone. He is a hard-working man and needed help. Apparently he was going through a stroke and in a span of three days for the grace of God, he kept on trying to call 911 with no 9 response. Since he was having a stroke, he wasn't able to talk or communicate. But on his cell phone record, I have an indication of 28 calls done by him to 911 and there was never a callback or at least a wellness check done in his behalf. By the graces of God and a miracle we actually still have him here with us severely brain damaged due to his stroke and the lack of attention and not having medical care as he needed on time, but he is here. It's just so stressful thinking and knowing that, okay, he's calling asking for help living in this house alone and not being able to get any type of response, no one knocking on his door. I mean, I know and I understand it wasn't a landline. It was a cell phone he was calling from. But on top of that, it wasn't -- I mean it's registered to him and to the home. I don't know if there's a possibility that it can be traced and that you could have done a wellness check on him or anything on that behalf. But it's sad to say he's a 63-year-old man and disabled right now due to that. And now, he's in the care of his loving family. But it's a little hard to understand that so many calls were made out and he never received a call back or at least a wellness check to check on the home or to see his status. You know, ever since then it's in and out of rehabs. It's sad.
I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for what you went through and what he went through. And I guess one of the questions we will ask is what is the procedure for people who might be under duress that cannot verbally respond and what does that trigger by way of a response by 911 and by the Philadelphia police? And we will ask that question on your behalf.
Thank you so much. I mean anything would have just helped if he would have got medical attention on time, so I appreciate it.
Mr. Chairman, Councilmember Gauthier would like to be recognized.
I just wanted to thank Ms. Rodriguez for coming to share her testimony. I'm so sorry that happened to your father, and I can only imagine how painful it must be to think about your loved one there for three days calling for help and not getting help. I'm really sorry that happened and I appreciate you coming to share that testimony even though it must be quite painful.
Thank you, Member Gauthier. Yeah, can't imagine. Mr. Glass.
Good morning, Ms. Chapman. Can you state your name for the record and please begin your testimony.
Sure. My name is Nyesha Chapman. Just wanted to just recognize and say good morning to Councilmembers Jones, Gauthier, Harrity, Phillips, Lozada and Johnson. I work with many of you on a different level. So I'm glad to be here just to testify. So thank you, Councilmember Gauthier, for inviting me to this Committee hearing today. So I just wanted to, one, start off by saying I'm also a public servant within the City of Philadelphia so I do understand the roles and responsibilities of the police and 911 and dispatch. And I just want to say that on my behalf I thank them for their service and what they do every single day because we know it's not an easy job and an easy task. So for me, my testimony just involves basically I've called 911 several times. I have a special needs daughter. I have a daughter with diabetes, so I've dealt with 911. They've been very responsive in the past as far as coming out, making sure that they answer the phone. But in July of 2021, I actually witnessed -- we were sitting outside of my home. It was right around July the 4th, maybe the day after. And we were all sitting outside and we witnessed a shooting that happened, literally occurred right across the street from my home. Someone was shot and I called 911. Everybody kind of went in the house. Don't know who called 911 either, but I know I called 911 and literally the phone just rang. And that's never happened to me, to the point that I had to actually look at my phone to make sure that I did call 911 because I was not familiar with 911 not answering the phone within the first or second ring. So I did let the phone ring for about possibly 45 seconds to a minute, and then I ended up hanging up because no one was answering the phone. So I did call back again and after another about 30 to 45 seconds, someone did answer the phone and I was able to report the shooting. The problem with that is I was told, oh, you shouldn't have hung up because then you get put to the back of the queue. Well, as a resident and a citizen I don't know that information. I just know that I'm calling 911 and I'm calling because there's an incident that literally just occurred in front of my door and I'm trying to be as helpful as I can to the person who got shot. Now, the police did show up within the next couple of minutes. They did get the gentleman, they did the scoop and run technique. But unfortunately, that person they passed away from their injuries. So my testimony is just basically to state that as a citizen that's called 911, like I said many times I am used to someone picking up the phone again on the first and second ring. And if you're not familiar with that situation when you're dealing with someone who's literally shot and bleeding in front of you and you want to try to make sure you're trying to save their life, it's already a stressful situation. You're already upset. You don't want to be on the phone and literally trying to figure out did I call the right number. That is not the instance that you want to be in. So I just want to make sure that I am in support of whatever Council is going to do to try to rectify the situation, whether it's additional training, additional support, but making sure that no one is in that situation again with their loved one if they're in an emergency situation. As a mother and calling 911 for my daughter, time is of the essence and you want to make sure that you are getting a response as quickly as possible. So anything that I can do to assist, anything that I can do to help out. But again, my support is with Council to make sure that this bill, this resolution goes through and that we again have direct response when anyone that's calling 911 for whatever reason.
Thank you so much for your testimony and thank you for your advocacy in other areas through --
-- our government. We appreciate you. And thank you for taking the time to share those experiences.
Mr. Chairman, Councilmember Lozada would like to be recognized.
Yes, Councilman. Thank you so much. Thank you, Nyesha, for your testimony. I've also been on the receiving end of calling 911 and not receiving a response as well. And so, I think that part of our line of questioning as we get through this process today should be the education around the process of 911 and what people should do and expect in situations like this. When they are confronted with sometimes really scary situations where they don't know what is happening not just to their loved one but to a neighbor and, you know, how do they respond to a system that is just ringing, I think that we need to note, right, that if -- because I wasn't aware either until just now that if I hang up, I'm going to get pushed to the end of the line regardless of what my emergency situation is. And if that's the case, right, is it the case where you feel like your situation should be elevated. And if you drop on the call, you're actually sent to the bottom of the line. Is that a fact, and if it is not, then can we make sure that we clear that as well as what do we do moving forward to educate community residents about situations like that.
Those are good questions that we will have for the Police Department. I concur that what happens if you have to hang up because you're under duress in a domestic situation or someone has you hostage and you have to hang up, what is the response to inquire as to your well-being after you hang up? And so, those are systems, analysis that we want to take a look at. So thank you for that, Member Lozada. Mr. Glass.
Thank you so very much for your patience. Please state your name for the record and begin your testimony.
My name is Walter Webber and I'm a resident of West Philadelphia. And I'd like to say thank you very much for the invitation to testify today, Councilman Jones. We've met several times. Thank you to Councilmember Gauthier for your work on this issue and you are my Councilperson, so thank you for my invitation. Thank you to the Committee for addressing this important issue. I'm a resident of West Philadelphia, and on my block particularly we have been affected by all the looting that's happened three times now in 2020, again later in 2020 and then again on October 2nd of this year. At the end of my block a lot of businesses were looted and destroyed. My block ends at 52nd Street, so a lot of the businesses they were unfortunately dismantled several times. I don't know how those people are holding on. God bless them. But the most recent issue that I had contacted Councilmember Gauthier's office about was on October 2nd. And having been through this two times before, I'm a parent, I have two young children at home, we live on a block that's mostly made up of families. There are a lot of children around, longtime residents. And all of a sudden you can hear something's happening. I go outside to check out what's happening and I see 15 guys with hoods and masks on going down my block. Some of them with crowbars. Some of them with, I don't know if they had other weapons, you can't tell. It's nighttime. Within minutes, those 4 people are at the end of my block 5 trying to break into stores. More 6 and more people are showing up, cars 7 full of people are showing up and 8 parking and getting out, as if 9 they're going to the store to go 10 shopping. They brought boxes and other things with them, so we called 911. m. Very difficult to get through. There was a lot going on that night in the City. I understand that. Eventually we did get through and the dispatchers sounded a little bit in duress or whatever. I understand. But we were in what I felt like was an emergency situation that needed a response quickly because a quick police presence on 52nd Street would have pretty much stopped anything from happening. Instead over the course of the next two hours I continued to call 911. We received almost no police response. It took more than two hours for even one officer to arrive at the scene. There was a brief moment when one officer did pull up and park outside of the store so everyone just kind of dissipated. And then as soon as they pulled off, everything started again. People were loading their cars like they were checking out from a regular store. I mean, no 15 one was in a hurry. It was very lackadaisical. Clearly no one felt that there was any chance of getting in any trouble. However, we called 911 around 11 o'clock, maybe 11:15 or so. This is continuing to build. And when we spoke to the dispatchers, they started to get kind of combative with us about why are you calling us, what do you want me to do about it. One of the dispatchers said to my wife that this is a very dangerous situation, what do you want the police to do about it, as if it was a crazy idea to ask the police to respond to this situation. Several times different dispatchers told us what do you want us to do about it. And I understand it's frustrating, you're the dispatcher, you're putting the reports in, you're not the one driving the car, you can't get in your car and drive out there. I understand that very much and I imagine for them, there are things about their job that is very frustrating. It was -- we were in a distressed situation. I had locked the doors to my house, closed the curtains. And I had basically gotten all my family upstairs and prepared for the worse, that maybe the crowd will get crazy and start breaking cars, trying to break into houses. I have no idea where this is going. This happened to us twice previously. The first one was the early 2021. And then the second one, the same thing, my daughter was 2 days old.
She came home on Friday night -- no, she came home on Saturday during the day and Monday during the day is when the riot happened. And again, at that time same thing, no response. Calling 911, no response. And it makes us, you know, it makes us feel as if our community isn't valued or our community is not important. We turn on the local news and I see the police having a press conference saying, oh, everything is under control, Center City has been secured, there's nothing to worry about. And they're standing there, and literally I'm watching a guy carry a mattress out of a store and load it into his car while two other guys are prying open another door to a business. And it's as if no one in the City even knew this was happening, but we were calling 911 over and over again. And I imagine the owners of these businesses and I imagine other residents were also very concerned about this and calling 911. Meanwhile we're essentially trapped in our houses because who knows how quickly this could turn bad. Also, very concerning was fires. I was very concerned that one of them would -- someone would either by accident or on purpose light one of the businesses on fire which would then sweep down our whole block and we would have no way to leave. The late 2020 incident that happened in October ended with the giant truck trying to drive through the police line. I believe several officers were injured in that incident and then that truck crashed at the end of my block. And then that essentially ended -- at least the police response came because of that. But the next morning as I was leaving the house to take my now 3-day-old daughter to her first doctor's appointment, they were towing the truck from the end of my block past my car as I'm getting a 3-day-old baby into the car to go to her doctor's appointment. Nonetheless, the response time has -- we've had other issues on our block with, as someone else said, a nuisance house. There were a lot of -- over the summer a lot of young kids gathering, teenagers out past curfew. These people were definitely up to no good but being loud, being crazy. I know that one of them was up to no good because he was already wearing an ankle bracelet. But calling 911 about that, they never dispatched anyone. No one would ever come. 2 o'clock in the morning a raging party happening on our street full of underaged children who are supposed to be in their house because of curfew. Nothing, no one ever comes. And when we call 911, at a certain point they say, why are you calling us back, why do you keep bothering us. We've put it into the system, why do you keep calling. Well, if I called and then five minutes later I called again and then five minutes later I called again, maybe that's excessive, I don't know. A building was not on fire, a person was not injured gravely. But as the other community members have testified, it all sounded very familiar to me in the previous testimony, that response times are slow, if ever. And not every dispatcher but there have been dispatchers that I've spoken with who don't appear to take what we're saying seriously or are dismissive of our problems, and really the most shocking thing to me was hearing a dispatcher say that this is too dangerous of a situation to send police to. I'm really not clear who should be responding if it's too dangerous at least for police to respond to or saying something like what do you want me to do about it. Well, I've called 911. I want you to dispatch police about it. That's what I would like you to do. On the October 2nd night eventually a police officer did arrive, not a SWAT team, not a whole squadron, one uniformed police officer with a flashlight, and they dispersed the entire crowd. That's what it took, one uniformed police officer. Not tactical response, not tear gas which we did have down my block, not any of those things. One police officer arrived on foot with a flashlight and it dispersed the entire crowd.
