My Experience
It was an October afternoon when I found myself running down Spring Street, being chased by a seemingly inebriated man who was heckling and intimidating passers. Admittedly, I was terrified. I pulled out my phone and dialed 911 as I ran past a block and into the Georgia Tech Hotel Conference Center parking deck. The phone rang three times before a “please stay on the line, do not hang up” automated message played in my ear. It was at that moment that I discovered being on hold for 911 was even a possibility. It was in the moments that followed that I felt myself lose trust in our city’s emergency service system.
2 minutes passed by. I lost sight of the man who was chasing me.
4 minutes passed by. I made it safely to my car.
7 minutes passed by. An operator answered the line.
After I gave a physical description of the man, I hung up the call and sat back in my seat in terrified silence. 7 minutes. What if he got to another student within those minutes? What if he had gotten to me before I reached my car? A billion what-if scenarios raced through my mind, with the most fear-filled question being — what if I was stuck in a life-or-death situation and finally made it to a phone, and the 7-minute hold at my police station’s call center was the element that killed me?
I was filled with feelings of confusion, anger, and betrayal — betrayal by the system whose one job is to protect their citizens. This anxiety-inducing experience of mine opened the door to discussions with fellow Georgia Tech students in the months that followed, which made me realize my situation wasn’t all that rare. Far too many Georgia Tech students have spent panicked moments on hold with 911 near offcampus housing, just like I did. In my quest to understand why this happens, I spent months delving into the emergency communication options available to Tech students. The following discoveries have reshaped how I understand and navigate my safety in Midtown, both on and off campus. I hope it can do the same for you.
Atlanta’s 911 Call Center: Understaffed with Flooded Lines
My personal encounter with Atlanta’s 911 system happened back in 2021, when the call center was reportedly understaffed by 31 positions and answered only 77% of all calls within 10 seconds. This means that compared to other call centers at the time, Atlanta’s ranked among some of the slowest for responses in the nation. As you digest that statement, I want to make one thing clear: I didn’t just get unlucky with the month and year in which I needed to call 911. Atlanta’s call center failing to meet national standards is a sad reality that has affected citizens for years with little public awareness.
2022 brought a glimpse of hope when Mayor Andre Dickens acknowledged the crippling issues within our city’s call center and claimed a General Obligation Public Improvement Bond Referendum would help address them. This infrastructure bond measure was placed on the May 2022 ballot and was met with a “yes” vote by an overwhelming 83.59% of Atlanta citizens, leading to its approval. $15 million of this bond alone was to be used directly on a new 911 call center in Atlanta. However, it’s nearly two years later, and that center has not been built. Georgia Tech students are still experiencing long wait times on hold when trying to contact 911 outside campus borders.
While I never received an answer as to why the call center hasn’t been built, Atlanta Public Information Officer John Predmore did tell me that the 2024 average wait time for 911 calls is 19.98 seconds, which is substantially higher than the maximum national industry standard of 15 seconds. Atlanta’s below-average rating exists because of two factors that have affected wait times in our call center for years: understaffing and unnecessary calls flooding lines.
Atlanta’s 911 call center has struggled to employ and retain call operators for years. Predmore provided the following 911 call center staffing statistics:
While total staffing statistics are at their highest, resignation rates remain a concern. The job of an emergency call operator can be highly stressful and often takes a toll on the operator’s mental health. These workers are tasked with hearing the first outcries from in-need citizens, some of whom are experiencing the worst day of their lives. In a heavily populated city like Atlanta, it’s no surprise that the center struggles to retain the necessary number of operators, especially since it receives over a million calls annually.
Calls are answered in the order they’re received, meaning when unnecessary or duplicated calls are made to the center, dispatchers are kept from answering other lines. To address the flood of calls, the Atlanta Police Department (APD) requests that citizens stay mindful of two things when picking up the phone to dial 911:
(1.) Do not call if you hear or see someone else calling to report the same issue.
(2.) Only call when you are actually experiencing an emergency or witnessing a crime.
While the latter may seem obvious, APD Chief Administrative Officer Peter Aman told Fox 5 that “out of 1.3 million calls handled by the ATL e-911 in 2023, only 45,000 were deemed serious emergencies.” This means that approximately 96.5% of calls made to the center last year accounted for squandered resources and potentially pushed another in-need resident onto hold. Although we can surmise a majority of the 1.3 million calls made had some reasoning behind the dial, it’s important to know there may have been alternate lines to call. After meeting with representatives from ATL311 and the Georgia Tech Police Department (GTPD), I now look at my 2021 incident very differently. Given my circumstances, I shouldn’t have spent 7 minutes on hold with 911 because 911 wasn’t the best option to dial.
311 – A Number I Wish I Knew about Sooner
ATL311 was launched in 2014 as a one-stop customer service hotline that would help connect citizens with various non-emergency departments and services. However, in the past six years, Director Joy Quarles has helped expand ATL311 into so much more than a connecting hotline. ATL311 has a Supportive Services team — a collaboration that serves as the blueprint for many states planning to implement community referral programs, as it’s the first of its kind in the nation. In January 2021, ATL311 launched a partnership between their Supportive Services team and the Policing and Diversion Initiative (PAD), designed explicitly for public calls regarding issues related to homelessness and mental illness. Panhandling, public indecency, and yelling in public are a few Atlanta commonalities that could be considered criminal offenses but would be better off reported to 311’s PAD rather than APD.
Quarles explained that when witnessing a public disturbance or non-emergency crime in Atlanta, anyone can dial 311 from their smartphone or landline. However, for PAD to take a referral, the person requiring assistance must be over the age of 18.
