New York Dismisses Criticism of New 911 System

Unions for emergency workers question whether New Yorkers are now less safe because of 911 system mistakes. It is not human error, they say, but a gross indictment of the city’s $2 billion overhaul of the aging 911 computer network.

“They wanted it to be the system, because it feeds into this perception that the whole 911 system is a mess, that unified call taking doesn’t work, and on and on,” said Caswell F. Holloway, the deputy mayor for operations who is overseeing the project. “That is not the case.” Indeed, the system has not shown wide-scale cracks in its operation. Response times are mostly unchanged since the rollout of the Police Department’s new technology on May 29. During an average week, emergency responders from the Fire and Police Departments arrived at the scene just as fast this year as last year. Nonetheless, the suspicion that the network was at fault was particularly sensitive for the Bloomberg administration, which already suffered through a scandal-tarred upgrade.