So when I call and they say what do you want, I want someone to come out. There are between 40 and 100 people with black-hooded sweatshirts on and masks on breaking into a store. It seems as though that's a job for the police to respond to. So I would like to just end, tie up my comments by saying that I appreciate everyone's work on this issue and for giving me the opportunity to testify about my experiences. I do realize that the dispatching is a very difficult job and I don't have that job, and the reason I don't have it is because I could not do it. It's very difficult so I have a lot of respect for the dispatchers. And again, many of the dispatchers have been very professional. They're doing what they can do. And I do get a sense from them their frustration that they are putting in the dispatch request, but then nothing happens. So then I call them again, so then I call them again, so then I call them again. And if they've done their job correctly which is they've listened to me, they put the dispatch request and then nothing happens, I can't call anyone else. There is no one else to call, so I end up just calling them back again. And they say, sir, we put it in, why are you calling us again. Well, it's been an hour and nothing has happened. It's been two hours and nothing has happened. And again, I just like to emphasize that, you know, I was on -- my block was one of the blocks that was hit with tear gas during the protests. My block was one of the blocks that had street battles going on, on it with police and everything. But this particular time on October 2nd it was one uniformed police officer with a flashlight that dispersed the crowd. That's all it took. So Center City, they formed a police barricade around the businesses that were owned by major corporations and blockaded them and protected the Apple store at all costs, but my neighbor on the corner who sells discount mattresses, no 11 police barricade arrived to blockade him. The brand new open businesses on my block, a new ice cream store, the pharmacy that is my pharmacy that I get my prescriptions at, no one blockaded that. V. saying everything is under control, and everything was very much not under control. I believe at that time it's the new acting Commissioner, not the previous Commissioner. Nonetheless, there was a commander on television. So I want everyone to know just what our experiences living in the neighborhood and that we believe that it's important that when we call 911, that it makes it feel like something is going to happen and when they say that it's someone's getting dispatched, someone actually is dispatched. And I realize this hearing is about 911 dispatching and that might be beyond their control and I understand why they might get frustrated, but taking it out on me in a situation where I don't feel safe in my own home at that moment, not great, not great. So thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. And that's all I have to say.
Thank you so much for your testimony you gave. I know Member Gauthier and I shared those evenings, and I'm experiencing PTSD at this moment from the call that I got from Member Gauthier when she was talking about what was going on, on 52nd Street, and the conversation said she overheard in the crowd that they were now going to my District to loot the 52nd and Jefferson Street mall. I remember that feeling of despair when I called as well and couldn't get a response because quite frankly the system was overwhelmed and there is no playbook for what happened those evenings. And do I understand the frustration of Center City versus neighborhoods, Center City safety versus neighborhoods. And for a period of time -- I can't speak for other Districts -- we did not get the type of response to the calls that would have given any of us comfort that evening. For about 17 hours we kind of were on our own. And I hope that we take from that experience. And what the hearing is about is what did we learn, what can we do so that we never ever, ever have to experience that feeling of helplessness that I know. Our Districts are right next to each other, Jamie. And I remember your call to me telling me that they were on their way and that feeling of dread that followed. So I'm sure -- Member Gauthier, would you want to respond to any of this?
Thank you, Mr. Webber, for testifying. I had that same experience of feeling sort of back in that place from being on 52nd Street when tanks were rolling down and being on 52nd Street after Walter Wallace, Jr. when the truck crashed into the police, so it was horrible. But thank you for coming to share your experience and thank you to everyone on the panel. It's very hard to hear those testimonies, but I greatly appreciate you being here to share. And I hope that you feel a sense of hope that in sharing these stories you're helping us, you're helping Council and the Police Department and 911 to do whatever we need to do to fix this system and to make sure that nothing like what happened to you and your loved ones happens to other residents in the City of Philadelphia. So thank you so very much.
Mr. Chairman, our next witness is District Council 33 Local 1637, President Gordon Zimmitt. I'd also like to note for the record that Councilmember Thomas is present as well.
Welcome, Member Thomas. Duly noted for the record. Mr. President, are you available?
So please state your name for the record and begin your testimony.
Gordon Zimmitt, President of Local 1637, which represents our 911 operators. Before I turn it over to some of our seasoned operator -- 911 operators, I would like to point out the fact and I believe some people on this virtual hearing know this, but I just want to reiterate again how much that this job as a 911 operator is one of, if not the most stressful as well as one of, if not the most thankless jobs in the City of Philadelphia and to represent the men and women that answer these calls has been a privilege of mine. However, what I would like to also point out the fact that a lot of these issues that we have been circling back around trying to get the solutions for our issues that we have addressed with the police department, and we are working with them. However, before I get too much into it, I do want you guys to hear from some of our dispatchers that are 911 operators that are actually the ones that answer these calls. So first, I'm going to have Tomasz Rog who is a 911 operator, and I would like him to speak on some of his experiences.
Yes. Actually in the same room as Mr. Gordon. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, City Council. Good morning to the citizens of Philadelphia because I'm one of you as well. I'm just going to come here and talk to you guys about facts because the reality of the job is there's a lot of things that happen that unfortunately the public isn't aware about. Maybe starting with a public service announcement, allowing the public to know what the process of 911 calls is, meaning goes from calltaker, sometimes it needs to be connected to another entity, meaning 911 fire rescue. Somebody needs dispatch for that. That's another room. That's a different entity. Dispatchers are also a separate person from the calltaker. So a calltaker doesn't really have any I guess say in reference to when the job gets dispatched. Now, as a dispatcher I can only do as much as the streets allow me. Meaning, the personnel I have, I have to utilize, so I prioritize the priorities based off of the jobs I receive. Now, unfortunately I wish I could send an officer to every single job as soon as it comes out, but there are nights on Friday where I'll have four police officers working in Olney and I have to see which domestic is more important than another domestic, which person needs service more than another person. That is the unfortunate responsibility of a dispatcher that has to unfortunately go through the process and figure out. Now, that is not including all of our violent crimes. These are some of the numbers -- just to give you an example, in 2019 we had 350 -- 346 homicides. 2020, first year of COVID that jumped by 40 percent to 500, 499, but I'll round up. After that we have not hit below 520 homicides. Now, homicides is not including shootings. We've processed 1400 shootings in 2019. After that, 2200, 2400, 2500. That's year-by- year. That's not including aggravated assaults and including firearms, which counters 4,000 jobs per year, not including rapes, robberies, petty theft. Kias and Hyundais, the last two years. Hopefully, the City is aware of this, maybe get into a civil suit with the car manufacturers. I dispatch in the mornings multiple officers to homes for report of vandalisms in reference to people breaking into Kias and Hyundais, stolen car reports in reference to people's Kias and Hyundais being stolen, investigate autos for abandoned Kias and Hyundais on the highway. That has increased so much in the past two years due to that manufacturer defect, that I still have to prioritize those jobs. So I understand the frustration in response time. But the response time can only be so much controlled by a dispatcher as myself. Trust me, as a citizen myself I have two daughters that live in Philadelphia. I've been here my whole life. I'm an immigrant myself. I came to this country for the purpose of a better life for -- my mother came here for a better life for me, for my children. These are things that I'm fully aware of. And I wish I could fix it. Now, the problem is we don't retain anybody. COVID took so many senior dispatchers and personnel from the room due to being overworked. We worked remotely zero days during COVID. I had COVID three times due to the profession I chose, do you know what I mean. We lost so many people just to the fact of COVID, the inability to work remotely for the fear of getting sick. There are a lot of people who are over 40, 50 -- well, let me rephrase. There was a lot of people over 40, 50, 60 years old that did not feel safe coming to work. So these are things that have changed rapidly in the last few years. Now, we're at a point where about 70 percent of this room has less than four years on, three years on, so they can't even begin to train or understand certain instances because they haven't processed them yet. You don't have to deal with everything every day which is a blessing, thank God. But mass shootings, for example, like we referenced Kingsessing. Kingsessing was a mass shooting, terrible instance.
That year we processed 8 mass shootings. That's of 20 9 unfortunately. 10 In 2019 we only had 10. In 11 2020, 27. The following year 25. So 12 our mass shooting rate has gone up 13 over 50 percent. I myself can tell 14 you I've handled three mass shootings 15 in the last two years, on Broad and 16 Olney and on Germantown Avenue. 17 These are things that I process 18 myself. These are things the 19 officers on the street have to 20 process, do you know what I mean. 21 People don't want to deal with the 22 post-traumatic stress of the job 23 without proper compensation and that 24 is a real issue right here, the lack 25 of retention, the inability to have 1 good personnel, because we're getting paid $47,000 a year to sit and spend Thanksgiving at 400 North Broad Street. I haven't had Thanksgiving with my children in eight years. My daughters have never had Thanksgiving dinner with me. Now, I'm not complaining because I signed up for this, but at a certain point people need to be appreciated and need to be compensated properly for the things that they are doing. And the people I work with are superstars, superstars. They come in, they sacrifice family time, they sacrifice birthdays, they sacrifice their own well-being, like I said, because of COVID to do a job, then these people need to be finally rewarded and appreciated for that. So what I think we need to do is overhaul the room in a sense of first off, we need at least $15,000 more, and I'm not saying that just picking a number out of the air because I can move to Bucks County right now and make $12,000 more instantaneously, not including my years of experience, all my certifications and everything like that. So Bucks County, for example, has a tier system. You start as a dispatcher but then you can become a dispatch supervisor. Then you have the ability to move into a management position. Now, I'm only going to mention Bucks because I can inundate you with all the different counties, states and everything, everybody has the tier process. But in that same breath if you raise the pay, you also attract a different type of employee. So with that said, with the higher pay rate, make it not harder but make the qualifications make sense with what my job title is. So, for example, test on multi-tasking skills. I work off of five screens simultaneously on the dispatch side. My job, I will be talking to one person, typing for another. That's just the reality of my job. But we can test for that prior to coming into the room. People's reaction time, the ability to hear something and what is your response to that, that has a lot to do with dispatching and calltaking. A reading and writing comprehension, something as simple as that would help you realize who do you have and what kind of personnel are you about to hire. Verbal skills and short-term memory retention skills, these are also things that are very important on the dispatching calltaking side because we process so much information. I might take 200 calls on a Friday night, 250 calls, or on dispatching me and my partner on a Friday, Saturday night we might dispatch over 600 jobs. So there are times where jobs are in reference to other jobs. You need the ability to connect dots sometimes. These are things that we need to assess prior to getting into the room because if I'm spending four months training a dispatcher who I know, one, doesn't have the qualifications, two, doesn't have the skills and, three, really doesn't care about the job, I'm wasting my time, I'm wasting the City's time and the City's money at that point. And there are people I can tell you right now 10 minutes within a conversation I know that they're not built for this job, and that's nothing against them because it's just not for everybody, do you know what I mean. And this is one of those instances where we need proper people in proper places because this is a very important job.
We are -- like you said, we are the first line of response to the police department, so we need empathy, we need people who are sympathetic, we need people who know how to speak to individuals because that dictates a lot, not even to the person who's calling, but the officer responding. If I'm on a phone call and I give you a terrible experience on the phone, you're going to give that energy back to that officer and I don't need that, so I need everybody to be on the same page because if we can do that, then that sets up a way better experience, but then it also maybe alleviates somebody calling right back. Give them the proper information in reference to what's going on. Auto accident, to reference the auto accident in Southwest Philadelphia really quick, that's a terrible thing and I wish we could send somebody. On a night in Southwest Philadelphia everything is based off of what's going on in the neighborhood, so there might have been a shooting four, five, six blocks away. As soon as you get a shooting, that ties up six, seven officers. You got to hold a scene. You might have to transport complainants, you might have to go to a hospital with a victim. There are so many different things. Not only that, but they also have to process that job. They also have to give the person who called that job in the proper time and explanation of what goes on going forward, you know what I mean. And the staffing issues and all that, we have a room full of people that are unfortunately undertrained right now, and we have no reason as senior people to stay anymore because all we're doing is training without any kind of promise of anything changing. We don't get stress pay. We don't get stress days. We don't have any type of ability to really express ourselves unless we go to EAP, which is our Employee Assistance Program and talk to a psychiatrist, do you know what I mean. And there's a lot of things that we can do to change this room, but it all starts unfortunately in the sense of retaining employees and attracting employees who have the qualifications. And unfortunately, that's a money issue. And like I said, a pay bump of $15,000 like I said to the 47 we're making right now seems very minimal to me, but it's a starting point. Also, to give another example we did have civilian supervisors in the room in Police Radio previously. In 1989 a civilian supervisor was making $55,000 a year, 55 in 1989. I am a senior dispatcher, which is something that we just started which the premise is amazing, but the pay difference between a senior dispatcher and a regular dispatcher is $1100. So after taxes we're talking about $700 additionally a year. That's almost laughable in terms of what the message is supposed to be. That's not going to retain anybody because as someone with time on, it's almost disrespectful as that being a pay bump. That's nothing real, do you know what I mean. So a civilian supervisor in 1989 made 55,000 but I'm at 52 in 2023. You already know the math just doesn't make sense. Sorry to talk everybody's ear off. My apologies.