When 311 is dialed, the caller will receive two options: The first option is for non-urgent police matters. If this option is selected, the request is routed straight to the APD non-emergency team.
The second option is for supportive services. If this option is selected, residents reach the fully staffed 311 call center, which connects them to a live agent who can send out PAD field officers or connect them to other resources like the Housing Help Center or Salvation Army.
Given my circumstances, I shouldn’t have spent 7 minutes on hold with 911 because 911 wasn’t the best option to dial.
Quarles further explained that when citizens call 311 and request PAD Supportive Services to respond to non-emergency areas of concern, they save the time of 911 call operators and field officers who should be reserved for policeneeded crimes. They’re also ensuring that in-need individuals aren’t wrongly taken into custody for issues that need to be resolved with rehabilitation and mental health services.
ATL311’s Supportive Services team has helped direct hundreds of individuals to shelters and rehabilitation programs who otherwise may have been arrested for minor offenses. They have also helped connect hundreds of individuals to various resource organizations and hotlines, such as Gateway, Atlanta Volunteers Law Foundation (ALVF), Georgia Crisis and Access Line (GCAL), United Way of Atlanta, and Grady Mobile Crisis. In February 2024, the Supportive Services call center of ATL311 received 596 calls from in-need Atlantans. Out of those 596 calls, 175 were directed to PAD, and 421 were directed to other resources that could help.
Learning about 311 provided me with a layer of reassurance in my quest to feel more safe and prepared as a student in the city. Now, I had an alternate number to call if I ever experienced a similar situation to the one I did in 2021 — one that didn’t necessarily fall under the “crime” category but still needed to be addressed immediately. However, discovering that 311’s Supportive Services can’t act as authoritative police and can only operate during business hours, feelings of uneasiness still lingered as I remembered the state of our 911 call center. Those persisting feelings were finally put to rest when I walked into the GTPD department on 965 Hemphill Ave this March to talk to Georgia Tech’s Emergency Communications Director, Shireka Graham.
GTPD – More than Campus Police
Graham has 18 years of experience in emergency communications and led Georgia Tech’s 911 call center to be nationally accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) in 2022, making it the only university in Georgia on the list. The Georgia Tech call center remains fully staffed and even has to turn applications away, which I’ve found is particularly rare in the field of emergency communications. Graham said her greatest goal when signing on with Georgia Tech was not only to help better the community but also to better the lives of her staff. Graham runs the center with thoughtful intention, as she started her career as a dispatcher and knows the emotional toll and demands of the job. She knows that when you prioritize the well-being of your call center staff, you’re helping retain the workers who do so much critical background work that often goes unnoticed.
The Georgia Tech call center runs with three communications officers on call each shift and a group of rotating student assistants who help monitor video footage from the 4,000 video cameras across campus. The center receives roughly 3,000 calls per month and answers 97.43% of those within the first 10 seconds, seamlessly exceeding national standards.
After a tour of the call center and a briefing on the statistics, I went into Graham’s office with one central question related to my 2021 incident: Is GTPD ever willing to respond to students outside the borders of our campus? First, Graham assured me that GTPD officers respond to incidents within 500 yards of campus borders. She told me about her team’s awareness of the vast majority of students living off campus. Graham said that regardless of location, if the person in need is a Georgia Tech student, GTPD wants to be the one to help. GTPD can connect with outside police departments, EMS, and fire safety immediately. So, if you’re anywhere in Atlanta, using GTPD is always a viable option.
GTPD can connect with outside police departments, EMS, and fire safety immediately. So, if you’re anywhere in Atlanta, using GTPD is always a viable option.
This led Graham to explain the process that occurs when someone calls 911 from their wireless device. Regardless of whether you’re on campus or not, if you dial from a wireless device, your call immediately goes to APD first, and then they transfer it to GTPD if you are nearby or on campus. To avoid the intermediary (who may have you on hold for minutes), students in both emergency and non-emergency situations can contact GTPD directly at (404- 894-2500) or, even better, the LiveSafe app.
What’s LiveSafe?
The LiveSafe app is Georgia Tech’s free safety mobile application. This cutting-edge technology provides real-time, moving location detection and easy access to emergency numbers, turning your smartphone into a powerful safety tool. The location detection feature allows GTPD to locate you in the case of an emergency, and SafeWalk™ allows specified family and friends to track your routes. Another great feature of the LiveSafe app is its ability to report suspicious activity discreetly and anonymously to GTPD through text, photo, and video tips. During my call center tour, Graham showed me the giant monitor that displays the campus map and all the LiveSafe tips reported across it. She told me the center currently receives an average of 30 emergency and 30 non-emergency tips through the LiveSafe app each month. However, she believes the number would be much higher if the app’s capabilities were better known around campus.
Reflecting and Looking Forward
After months of researching the emergency communication options in the city, I reflected on how differently I would have handled my incident in 2021. Instead of dialing 911, I should have called 311 and requested Supportive Services to respond. Then, I would have taken 30 seconds to report a tip in the LiveSafe app, with a note stating that 311 was already notified. I would have also activated the location detection feature on my phone so that GTPD could track my route back to safety. If I had followed these measures, I might have helped connect a man who was undergoing a mental health crisis with rehabilitative resources and prevented the scenario from happening again. I would have also helped protect my fellow peers by making GTPD aware of the man’s description in case he later made his way onto campus.
The Bottom Line
As students living in the city, it’s important to know and understand the difference between all the available emergency service options. By understanding the current state of our 911 call center, spreading awareness about ATL311, and using the LiveSafe app, you can avoid all the “would haves,” “should haves,” and “might haves” that I experienced. Together, we can help alleviate the pressure on Atlanta’s 911 call center and look toward a more safe and prepared future for Midtown.