No, I think your testimony was insightful. But I want to let you know that we absolutely appreciate the job you and those dispatchers do. And Member Gauthier, now Mayor-elect Parker, we walked around there and saw those conditions that people were almost mandatory to work in, wasn't very safe, wasn't --
We actually did have mandatory -- I apologize. During the riots we were doing 12-hour shifts. That's another part of the job that we don't discuss, because again we signed up for that. But there were times where I would have something planned. They're like, oh, no, we're short personnel, you got to stay an additional four hours mandatory. These are things that we've all gone through in this room, you know what I mean. We're here just like everybody else. And not to cut you off, but like I said we understand the mandatory because we did that. We do the hours. We put the time in.
So when we were there, we heard from dispatchers that talked about child care issues that came about when mandatory overtime was presented to them with the offer that they could not refuse. The good news is what I'm trying to tell you is that Mayor-elect Parker understands that in a close and personal way based on those visits, not visit, visits, so that hopefully down the line we'll be able to address some of those things. But let me just go back to your testimony. And what I appreciated is we need to do a better job of educating the public as to how you as dispatchers prioritize jobs, and it might give some understanding if there's a murder versus a shooting versus someone's porch furniture being stolen, and those things to the people that are undergoing them, you know, they don't -- there's an urgency when they call, but there has to be a priority when you guys go through how you respond and that education process should happen. I'd also go on to say that stress level that you deal with every day, you talk to people on their worst day, when they're going through traumatic occurrences within their homes and their communities. So there is a level of urgency that you guys sometimes cannot emotionally match their energy because you have to take down the facts and that kind of difference in intensity often can come off as less than sympathetic. But what I want is not sympathy. I want accuracy in what address is being taken down and whether or not the people that you're responding to have mental health issues that need co-respondents and taking down those facts is methodical and only trained professionals, you touched on that. Yes, we need to do different testing to determine if people have the aptitude to be able to remember half of the things that are being said at an emotionally-charged incident. But I want to let you know we hear you and we are having this hearing because of it. Member Gauthier.
I just wanted to thank Mr. Zimmitt for being here and for really highlighting not only the stress of the job but the pay disparity, the conditions. I do have questions after the panel finishes, but just wanted to take a moment to say thank you. And the purpose of this is for us to get you guys what you need. So thank you so much.
Okay. Does anybody else or where are we at on the witness list, Mr. Glass?
Mr. Chairman, there are two more witnesses for this panel before we move on to the police department. But Councilmember Lozada would like to be recognized at this time as well.
I also want to reiterate my appreciation for Mr. Gordon and all of the dispatchers who respond to our most difficult moments. I have family who also work as a dispatcher and have heard firsthand, right, some of their challenges. And so, I understand. What I really don't want is for the dispatchers in this moment to take this as if we are taking a shot at them. I think that this is an opportunity for us to hear directly from them about what some of their challenges are so that together we can work towards making their work environment a better place so that they can serve the residents of the City of Philadelphia, but I have heard and I can sympathize to some of the challenges and about the sacrifices that many of you experience on a day-to-day basis. And I've also heard about how often times you feel unappreciated in situations that you're confronted with and that you feel like you're not heard. We are hearing you. This is an opportunity for us to work together and come up with some solid recommendations to better improve your work environment.
Mr. Chair, can I just jump in and echo the sentiments of all of the other Councilmembers and just communicate my appreciation for D.C. 33 and the workers. This is informative and disheartening at the same time. So just wanted to add to the chorus of the choir. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Member Thomas. You hit the nail right on the head with it's informative and disheartening all at the same exact time. So I'm going to -- Member Harrity, would you continue the witness for a second? I have to attend to a separate matter. It'll be about five minutes.
Yes, Mr. -- Councilmember Harrity. Our next witness will be Latifah Bashid.
Hello, Lateefah. Please state your full name for the record.
Good morning. Okay. I just wanted to speak on I've been a 911 dispatcher for the last -- going on 17 years. I actually love my job. I'm very passionate about my job. I work North band majority of the time for the last 10 years, which is the 14th and the 35th, A-1 District very busy. I'm saying that to say when I first started Friday, Saturday and Sundays were busy for us. Now, it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday and Sunday. We are extremely busy. And it's not just like -- I want everyone to understand how we prioritize jobs. Like I said, I work North band. On a regular night we might have three police officers that I can actually delegate jobs to. We have more police on the street, but I can't give them jobs, if that makes any sense. They're there for like priorities, shootings, robberies, theft, vehicle theft like that. So with me saying that when we get -- some nights I might have 18 jobs pending. So when I sit down on 19 my 2:00 to 10:00 shift, I have to sit 20 there, I go through each job and I 21 see what is the most I'm not going to 22 say important because when everyone 23 calls 911, everybody who called is 24 important. But I have to sit there 25 and figure out who I'm going to give these jobs out to. And sometimes I might come into work and we might have a job -- we have people waiting 10, 11, hours sometimes. 5 So in that instance, what we 6 do is we let the street supervisor 7 know we have this thing where we do 8 zero cards. And we say -- we 9 (inaudible) a supervisor, we say just 10 be advised we have 25 jobs pending, 11 no priority 1s but we're at zero car. 12 Meaning, we cannot give out the jobs because we have no one, because they're busy on other jobs. During COVID we worked a lot. Thank God I've never had COVID. I worked every day during COVID. I rarely called out sick. We were mandated at least three, four times a week which is an extra four hours. I had an older son so it was a little more easier for me. Like I've actually taken people's mandatory and said, you know what, go home with your kids, I'll stay because my son was in high school and he can pretty much figure it out. He was in his last year of high school. So with me saying that, during COVID we were not compensated. We wasn't thanked. A lot of stuff -- I had an active shooting one day on the 35th during my 6:00 to 2:00 shift early in the morning. It wasn't all late and I believe it was like a Monday or Tuesday. Someone was actively shooting in a building and I handled it, and no one came over and said, you did a wonderful job. No one gave me a pat on the back. My partner said, wow, you did a good job. But we did have one Deputy Commissioner at the time who actually did call my cell phone and tell me, wow, you did an amazing job. They wound up catching the person, the shooter. Unfortunately, someone did get shot and they died. But that was the only time I ever felt appreciated, but it's sad that I have to feel appreciated when someone else's family is suffering. Like I said, I love my job. I've been there going on years. I 5 was able to put my son through 6 Catholic School his whole time. From 7 the time I started, my son went to a 8 private Catholic School up until he 9 graduated St. Joe's Prep. And now, 10 he has a full academic scholarship to 11 St. Joe's University. I actually 12 love my job. I'm one of the ones 13 like Tomasz says, yes, I do feel 14 unappreciated. But at the end of the 15 day, I actually like the job that I 16 do. And that's basically all I have 17 to say.
Thank you for your testimony. I actually have a question for President Gordon. President Gordon, can you tell me the number of dispatchers right now you guys are short? How many are you budgeted for and how many do you actually have?
We're budgeted I believe for 350. And right now I believe we're at about 278, 288.
Yeah, that's crisis level for you guys like you were saying. Okay. I got it. Any other questions from Members? I see Councilman --
Go ahead, Councilman Kenyatta Johnson and then we'll go to Member Gauthier.
Just a real quick question. Is the Administration on the call? Like what is the actual plan and strategy for recruitment to staff up because I know this is the first time that the staffing levels have been part of this conversation?
Point of information, if that's okay. Councilmember Johnson, I mean we're free to let Mr. Zimmitt respond, but we also have PPD on the next panel and --
I'll wait. I just wanted to get an idea, but I know that staffing issue keeps coming up over and over. So I just wanted to tell, Mr. Gordon, the young lady that's working with you, could you slide back over.
Not a question. I appreciate you. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for your dedication. I look at it as a real public service job. I don't think people recognize the trauma that you deal with when you actually call and somebody's on the other side of the phone who actually understands what you're going through and kind of walks you through a process, right. And so, I appreciate everything that you're doing, I do. And I'll talk more about this with the police department though, but we do have to make sure y'all are supported from a level of staffing standpoint because I personally was in a situation with my son in a shoot-out on the corner of my block. I'm a Councilperson, but no one knows that on the other side of the call, and nobody came, nobody. No 19 response, no nothing. So I just called the people I knew and the police department off my cell phone to get a response. And so, for me it's about fixing what needs to be fixed and supporting y'all in terms of the work that y'all are doing. And it's incumbent upon us as a City to get it done right. Thank you very much and thank you for --
Okay. I just wanted to say in response to what you just said. I'm sure someone answered 911 when they called for the shooting.
Okay. Can I just say that I'm not making up any excuses for that. But when there's a shooting, a lot of people call 911, a lot of people call. And it could be of us sitting in there taking 911 25 calls, but there's only two Fire members. Meaning, every time we get a phone call for a shooting I can get the same phone call five times. I still have to transfer to Rescue. And a lot of the times there's only two people working in Rescue for the whole City and the phone just --
Yes, young lady. And I think the point that we're getting at from the staffing support standpoint is that the Administration has to figure this out. I mean, it's totally unacceptable. That's why my colleague is calling this hearing. But probably what's more unacceptable is that this is the second time we're having a hearing on the same exact topic, which means nothing has been done from the last time in terms of moving the City forward around this particular issue. And so, I'm just here to be supportive. But I didn't want to let you get off without recognizing that you are appreciated. I want you to know that, like we appreciate you. So I just wanted to make sure you recognize that there are folks in government who we're not pointing the fingers. We recognize that something needs to be done. But in terms of the workers, we definitely support you. So I just wanted you to know that.
You're welcome. Councilwoman Gauthier, do you still have questions?
I have a brief comment. I just wanted to say to Ms. Bashid, you did a good job and we appreciate you. And we have to figure out as a City how to express that in a better way, so thank you so much.
Yeah. I mean, we all owe you guys a debt of gratitude for sure. You know, I'm a son of a police officer so, you know, I've heard the stories. I know what you guys do. I mean just, you know, you're the first line of defense. You know what I mean, between giving advice on how to stop the gunshot thing or, you know, whatever it is. So just know that us here on Council we respect you. We respect what you do. All we're trying to do with this is figure out how we help you, what would be the best way to give you the resources that you guys need in order to be able to do the job the way it used to be done. As so many of our other testifiers testified that, you know, they know the difference between when they used to call 911 a few years back to calling 911 now, which the numbers that you guys were saying, 350 to 278 that's a big, big difference when it comes to dispatchers. I mean, like I get it, you know, so just know that we respect and we thank you for what you do. And this is in no way a way to try to push blame on anybody. We just want to know what we got to do to fix it to make Philadelphia safer. So thank you. Anthony, anything else going on?
Yes, Councilmember Harrity. Our next witness for this panel is Michelle Jordan.
My name is Michelle Jordan. I've been a dispatcher for years and I have seen many, many changes. And I think my colleagues in here right now, they've spoken on a lot of things that I guess I was going to say. So I'm going to tell you about our morale and why it's so low, what's causing it. And just to piggyback on a lot of things, the morale starts with feeling unappreciated. The morale starts with feeling -- just last month I sat and talked on the air and I was the voice that you heard on Channel 29, 17, 6, 3 when the officer was killed at the airport. I was that voice. I was on that air for five hours straight. I did not get up to take a break. I did not get up to eat my lunch. I didn't get up to do anything. I had to be told, hey, hurry up and go do something but come right back. So I had big wigs come into the room where I was dispatching. I was on J-Band, which is our city-wide band that controls, that can speak and talk to all entities that Philadelphia consumes. And you know what I got, I got nothing. I got a Wawa, have a shorti and soda on us the next day. I never got appreciated. I never got told, you did a great job, I know you're tired, maybe you should stay home today. Because you know what, we work with these officers every day. And just like the City of Philadelphia you're calling on your worst days when you are calling 911, this is the officers' worst days too sometimes and we deal with that. We internalize. We continuously internalize. Our job is one of the worst cases of whisper down the lane that you can imagine because of retention ratings. Our supervisor's retention ratings are just as worse as the dispatchers themselves, so that's something that the police have to address. But because of that, our supervisors then rely on us to tell them when we are doing wrong or rely on the public to call and say, hey, I had a bad experience with 911 and then rely on us once again to objectify and figure out what was wrong with that call or why the dispatching was wrong. So imagine being told to tell yourself or your counterparts you're not a supervisor, but the supervisor's job has then been delegated to a dispatcher to figure out what we did wrong, and then they then plagiarize almost and say, hey, now we figured out what you did wrong and now you're in trouble. It's a lot. It encompasses a lot. Our morale is so low. There is nothing that says anything about us being so-called senior dispatchers -- senior dispatcher is someone that has been there for three years or more. I think that's a slap in the face, that someone that's been there for 5 years, and a 3-year veteran versus a 6 15-year veteran is making $7 -- what 7 is that total, maybe $10 a pay. It's 8 a slap in the face. 9 We do need to bring in 10 civilian supervision and we also need 11 to have people that are dedicated, 12 which the dispatchers are dedicated 13 to the room. I am dedicated to that 14 room. I took prestige in this job. 15 I hold this job in such a higher position that when I speak on this job, my feelings are hurt. My feelings are hurt that we even have to have this hearing because we work together, we work very hard and we have seen that COVID has brought in 150 or more people and we're having the hardest time keeping them, retaining them, training them properly. And at this point, it's a definite struggle. We have a ratio of maybe veterans to 70 brand new 4 people on a shift. That explains 5 itself. That explains some of our 6 issues. Not just that, our staffing 7 levels when you're saying we're not 8 answering, there is some 9 mathematician that I do not know, we 10 never get an answer as to who the 11 mathematician is, but the 12 mathematician that tells us that our 13 room only deserves to have 20 14 calltakers, 20 on a Friday night, 15 that's -- we have 45 seats, 45 seats for you to be able to calltake so that every call gets answered in a responsible time.
So our goal is to 19 have all calls answered in 10 seconds 20 or less. But on a Friday night where we know even on a 90-degree day as soon as it's nice out, we have multiple crimes happening at the same time, shootings. So imagine the phones are -- yeah, your call is going to be in the queue. It's going to over- ring. It's going to cause a problem. But we have to ask the police department why are they utilizing numbers based on 2009. Why are you using those numbers? Why do you think that on a Friday night between 3:00 and 11:00 you only need 10 calltakers or 20 calltakers. It's 11 inappropriate at this point. 12 And, no, we're not including 13 the math of Philadelphia is growing 14 every day, every year. We went from 15 3,000 people -- 3,000,000 people, I'm 16 sorry, what, four years ago. We are 17 at 6,000,000 people now. We doubled 18 in size. But we did not double on calltakers. We did not double -- anything that we do, our strategies on how we handle things have not changed and we need change, and we need for the veterans to feel -- the veteran dispatchers to feel appreciated and utilized properly but also compensated for being able to teach. We can teach. We are good at what we do. I wouldn't stay here if I wasn't. I would not. I would think that I would want the best people to answer my 911 call. I want the best people to dispatch the officers so that the officers feel safe. I don't know if we even have -- officers have lost confidence in their dispatchers. Dispatchers have now -- we have lost our control of how we control our air and get things out. Everything's in a disarray. And at this point, you know, I've done this so long and I never thought that I would start looking for another job. I never thought that. I really thought I would retire from the City, and that's sad because I have a lot to offer. And a lot of times any time we ask questions of the police department when we sit in these management meetings and things like that, we get very generic answers. We get why are you not staffing the phone room. We have 45 seats. And why you don't -- why wouldn't you put 45 people in those seats and then we wouldn't hear about an over-ring. We wouldn't hear anybody complaining about anything unless it had to be connected to the fire department, which they are understaffed. So they should be here in this meeting as well because they are dispatchers also. They need to be here to address their issue. But right now I guess we're going to talk about our issue. But as far as the police department and not answering calls, we have 45 seats. We have 18 people working. That is very important to address. And, you know, other than that I really don't know what else to be asked of us. We have a good system. 911 on its basis, its foundation is good. The priority system works. It does work. A lot of things that people are feeling is out of the dispatcher's control. It is based on police staffing levels, not 911 staffing levels because we have people. We have enough people to cover 45 seats. We have enough people to cover the bands. We 11 have enough people, but do we not 12 utilize them. We don't. 13 And maybe the overtime thing 14 or maybe we need to create a new 15 group so we can break down and have 16 more people in the room at an active time versus our days off, I'm not -- I can't get into how much overtime we put out. I don't know, but I do know that we are very capable of answering your calls and we do not mean to sound disgruntled when we answer our phone calls. We do not mean to sound dismissive. I just think that, yes, we do need to create a PSA from your dispatchers to explain how our answering -- how we answer our calls, how we dispatch our calls and very transparent. Let the police department be transparent on we are 800 officers short in counting. And then we need to talk about why we have officers doing civilian jobs, but that's another story for another day. I'm done.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Any questions for this witness?
Councilmember Gauthier would like to be recognized, Councilmember Harrity.
Thank you. First, I wanted to thank Ms. Jordan for your testimony. I also just wanted to thank you for sharing the story about what it was like to take the call when Officer Mendez was shot and killed and the other officer injured. I can't imagine the level of trauma that must go along with that, and we thank you for your service and also thank you for highlighting how things are in the room, right, and the amount of seats that are filled and how that translates to, you know, a 911 response. And thank all of you, Mr. Zimmitt, Ms. Bashid, Mr. Rog, as well for your testimony. We're here to support you and to take action, and to ensure not only that our constituents get the service that we want, but that the 911 call center is an attractive and desirable place to work and have a career. And I think we all recognize that answering 911 calls is one of the most taxing and traumatizing jobs in the City and we applaud all of you for the critical role that you play in public safety. I was wondering if each of you could summarize how you think the City can better support our 911 dispatchers professionally and emotionally, and also talk about, you know, what are some of the things that your members say would help them to stay with the City of Philadelphia? If everybody could take a turn answering those questions.
Tomasz again. Oh, my screen went black. I don't know -- (Background interruption.)
We can hear you guys. I don't know -- I don't know what's happening at this time.
All right. Well, what I was saying earlier I'm going to say the same thing again. I'm also the shop steward for my squad. So I do hear the issues the room has, the things that people talk about. And a lot of the issues have to do with monetary things and not to make it about money, but money in itself brings respect, brings appreciation, brings consideration that people know what people are going through. Again, we're all civilians. None of us are sworn. We don't go through the pay increases nor do we have the upper mobility like my supervisors do, we have a corporal sergeant and a lieutenant. I'll have six police officers working in the room at one time. If you combine all their salaries, they're making close to $1 million a year, you know what I mean. Meanwhile the dispatchers, again we're making $47,000 to $50,000 a year. And again, that's including sacrificing our weekends, our nights, our holidays, our personal time. These are all things that we all put into account where the only people really now are staying are the ones who genuinely really care about the City and are also trying to make a difference in riding out the storm. Because there's nothing really stopping them from leaving. I lost a lot of my co-workers because they went to the counties, they went to the universities, they went to UPenn, they went to Temple, they went to transit police, they went to, you know, Bucks County, Mont. Co. These are all things within, you know, our realm of possibility. The only reason we're still here is because we still genuinely care about the City and we don't want to leave the City stranded because if we leave, I think to myself all the time, if I leave, then who's going to take my place. And not to put myself on some kind of pedestal, but I think the same thing. Not to joke around I told my partner every day that works in North Philly with me, the day you leave is the day I transfer out because I'm worried about who I'm going to work with next. So with the pay increase, with the ability of upward mobility, some kind of promise that I could be a supervisor, a lead, a management role in the department, then I have the ability to want to stay. I'm literally waiting for my pension to hit at 10 years to maybe pivot and go to work in Maine or Vermont because I know I'm going to process 10 percent of the amount of work I do now and I'll have no, you know, I won't have to deal with the stress of shootings, officer-involved shootings, mass shootings. Hearing my officers on the street telling me they're scooping somebody, dealing with infants dying, these are things that we deal with on a daily basis but are not compensated because nobody thinks about it. Nobody talks about it. These are all things that are just happening behind the scenes, but the people behind the scenes are the ones who are leaving. These are the ones that we need to be concrete. We need those written and reading comprehension tests prior to coming because we need to bring the best in. This is one of those jobs when I took this job I felt privileged. Now, it's more so like we are privileged to have these people come in. And it really shouldn't be that way because this is such an important job with so many responsibilities, that people should know how great they are and how important they are to this place. But when you're telling somebody that your pay is this and you have no way of going forward, then you're not telling that person that they matter, because you're telling them like, hey, I could just replace you with any other human being. But in all reality you can't replace me that easily. And again, not to say that I'm God's gift to whatever, but all these dispatchers you spoke to today are just another version of myself and I'm another version of them, because we all understand this struggle and we've been here long enough that we know that we deserve more. And it's not because we're money hungry. It's because that we've already gone through these motions.
Like Michelle said, she's been here 15 years. Someone who's been here 3 years can make the same amount of money as her. That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make sense in a professional world. It doesn't make sense in any type of aspect, you know what I mean. And we're also training. We're also giving advice to the supervisors in the room. These are all things that we're doing, that we're not being compensated for, so if you give the people in the room 6 the ability to look forward to something. But not only that, if you're putting the job out there and you see the job is $64,000 with these qualifications, you're going to bring in a different type of employee, a different, you know, the recruiting is going to be different at that point. So the inadequacies of the room have to do with everything that goes on outside, because the people in the room are concrete. The people in the room know what they're doing. What we need to do is tell those people we appreciate them, we understand what they're doing and we want to help them moving forward in the same department because that longevity only means a better dispatcher. I'm a firm believer you got to put 10,000 hours in to be proficient at anything. And some of these employees are only lasting a year because they don't know what they're getting themselves into, their job is too hard and they're already on their way out by the time they hit that door kind of, you know what I mean. So we need to work on that retention by first appreciating the people who are already in there but also letting the people who don't have that job yet know, hey, we're looking for people, but we're looking for quality people. I don't need quantity in that room. I need quality because you can give me 5,000 people, but if they don't know how to talk to the human being, if they don't know how to be empathetic, sympathetic or how to look at a map and tell directions, north, south, east and west, I can't do anything with that. So what we need to do is figure out a way of getting proper people in there, better people in there while also retaining the ones we have now. Because if we don't change this soon with the way we're going in the next two years, percent of that room 9 will have more than five years on. 10 And at that point, I don't know if we'll be able to recover from those numbers.
Thank you. That was a very thorough answer. So before I conclude my questioning for this panel, I'll just ask if any of your colleagues want to weigh in on what type of support you need professionally and emotionally and what can help dispatchers to stay with the City?
Hi again. Civilian supervision is definitely needed. That is one of our top priorities. I believe that we need a tier system because we can save money. A lot of people that come into our job are under the impression that they will only calltake. So being a calltaker in most counties comes with a pay rate of a certain standard. And then if you would like to make a certain amount of money more, you would become a dispatcher and then it continues. But a tier system of how we operate for, one, it could save the City a lot of money because then we're focusing on one group doing one thing and then you're moving on in the ranks over time. We toy with this split shift to bring in more people on our busier hours. We toy with it, but if we were to like I said have a tiered system because right now we're saying that we need it because we're asking for more people to be there during certain hours because of the mathematician that comes up with why we only need people on a Friday. 4 If we were to then like I said have 5 that tiered system with calltakers 6 being something as we had 45 people 7 covering 45 seats, there would be no 8 need for that. 9 And lastly, better -- working 10 on our training center. The same 11 Tomasz is talking about and everyone 12 else, working on our training center. 13 Working on how we -- we can't cater 14 to -- our training center currently 15 is (inaudible) catering to the people 16 that we're hiring, not letting them 17 cater to the job that they want. We 18 are allowing them to work from 8:00 to 4:00. That's not a shift that we currently have. We've never had it. We work from 7:00 to 3:00, 3:00 to 11:00 and then we have a steady shift of 11:00 to 7:00, and I think we set them up at a disadvantage by doing this and then throwing them into a 7:00 to 3:00 situation and you don't get to see -- they don't get to see that they don't have child care during that time. They don't get to see that they don't have somebody to take their mom to the doctor's in the morning time. They don't get to see that. They don't have that person to pick up from after school, so we have to go back to standards. We have to have standards put in place. Again, I know COVID we were desperate. We're not desperate right now. We have to go back. We have to go back to setting standards and keeping them. And also like I said, pushing for our senior people to have better roles within our job. That's all I pretty much have to say. Do we have to add anything to this?
Excellent and informative testimony. Thank you so much and thank you for the work you do every day.
One second. Before we conclude with us, I do want to share one thing. With everyone that's on this virtual hearing, I believe we all -- I think I can speak for all of us when we say we all want the 911 operators to succeed. And, Councilwoman, you asked us what do we think we need to help to reach that succession. And a lot of it is based off what you just heard from these dispatchers and myself. However, this fight, this was already put in place before COVID, before the pandemic. My predecessor Frank Halbgherr testified to City Council, and I believe Councilman Jones actually alluded to it. And that right there told you what exactly we needed. Now, again the police department has been doing an amazing effort as, you know, hiring people. However, the problem is now our retention. And before we had so many -- we had other agreements put in place with the prior Chief that we don't now. A lot of those things need to be revisited, you know. As Michelle just said, our training center, our training center is currently the 311 center, who actually is not working there. Are they working remote? I'm not sure. That's not for me to speak on. However, that training center has I want to say between to 30 16 monitors while we've been getting 17 classes of over 40. So, you know, 18 and our training staff does a good 19 job with navigating who they have 20 with what they have. And doing the 21 best that they can to prepare them 22 for when they do get into the room, 23 but those are some of the things that 24 we need to look at again. 25 The funding again is just a start. Again, the morale has been low. Of course the pandemic lowered morale across the world honestly. As far as the senior dispatchers, the supervision and the fire -- when the 911 operators look over at Fire and the fire department has civilian supervisors over their operators, it can done. And it's something that really needs to be looked at because over in Fire those are qualified, those are qualified operators that become the supervisors, you know. Over on Police side, I mean, yeah, police, 911 operators, our supervisors are sworn personnel. Now, it is something that is definitely something that we need to look at. Again, working through the pandemic lowered the morale, working through not being able to work remotely, still having to come in. When everyone was home, these 911 operators were there. So when you look at it and you ask them to ask for more and more and to continue to doing the job that they do and they do it without question, because they do care -- when you ask that and then there's no 6 kind of compensation, nothing to look forward to, that's what our operators look at. So again, that's why we are on this, that's why we're on this Zoom so that everyone can get on board. And with anything that you guys need, I can submit whatever it is you guys need. You know, any person on this Zoom call or any Councilmember.
Thank you, Mr. Zimmitt. And I hear the frustration in your voice and I hear that you guys don't want to keep coming to the same hearing saying the same things. But sometimes progress takes many steps, right. And Councilmember Jones started this off. We've moved forward. We got more people. And now, you know, together we're going to move it even further hopefully with the support of the new Mayor also. So thank you for coming to the hearing. Thank you guys for sharing your testimony. It's really critical in getting us to a different place.
Thank you so much, Member -- thank you so much, Member Harrity, for getting my back while we were there. Where are we, Mr. Glass?
Mr. Chairman, we are now ready for our final panel, the Philadelphia Police Department. That'll be Commissioner John Sanford -- John Stanford and Deputy Commissioner Krista Dahl-Campbell.
Thank you so very much. Commissioner, are you there? COMMISSIONER STANFORD: Good morning. It's still morning. I am here. A lot to take in, a lot to unpack there. And, you know, again I hear the echoes of, one, starting with citizens that have called in and testified this morning. You know, again a lot of moving stories, a lot of incidents that I can understand the sentiment of how some folks feel. I want to express my condolences for the folks that we lost in the Kingsessing incident and those that were traumatized as a result of that incident, which ultimately has led us to being here today. And I also want to acknowledge the work that's done by our police communication dispatchers. That is something that goes unnoticed. And, you know, listening to them express that today and, you know, it hits close to home of understanding the work that they do each and every day and it is taken for granted by many. Certainly not, you know, I would say not those of us that understand that and know that in this profession, they are our lifeline on the street as police officers. But it is a very, very challenging profession, and one that gets overlooked. So I can completely understand their sentiment. And hopefully out of this hearing today will come some solutions, one, for them but also moving our department forward and being able to serve the citizens of this City in the highest possible way. I will share my screen and start off with just going through some of the points that have gotten us here. But I may be working backwards in terms of connecting on some of the things, the issues that have been brought up. So we'll kind of jump right into sharing my screen so that everyone can see. All right. So the first thing that was discussed here as it relates to the dispatcher pay, so one of the things that we looked at as a result of analyzing what has been going on with our communications group, the yearly pay, minimum pay is around just over $42,000. And looking at the averages across the country would be somewhere around $47,000. Our yearly maximum is around $53,000, $53,700. And again, the averages are somewhere around $64,000. And so, just right off the bat you'd be looking at to bring our folks up to a minimum, they would need a 10 percent increase. And to bring them up to a maximum, you would need a percent increase. And so, 17 I think I heard one of them expressing that early on in testimony that, you know, an increase in the pay levels would definitely do some significance in terms of retention and even so much as hiring folks that are interested in this profession. And quite frankly, individuals that would be able to feed their families based upon a salary that would reflect the work that's being done. And to be quite blunt about it, even those pay amounts still don't reflect the work that they're doing each and every day. When you get into the totals, one of the things that we also discussed on this call, on this hearing is around our employment breakdown. So since 2020, you can see the numbers have significantly increased. people were hired in 14 2020, 103 in '21, 113 in '22 and then 15 118 so far this year. So this year 16 has been the highest over the past 17 four years giving us a total of 355 18 people that have been hired over that 19 period of time. 20 The problem is retaining them. 21 And so, we have lost 304 during that same amount of time. And so, it's one of those things where we're not covering much ground in the amount that we're hiring because of the retention issue. And so, right now I think we're staffed at just a little over 300 but quite naturally needing much more to address the needs and the workload that's in Radio each and every day. As it relates to the 911 calls, I heard a couple different community members express a couple different issues but around their calls for service and how long it takes to answer 911. So our overall goal is to answer 90 percent of those calls in under 10 seconds.
And you can see the red line there is the baseline for that 90 percent of the calls threshold. And so, you can see this year in 2023 that number has been fluctuating in the 80s which has been significantly higher than previous years as far as the wait time when folks call 911, but you can also see since August that number has been above that 90 percentile for answering those calls in under seconds, and that's something that's actually monitored and looked at each and every day. That's something we started doing since, you know, essentially reviewing our process and looking at what we've been doing. That's one of the things that we look at and review each and every day to try to stay within that goal of answering 911 calls within that 10-second time frame. So what brought us here in the hearing itself. And I'm not going to rehash everything because, Councilmember Gauthier, you kind of went over this initially. But bringing us back to the fact that it was the incident that happened in early July in which a citizen called 911 and reported a shooting incident after hearing gunshots. And so, that information was received improperly and the wrong address was placed into the system of 1600 North 56th Street when it was actually 1500 South 56th Street. As a result, our officers responded to the location. But obviously we know that the result was that this was not the proper location. As a result of that, we put together a working group to pretty much review our practices, and that working group consisted of research and planning, communications, police radio communications, patrol, our Chief strategy office as well as the legal department and to look at what our policies reflected and what we needed to change. And so, out of that we were able to make some changes almost immediately, and some others are going to be more long-term. So one of the things that we did was the police communication dispatcher involved in that call went back through a training session identifying what was wrong or what could have been done looking at improvement and just retraining around that initial incident. One of the other things in terms of looking at was when individuals call 911 what are they asked in terms of our greeting. And so, the greeting was changed from just a 911 radio dispatcher name or I'm sorry, radio dispatcher number, how can we help you. That message, that greeting was changed to now when you call 911, that radio -- that 911 calltaker will provide their radio dispatch number. They will ask the question what is the location of your emergency and does this address have a directional indicator, meaning north, south, east or west. And that was implemented immediately to be able to address any type of issues surrounding a direction. As well as when we do callbacks, that's now a recorded conversation. Before when we would call back to an individual that would call 911, we had a supervisor call back and radio would call back. That call was not recorded. Now, that conversation is being recorded in which citizens will be told that once they are connected with a police department supervisor, that that information at that point is being recorded, so that is something also that has changed as a result of this incident. The long-term solution and, you know, heard it in terms of around training concerns, but one of the long-term solutions is implementing a vendor-based calltaking procedure solution that will essentially come with preformatted questions for the calltaker to utilize when citizens are calling 911. We're looking to have that implemented and fully operational by January of 2025. But just to again give you an idea of some of the immediate solutions that we put in place, give you one example to know that this is working. And so, one of the things was we had an incident in August shortly after implementing the new process of asking the calls and asking the direction of when someone calls.
During that incident someone called, a complainant called 911, gave an address of 2500 North 4th Street. Somehow the calltaker entered that as 2500 North Broad Street. When police arrived to that location, nothing was showing so it initiated a callback. When that callback was conducted, it was determined that that was the wrong location and therefore was rerouted to the correct location which happened to be in the 26th District. And so, that process, that person, the calltaker was counseled and retrained on how to identify locations in just what they were doing. But just to give you some quick roundup of some of the things that we have been doing to address this issue, and I'm just taking my screen back off. I'm open to any questions that you may have. Hopefully just running through kind of briefly to kind of sum up some of the things that have been addressed so far in the hearing.
So thank you, Commissioner, for your testimony. Before I turn it over to other members of this Committee, very quickly if you were to name the takeaways because you were elaborate in your presentation and testimony, takeaways is we are going to do the following things so that this never happens again, and what types of redundancies are we going to employ to make sure that we check and check twice before we kind of close a request? Give me those succinct things that we've learned from this instance. COMMISSIONER STANFORD: So we've learned, one, around the training component that making sure that our folks are properly trained, and I think even some of the dispatchers that spoke today touched on that. So that is one piece of that, is making sure that all of our staff are trained properly. Also, the policy around the callbacks. And so, making sure that there is a supervisor when they are conducting the callbacks from the confidential caller location that, one, that's being verified, two, that that's being recorded so that there isn't a discrepancy and if there is a need to review, that we have that available to us. The other immediate correction is the fact that when you call 911 we are asking very specifically is there an address, directional indicator, and that would eliminate any confusion around north, south, east and west. And so, hopefully having that now implemented will be very, very direct in terms of when people are calling being able to ascertain that information as quickly as possible and as accurately as possible. We're going to continue implementing the training as I stated but also looking at that more long- term solution with additional preformatted questions. That's something that we want to see moving forward and see that implemented as quickly as possible as well as continue to hire. And so, one of the big takeaways is also hiring more and more dispatchers. And we've done that this year. You can see this has been the highest year, but trying to essentially fill those positions as quickly as possible. But a big part is around retention, and I think you heard it here today that if we can find a way as a City to be able to retain these individuals that are doing such a strenuous task and such a stressful task, quite frankly again I think that keeps us at a level of having employees that want to be here that feel that they are appreciated in the work that they're doing and will allow us to keep the staffing levels where they need to be.
Just one other question to add and I'm going to turn it over. When someone calls 911 and they hang up, what is the wellness check procedure that could be involved? If suddenly I'm calling 911 and I'm in a domestic dispute and the partner involved threatens me and I hang up, what is the appropriate protocol procedure to check on whoever that person was that called? COMMISSIONER STANFORD: So if there is -- and I think two different examples were kind of provided. If there is a situation where we answer and there is an incident where the dispatcher can hear some type of commotion and essentially there is a hung carrier -- not hung carrier, but an open line in the sense of where the person, the call is disconnected as a result of something that you can identify that warrants a callback or that indicates there is some type of emergency situation, then a callback can be conducted in that situation. I also heard someone say that when they call 911 if the call is not picked up, if there is not a call that's picked up or answered, there isn't a process in place at this point of just calling back the random numbers of 911. There is not. And so, that's something we can examine and look at. But again, that's not a procedure in place of just -- essentially missed calls that are returned, that is not something that's in place at this point in time. But that's something we can examine and take a look at.
Well, I think for a number of reasons we should. I remember a couple of times my kids used to dial 911 and hang up. And suddenly we would get a call back and even people coming to the door to do a wellness check, and this is something that I think, yes, adds steps and work to the individual officer but in the case where someone is being intimidated or even held hostage, it might be an appropriate thing for us to examine how we proceed when in cases of disconnect, so something to think about. Mr. Glass, who do we have that wants to question the Commissioner?
Mr. Chair, Councilmember Gaut -- COMMISSIONER STANFORD: Sir, if I could just point out one thing --
Say it again. COMMISSIONER STANFORD: If I can point out something in response to your question around that, is if one thing we have to just keep in mind is that the cell phone usage today is much higher than landlines. And so, when folks if they are calling from a cell phone and a call is disconnected, as far as a wellness check, that's not always possible because we won't know their location. And so, I know someone had asked that question earlier. If it's a landline where we know it's tied to an exact address, there is a possibility there. But when it comes to a cell phone where it's bouncing off a tower, we may not be able to pinpoint an exact location. So I just wanted to clarify that.
But, Commissioner, can we at least call back to the number? COMMISSIONER STANFORD: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And that's the part that I think we can take a look at how that would go about being done and the steps for that. I just was referencing the actual wellness check, because so many people use cell phones essentially as their home phone today because they're always on the go. There are a number of folks that don't have those landlines. And so, I just don't want the general public to hear and think that we would then have the ability to know where they're at just based on their cell phone.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Commissioner Stanford, for your testimony and for your partnership. Council is not ignorant of the fact that 911 dispatches nationwide are experiencing these issues. This is not a Philadelphia-specific problem, but we look forward to continuing to work together to enact a Philadelphia-specific solution. And I also want to thank you, Commissioner Stanford, and Deputy Commissioner Dahl-Campbell and your team for following through on your pledge to investigate the incident on July 2nd and for taking the steps to implement changes to ensure that this never happens again. What struck me in what happened with that call related to the initial victim of the mass shooting was that we had a person who was probably scared, but they called 911. They were descriptive about what happened. They even participated in the callback, right. I really appreciate the change towards making sure that the callbacks are recorded. I thought it was unfortunate that we weren't able to parse through a recording of the callback to understand where we went wrong, so I think that's a meaningful change. I did want to ask you about this sort of preformatted -- the questions with the new vendor. Can you explain why that would take until 2025 and what the process will be to get that in place? COMMISSIONER STANFORD: I can pull in -- yeah, I was just about to tap in Deputy Dahl-Campbell. She can pull someone from her team to explain the process that we're going through to get the vendor and everything up and running. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DAHL- CAMPBELL: Good morning, everyone and good morning, Councilwoman. I am Krista Dahl-Campbell. I'm the Deputy Commissioner of Organizational Services. I just want to say again I appreciate everyone taking the time to listen and go through this. Our dispatchers are amazing folks that do an incredible job. I always say it's definitely more than a job. It's a career and it's a calling, and I'm personally grateful to them. For your question, I'm going to turn it over to Joseph McBride so he can kind of walk through why we have those dates associated with that implementation.
I'm Sergeant Delaney from Inspector McBride's office. Can you hear me?
Sergeant (inaudible) Delaney. I work in Inspector McBride's office. And to the question about why it's until January 2025 for the implementation of that, currently right now the City with OIT and the Philadelphia Fire Department and the Philadelphia Police Department are working on a unified CAD system, that's a computer-aided dispatch software. So anyone that went into the rooms, ours in the fire room last time would have seen that we were on two different CAD platforms that didn't talk to each other. We're moving to a unified CAD platform that talks to each other. And then from that, we build the interface that allows APCO to be able to work. So we have to get to that CAD platform to create the interface so that we can put APCO into place.
Okay. Thank you so much for that. My next question is for the Commissioner or Deputy Commissioner Dahl-Campbell. I'm curious to know if our dispatchers handle more calls per capita than other 911 dispatchers. And if so, how much more? COMMISSIONER STANFORD: So I don't know in terms of if we have a breakdown per capita. But I'll tell you anywhere between 2.5 million to 3 million calls for service a year comes in for this City. And when you look at it was touched on the more and more violent crime that we have, the more and more crime that we have in the City overall, those calls increase. All right. And so, that's why it's such an important piece and this all goes hand-in-hand of us continuing to attack the crime in the City, because as we drive crime down, both violent crime and quality-of- life crime and all crime, property crime, as we continue to drive crime down, those calls into 911 are decreased. And so, that's one of the big differences that you see between our City and some of the surrounding townships in neighboring areas, is that they don't have the same amount of violent crime, the same amount of that call volume. And so, that's just something we have to be mindful of working as a City, all of us, to drive the crime down and continue to drive down some of the issues that we see, because ultimately that would lessen the load of what comes into 911 to allow many more of those calls, those dispatches. Same thing with people having to wait for an abundance of time for an officer to arrive, that's not because the officers don't want to come and handle their incident or that they don't care. It's just because they are running from call to call. And so, it's just that's all a part of the call volume. But I don't have that breakdown per capita. I don't know if that's something DC Dahl-Campbell, if those numbers are available or if we need to get those and get back. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DAHL- CAMPBELL: Staff Inspector McBride, do you have them? If not, we can look to get them. INSPECTOR McBRIDE: No, Commissioner --
Yeah, I -- go ahead. I'm sorry. INSPECTOR McBRIDE: Each 911 call center may be a little different. So if you're just comparing us to Bucks County, Bucks County's intaking all those 911 calls and then dispatching them to different townships, so the data from Philadelphia is not going to match the data for Bucks County and vice versa, and that may happen in different places. Just take Kansas City, for example. Kansas City's in a county. They're dispatching multiple different locations, different cities, different townships. So our numbers may not match someone else's numbers because they're going out different as they're coming in.
Do you all think it's important for us to have a sense of that? We saw the chart about where we sit in terms of minimum and maximum salaries and how we compare regionally. But do you think it's also important as we're pegging the salaries of our existing staff and trying to be competitive to hire new staff, do you think it's important for us to understand how our call volume also compares to those other areas? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DAHL- CAMPBELL: Councilwoman, I totally agree. I do think it's very important because I think it will show the enormous volume that these dispatchers have to dispatch, so we'll look to get that exact so that we can send it in and get back to you on it.
Thank you. We heard the dispatchers talk about the consequences of not having promotable levels for civilian dispatchers. In the past, I know PPD has said that they need, you know, that we need sworn officers to serve as supervisors because this work involves deploying officers into potentially life-threatening situations. I also agree that this is important, but the current hierarchy means that dispatchers have virtually nowhere to go but elsewhere when they want to move into a higher paying or higher responsibility role. Would PPD be open to introducing a promotion system for civilian dispatchers so that we can better compete with regional police departments to keep the best talent here with the City of Philadelphia? COMMISSIONER STANFORD: I think that's absolutely something that we can look into. And I would agree that there needs to be the opportunity for folks to advance. I mean, that's a real reality. The same way we have the ability for our sworn personnel to have the opportunity to advance, that opportunity needs to exist for our civilian professionals as well. And so, I think that that can definitely be open for discussion. It doesn't necessarily mean that we replace sworn personnel in terms of in that, and I think that that needs to be clear too because sometimes it's that misunderstanding that you have to replace sworn personnel. I think there can be a combination of the two. It's just a matter of defining what their tasks are and how that hierarchy will look and operate. But I definitely think in today's time you have to have an opportunity for advancement in careers because that's the only thing that is going to realistically keep people or make people want to stay in this profession and particularly in our department. So I think that that's a discussion we can absolutely have.
Thank you. We also heard Mr. Zimmitt and the other dispatchers share concerns they have about the readiness of some of our new hires. Can you talk a bit about our recruitment selection and training process for the dispatch positions? COMMISSIONER STANFORD: So I will give that again to DC Dahl- Campbell? You can go into that one a little bit for her, please. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DAHL- CAMPBELL: Sure. And I can have Staff Inspector McBride get into specifics, but I can tell you that we've done a good job at recruiting. We get a lot of applications that come through. We go through them. We certainly don't accept everyone for a variety of reasons, but we look to try and fill these vacancies that we have. Once we are able to apply and be accepted, we actually just yesterday started a new class so they will be in training for the 12 weeks. We'll have a ceremony and then they go into another form of training where they're learning different skills in the room. So there's a training process in place to get them ready to enter the room. But it is intensive for our staff to be able to train them. Training obviously takes additional energy and work, but they do an excellent job in getting folks ready to enter the room. I'll turn it over to Staff Inspector McBride to kind of break down the process of bringing folks in. INSPECTOR McBRIDE: So we get a list from City Human Resources and then here at Communications Division. We interview all those candidates. Those candidates are then chosen. Like the Commissioner said, some are rejected for reasons. There are standards that they have to meet. They have to be CJIS-compliant to be able to work inside the police radio room. Some people cannot get over the hurdle of being CJIS-compliant. Once they are hired by the City, they go through an intensive inclassroom training through our training center. There's a graduation that occurs. The Commissioner attends and it's great recognition for the hard work that they have done to get to that point, but then their training continues inside a live environment. They sit down with senior dispatchers. They sit down with experienced dispatchers and each day after their training in those 12 weeks while they're in that live environment, they're critiqued and evaluations are performed by those senior dispatchers and the supervisors and the supervisors sign off on those critiques. Hopefully, most of the time they're positive and would be able to help that dispatcher as they're going through the training process in the room. I think what happens is once they leave that classroom environment and they step into that live environment, then they get to really experience the challenges that come with being a dispatcher. A lot of people you can tell them over and over again what a crying mother sounds like when their child's been shot, and that scream, that blood- curdling scream, but until you hear it live, it's very different. So that's some of the issues that once they enter that live environment, that they get themselves into, that they have to overcome to become successful in that room. And I think a lot of times that's where maybe we lose a couple people in that room. But we do our best to continuously train them vigorously and if during that time they need that help, that help's available to them through our EAP program either with the police department or with D.C. 33, and we also have the police clergy who walk through every Wednesday to speak to our dispatchers, our trainees to see if anyone needs to just step outside and get some quiet time and be able to just get what's off their chest and be able to talk to somebody else. So we do have things in place that help them and we are constantly motivating them to try to get to the end goal, which is to be a professional dispatcher in a very, very busy environment.
Thank you. Before I pass it off to my colleagues, I just wanted to thank you, Commissioner and your whole team, for your insightful and honest answers. I think that the main takeaway for me is that we will never be able to recruit and retain top talent if we keep paying our 911 dispatchers a below-average salary to handle an above-average call volume, right. We are a first class city. We need to be recruiting first class talent by paying them first class wages, and this is already a conversation that we've been having as part of Council's midyear transfer ordinance process. And today's hearing I think reinforces the urgency of the issue. And so, I just wanted to thank the team at PPD for participating and also thank the dispatchers and every constituent that joined us today as well. And with that, I'll pass it on to my colleagues.
Thank you, Member. Are there any others to question the Commissioner?
Yeah, I have a question. Hand is raised, sir, Mr. Chairman. Commissioner --
Thank you very much. Commissioner Stanford, good to see you as always. Thank you for your leadership. I just had a couple questions regarding, one, the training. Is there a trauma support component that's a part of the training for the 911 dispatchers? And then, two, what's the recruitment strategy? And again, I know we've been down this road before regarding dealing with 911 and staffing levels and issues around it. And so, I'm trying to get a better sense of what's the actual strategy moving forward. And I know there's some advocacy regarding additional support for 911 dispatches, which is definitely greatly needed. But I just want to get an idea about like, okay, we have the funding, but what's the actual plan, what's the recruitment plan to staff up to the level that we need besides also on the increase in pay? COMMISSIONER STANFORD: Good afternoon, sir, and thank you for your question. So in terms of the trauma component, that's a part of that. And as you heard Staff Inspector McBride address the fact that we have EAP, both ours as well as District Council 33's available. And a part of having the clergy coming through that space every week is to give folks an opportunity. Sometimes the faith-based component is a little more inviting and welcoming in the sense that it doesn't feel like it's just a part of your employer doing this, right, and so exploring that opportunity. And we're open to constantly looking at new ways and additional ways to enhance that component for both our sworn and our nonsworn because this is a job that puts a lot on you and sometimes you don't even realize what you're carrying until someone, you know, either confronts you or has an opportunity to just recognize that you have something that's weighing on you. And so, we try to be mindful of that. As far as the recruitment effort, so we've been trying to push to hire more and we've been doing that very good this year. But we can always look at increasing again our pathways for that as well. The same way that we have increased and had a recruitment strategy around our sworn, we definitely can do this around our, you know, professional positions in terms of nonsworn positions, both for dispatchers and across the board to make sure that we are getting the best and the brightest. And so, that's something that definitely I think we need to explore a little bit more as to that recruitment strategy, really get something down, narrow something down that's going to be a little bit firmer than what we have that will be a little more concrete, if you will, to make sure that we are getting the best and the brightest to come through that opportunity.
Yeah. Well, thank you, Commissioner. And I will hope that -- I know there's a budget cycle that's going to come up in June, right, that when you and your team come back to City Council that -- because I believe this is a sense of urgency or it should be a sense of urgency around this issue, right. We're addressing levels of not only gun violence but crime just in general, right, down to homicides, down to some shootings, obviously we're dealing with other issues, rather it's carjacking, rather it's robberies and so forth. And obviously the 911 dispatchers play a critical and vital role, right. And again, my personal experience, shoot-out on the corner of my block, right. I call 911. I could have just picked up the phone and called someone personally because I have a lot of your cell numbers, but let me go through the protocol as a public citizen and call 911, and that jawn just rang and rang and rang and rang, right. And I'm like, okay, this is real. And I remember speaking about it on the Council floor as a follow-up. And so, I would just expect that part of your team when they do come back in front of Council for our budget hearing and we are given updates, that we should see a robust plan rather it's around recruitment, social media, same thing like you're doing at the police department, social media, commercials recruiting people, and especially with us being a number one big city when it comes to poverty, people looking for work, right. And so, I think increasing the pay scale and also aggressively going about recruiting people to come and do this great work I think will go a long way. And so, that's all I wanted to say. As always, good to see you. Keep up the good work with you and your team in terms of keeping our City safe. Thank you, Commissioner. COMMISSIONER STANFORD: Thank you.
Thank you, Member Johnson. Who do we have next, Mr. Glass?
Mr. Chairman, Councilmember Harrity would like to be recognized.
Leader, how are you. My questions are -- and I heard Councilman Johnson hint on this too, is the mental health aspect of it I mean I'm, you know, I've seen it firsthand. My father, he was assigned to the Tri-State Strike Force for Narcotics and, man, he would come home some days after some of the things he had, you know. He was a mess. My concerns are, you know, I've heard before just with police officers they get like one visit for free a year, and then it's $150 a visit like the same as medical. Is that true because for me if there's anyone that deserves to be able to speak to somebody whenever they need to, it would definitely be our first responders and our dispatchers because like we said they get the trauma first, you know what I mean. People call them. They're trying to talk to them through what to do to keep the person alive or help with the mental break or whatever is going on. Just do you guys feel that you're getting enough attention when it comes to mental health for the officers and the dispatchers? COMMISSIONER STANFORD: So in terms of EAP, we have all of those options that are available. There's no cost to anyone for that. We've even added in terms of our dispatchers into our crisis intervention training and having access to the coordinator of that for having the opportunity to discuss any type of issues that they may be encountering. But obviously, one of the other things, health and wellness is a big component of the department. And so, moving forward we're revamping our EAP program, also introducing an early intervention system that will be able to address perhaps the needs of officers and civilian personnel. Moving forward, so there is a lot that we're trying to do to, one, we acknowledge that that's a space that needs more attention from a department standpoint. And so, we're doing that and we obviously welcome any additional support, you know, from City Council and from the City as it relates to that, because again we're certainly not going to turn down any help when it comes to being able to make sure that our men and women -- and when I say men and women, I'm talking about sworn and nonsworn -- have the support that they need and have the resources available to them because this is a job that weighs -- again as I said repeatedly, this is a job that weighs on you and you never know which one of those incidents is going to hit you until it hits you. And so, being conscious of that and acknowledging that, we are open to any support that we can have around that area.
Appreciate that. Like I said, it's for me keeping our officers in -- you know, did you say that you have clergy so they can talk to? Now, I actually like that because some people really don't feel comfortable talking to a doctor, you know what I mean, because they know, well, this might go on my record. But being able to talk to somebody else that is also -- a lot of clergy go to training for this kind of stuff while they're in the ministry and stuff like that to be able to deal with their patrons. So, yeah, I like that idea too that they may be able to speak to clergy or somebody who may not necessarily be somebody that's going to write the notebook and go back to their, you know, give them more freedom to speak. So thank you. COMMISSIONER STANFORD: Absolutely. We utilize our clergy. They sometimes don't get enough credit for how they're there as well our chaplain and clergy that are available. They do this every day for even our sworn personnel. And so, they are available not just in, you know, times of crisis, but they visit our roll calls, visit our districts and our units as another means of support for our folks. Thank you.
Thank you, Member Harrity. Member Gauthier, did you have follow-up questions?
Okay. With that, who do we have, Mr. Glass? Is that it?
Mr. Chairman, that was our final witness for this panel and there are no other members seeking to be recognized at this time.
Are there any other people wishing to testify on this resolution that we have not heard from? (No response.)
Seeing none, we will thank the people who testified today. The insight is useful and will be utilized as we go forward developing a strategy to address our 911 scenario and department within the City of Philadelphia, so thank you for your testimony. And we will now proceed with Bill No. 230510. Mr. Glass, will you read again the title of that bill.
Yes, Mr. Chairman. Bill No. 230510, amending Chapter 16 10-600 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Public Spaces, Prohibited Conduct," by prohibiting certain official coverings from being worn in certain spaces, all under certain terms and conditions.
Thank you, Mr. Glass. I'd like to recognize the author of this bill, Member Phillips for remarks.
Good morning -- good afternoon now actually. Thank you, Chairman and members of the Committee on Public Safety and viewing members of the public. Today you will hear Bill No. 8 230510, which I introduced to ban individuals from wearing ski masks in public spaces. This bill and amendment to it which this Committee will vote on was written in lockset with the Administration and Law Department. We are secure and certain that this ban has legality. And to repeat, we're certain that this bill has legality. And I will remind Committee members that this ban is not unprecedented in many states and municipalities. It is not unorthodox, including this is occurring in Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, South Carolina and Georgia. And before the pandemic, New York City and the District of Columbia. There has been misinformation about what this bill does so just let me be clear. The ski mask bill covers school buildings, recreation centers, daycares, parks, City-owned buildings and all modes of public transportation. Additionally, there are exceptions for holiday costumes, religious garments, wearing ski masks for your job or trade, theatrical productions, winter sports and those lawfully engaged in First Amendment activities. As we all know, casually wearing ski masks hinders law enforcement from identifying dangerous criminals. So we recall that in September 2022 five mass individuals, some or all of whom were ski masks shot into a crowd of people attending the junior-varsity football scrimmage, killing a 14-year-old and injuring four others. In May 2023, a shooter wearing a ski mask shot and killed a 15-year-old high school student on a public bus in July 2023. In July of 2023, an attacker dressed in a ski mask body armor killed five people and injured two children in Kingsessing. It must end. We cannot allow dangerous criminals to evade detection by wearing ski masks in public spaces, not to mention intimidate the neighbors each of us were elected to serve. I would like to note for the Committee that this bill has received widespread support among our Council colleagues with 10 Councilmembers listed as co-sponsors. With these facts and context and also in mind, I look forward to having a productive hearing and seeing the passage of this bill so it can reach the Council floor. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you so much, Member Phillips, for your attention to this issue. Are there any other members of this Committee who would like to speak on this bill? (No response.)
Seeing none, Mr. Glass, can you read the names of the first panel to testify on this bill.
Yes, Mr. Chairman. Our first witness will be Deputy Commissioner Francis Healy.
Deputy Commissioner, welcome. Thank you for your patience. You know what to do. Please state your name for the record and begin your testimony. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Thank you, sir. Good morning, Chairperson Jones, Vice-Chair Johnson and other members of the Committee on Public Safety. My name as mentioned is Fran Healy. I'm the Deputy Commissioner in the Philadelphia Police Department now and I'm responsible for both the Offices of Legal Affairs and Professional Responsibility. First on behalf of Commissioner Johnson or I'm sorry, Commissioner Stanford, I apologize, thank you for allowing the Philadelphia Police Department the opportunity to voice its opinion on Bill No. 230510 amending City Code 10-613. For a myriad of reasons, COVID-19 seriously impacted the policing profession across the country and for that matter across the world. However, the mask mandate was incredibly troubling from the law enforcement perspective. There was a time not so long ago when any average police officer would see a person donning a mask before entering a convenience store or a bank and they would believe a robbery was about to occur. I'm certain the clerks felt that way as well when encountering masked individuals. However, the pandemic changed that mindset where people were actually more fearful of people without masks than with masks. This complicated policing as you can imagine. But as I mentioned, this is not just Philadelphia across the world. Criminals quickly learn benefits of masks, especially when everyone was wearing one. The one thing criminals hate the most is being visible. Obscurity is their mantra and the mask mandates made it easy for criminals everywhere. Pandemic's over and we're getting somewhat back to normal. But many people, especially those with compromised immune systems or other health issues still utilize medical masks. Nonetheless, criminals have continued using masks to avoid capture and it remains problematic. So the department fully supports the intent and rationale behind this ordinance, and we thank the Councilmember, which is the purpose which is to combat the use of masks by criminals to evade arrest at prosecution. Due to the issues I mentioned regarding individuals with medical concerns, an outright mask ban would be problematic. So the department appreciates the narrow scope of this ordinance, just ski masks and balaclavas. These types of face coverings are not usually used by individuals for medical purposes, and we think it's a reasonable balance between the right of persons to wear medical masks and law enforcement need to identify criminals. I will say the enforcement can be complicated. It's really going to be a little difficult with the exceptions, but the department is incredibly grateful to City Council for being proactive and responsive to the concerns of law enforcement in its efforts to combat crime throughout the City. This concludes my testimony. I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you so much, Deputy Commissioner, and thank you for your continued service in law enforcement in our City. Are there any questions for the Deputy Commissioner? Member Phillips.
Mr. Chairman, Councilmember Lozada would like to be recognized.
Deputy Commissioner, thank you so much for your testimony. My question is if this were to become a law, if we passed this, how enforceable would this type of a ban be? You know, we're living in a time right now where certain policies are put in place. We think that they're great policies. We think they're excellent for public safety. And then when we operationalize them, they end up being a flop or they become problematic or the courts don't want to enforce, the District Attorney doesn't want to do something. So how is this -- what's the chances of something like this being enforced? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Well, the issue of enforcement and being effective in crime is incredibly important to understand the distinction. This allows the police officer actually to intervene when they see someone wearing these masks. Now, in essence are you really going to cite them for the mask all the time, possibly not. But that's really not necessarily the value of the ordinance. The ordinance gives the officers the legal authority to intervene, to hopefully intervene before something bad happens. If during the course of the investigation it's somebody just wearing a ski mask, are we going to cite every person. The answer to that question is no. But the issue is having the ability to stop the individuals because we are scrutinized very heavily on, you know, who we stop. When we stop them, we have to have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity or violation. And that's really -- and I thank the Councilmember for this. This gives us the authority to do a little more. Are we going to cite people? I don't think that was ever the purpose to cite everyone wearing a mask. It's for the ability for the police officers to take that proactive step and this will help us. I mean, the code violations are a great tool quite frankly to law enforcement. And I'll be very honest, in 2016 when the -- I hate to use the word decriminalize, but when Mayor Kenney kind of decriminalized a lot of the summary offenses at the state level into the code violation, there's a lot of people, myself included in law enforcement, that were a little skeptical. But in retrospect, we found out that they're incredibly useful because they allow us to do our job, allow us to get in and do what we have to do, put hands on people if we have to. But it allows us to intervene, but also there's no backend consequences for a lot of people. So the whole issue of criminalizing some low-level behavior has kind of been taken away, so it's actually kind of a win-win. We see this specifically when we have large crowds and disturbances, but we've seen for the RN -- or I'm sorry, for the DNC, we were able to do what we need to do, clear scenes, clear people, but there was no lasting impact on their lives, so it was a win-win, which was diametrically opposed to what happened in 2000, the 2000 RNC. We didn't have that option. We had to arrest people. And so, there was a lot of lawsuits, there was a lot of money spent and there was a lot of ugliness that now the CVN actually has prevented, so it's been a real win for us to have that as I guess in our arsenal. So I appreciate Councilmember Phillips providing this. It will give us a tool to intervene and hopefully stop some criminal activity from happening. But I don't think we're necessarily going to be overly citing people for wearing a ski mask, but it allows my officers to take some proactive action. Like I said, every stop that we make has to be documented, fill out the report, it's checked out by the ACLU folks. So this gives us the lawful authority to do that in these cases and hopefully intervene and stop a crime from happening. I hope I answered your question. You probably asked me --
Yes. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: -- how to make a watch and I told you how to make a watch.
Yes, it does. It does, it actually does. And I mean, I want to be clear. I'm 100 percent supportive of what Councilmember Phillips is doing here. You know, there's just a lot of frustration. When you talk to different officers about different policies that are put in place, that at the end ultimately end up being a waste of time to them. And so, what I don't want to do is add to that frustration but allow for my colleagues and our viewers, right, and the residents of the City of Philadelphia to understand what the purpose of this is and how this tool actually helps and supports your officers. So thank you for that explanation. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER HEALY: Thank you.
Thank you, Member Lozada. Real quick, I want to applaud the author of this bill for the courageous step to draw the distinction from a massive mask ban to particular areas where this kind of mask would be kind of scrutinized and create probable cause. It's a good balance to not overstigmatize young people but enough of a balance to create probable cause. I remember -- as a young person you won't remember this, Member Phillips. A lot of guys in my generation used to walk with these industrial screwdrivers, these thick screwdrivers in the back of their pocket. Now, either, A, they were going to go fix their bikes or, B, they were getting ready to break in a house and not knowing that that was considered at the time a burglary tool and that cops had the ability to stop us and question where's your bike you're fixing or we want to stop you from doing what you might have in mind. And it is a delicate, tight rope walk that we do in order to try to keep reasonably us from being prejudicial, stereotypical and keeping the public safe. So thank you for your courage in this regard. Any other questions, Mr. Glass?
Yeah. My statement is again I want to thank Councilmember Phillips for the balance, but I also -- and I thought about how we need all the tools on the table in terms of law enforcement and protecting people around the issue, specifically gun violence, right. And as an elected official, I'm probably in a unique perspective and probably not more than other folks, but I still pretty much have my ear to the streets, right, as a Councilperson. And I know firsthand, folks telling me, at least two years ago that one of the key reasons why we aren't wrapping our arms around the gun violence issue, this is from the streets, not somebody in academic towers at Penn or Drexel. This is like actually people that are on the ground living day-to-day either in the lifestyle or know people close to the lifestyle what's going on in the streets. And they said, well, Councilman, I know you're an elected official or as they say, Yat, I know you elected, but this is what we know that's going on in the streets regarding the homicides and the shootings and how the masks are playing a critical role, and people just pretty much doing brazen homicides knowing that if you only can see my eyes, right, pretty much it's going to be a tough time for you to solve their homicide based upon you having to have identified the actual culprit. And so, hopefully this will be a key tool to help us. And I also want to -- I'd like to say to Francis Healy, thank you also though for saying, listen, we're not trying to overcriminalize and just be going after individuals just for the sake of going after them. This will just allow us if need be with probable cause to address the situation. And so, I just want to state that for the record and thank Member Phillips for his leadership around a very, very critically important issue. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman Jones. Thank you, Vice-Chair Johnson.
And let me -- I have one small part I want to wrap up with. Because there would be some critics that will say, well, this is not going to stop gun violence, right. And I just want to say for the record as a body over the last few years we have invested more than $100-plus million, right, in rather it's violence prevention initiatives, rather it's making sure that we have a mental health component when the police respond to issues, making sure that boots-on- the-ground organizations have funding. And so, we've always taken a comprehensive approach. But we must not shy away recognizing that the law enforcement is a part of how we address public safety here in the City of Philadelphia, so that's another tool that we have to address and we can't shy away from it. So to Francis Healy, thank you always for your leadership and stepping up to the plate and making sure there is a balanced approach with the things we're working on here in City Council around public safety. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Member Johnson or Yat, as they call you. I frequent a barbershop where they talked about this issue as well, and I found out there was a game that some of the young boys used to play and particularly victimizing older gentlemen where they would run up on them and pull down what is called pooh shiesty and try to scare them. They wouldn't rob them, but they were trying to see if they were jumping. And one of the instances, Member Johnson, where it happened, you know, one of the old heads actually pulled a gun on the young boy thinking he was getting robbed, and they panicked and ran. But I point out the fact that that's not a a game that should be played. It is very dangerous. And the regulation of where these masks should be worn and creating an issue where you can step to people for probable cause I think will go a long way like you said to deal with holistically the situation we face on our streets every day dealing with crime prevention. So thank you again, Member Phillips. Mr. Glass.
Mr. Chairman, Councilmember Harrity would like to be recognized.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, I'd just like to thank Francis Healy for giving us the straight truth about how you will go about those things because it is a tool. I was so happy when Councilman Phillips put this bill in because I had put in a bill, not similar because mine they said was wildly unconstitutional. I wanted to ban them everywhere and I was so glad that one of my colleagues actually got into the nuances of it and made it work because I was told that it was not allowed to be done with the way I wanted it to be done. So I thank you for that and I thank you for your honesty, Commander Healy, for letting us know that, you know, listen, it's going to be at the cops' thing, it's a way of maybe questioning people to find out what's going on but if they're not doing anything, then just letting them go about their daily business, which doesn't do anything but tie up a little bit of their time. But to be safe, time is okay with being things -- so, you know, listen, I'm happy with Anthony Phillips' bill and this is a good bill and this gives you another tool to be able to do so. I was proud to support it then, so thank you both.
And I just want to say thank you to Councilman Harrity for co- introducing this and supporting this initiative as well.
Some of my best comments are when I'm on mute. Mr. Glass, who do we have next to testify?
Good afternoon. State your name for the record and please begin your testimony. Thank you for your patience.
My name is Cecil A. Hankins, Sr. I thank you for this opportunity to address this Committee on a subject that is of great concern to me, full-face covering or disguises to hide one's identity. So let me give you my personal experience. Just this summer while I'm walking my puppy Sam in the Barrett Playground in the Logan section of the City, three young men were dressed in all black with ski masks on in 90 degree weather. They parked their car on the basketball court area talking to young females. Immediately I could feel my adrenaline flowing to fight or flight. Of course, my puppy and I chose flight. Although the death rate from gunfire is reported as being less than that of the last two years, the Controller reported an increase in gun deaths for those less than years old. 10 As I give my testimony, I 11 cannot forget the young man 15 years 12 old shot to death on Barrett's 13 basketball courts years ago as well 14 as Nicholas and Elazada who was shot 15 to death by a group of young teens 16 wearing ski masks. Let us not forget 17 the other four teens who were wounded 18 by gunfire. The mental health of 19 these young youth will probably 20 resemble PTSD. 21 In fact, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's data shows a 134 percentage increase in emergency room 24 mental health admittance of young children living in the vicinity of gun violence. I am a believer in the Constitution, but I also believe that there was a reason for amendments. To address issues relevant to the rights of law-abiding citizens to live in peace, this ban on ski masks will contribute to providing safe havens for children to grow without fear and intimidation of being shot to death by those who choose to wear ski masks to conceal who they are. I thank this Committee again.
Once again thank you. What strikes at me is 90 degree weather wearing a ski mask, and everybody has a constitutional right to do what they feel comfortable with fashion-wise, but this constitutes enough of a threat that we need to be taking the actions that we're taking. Mr. Glass, are there any others to testify?
Mr. Simms, thank you so much for your patience. Would you please state your name and begin your testimony. (No response.)
Mr. Chairman, it looks like Mr. Simms logged out and is not currently in the meeting so that was our final witness to testify.
Thank you so very much. This concludes the public hearing of the Committee on Public Safety dealing with Resolution 20 No. 230640 and Bill No. 230510. Thank you for your comments and please feel free to disconnect as we will begin to proceed with our public meeting to take actions on Bill No. 25 230510. Will give everyone a couple of minutes to disconnect. At the point where we have, Mr. Glass, will you please call the roll to bring to order our public meeting.
Okay. Thank you. I'm having some (inaudible) trouble. Thank you.
Present. A quorum is present for our public meeting. And with that, I recognize Vice-Chair Johnson for an amendment to Bill No. 230510.
Thank you, Mr. Glass. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I offer an amendment to Bill No. 23 230510. A copy of the amendment has been circulated to all members of the Committee. I move that the amendment be approved.
It has been properly moved and seconded that an amendment to Bill No. 230510 be approved. All those in favor will signify by saying aye. (Aye.)
The amendment carries. I again recognize Vice-Chair Johnson for a motion on Bill No. 21 230510 as amended.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that Bill No. 230510 as amended be reported from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit first reading of this bill at the next session of Council.
It has been appropriately moved and seconded that Bill No. 230510 as amended be moved from this Committee with a favorable recommendation and further move that the rules of Council be suspended to permit this bill's reading at our next session of Council. All those in favor? (Aye.)
The bill 21 passes out of Committee and will be recognized at our next session of Council. This concludes the business of the Committee on Public Safety and I thank all the Members for their endurance and patience. I want to thank Member Phillips and congratulate him on being passed out of Committee, his bill dealing with face coverings. And with that, that concludes our business for today.
See you everyone. (Hearing concluded at 12:57 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL