The Toronto Police Services in partnership with Mayor Olivia Chow hopes that an education campaign will help tackle excessive wait times on 911 calls in the city.
A week after Toronto’s police union reported that some callers are waiting nearly 12 minutes on the phone when they call 911 in the city due to what the union said was staffing shortages, Toronto’s mayor and the Toronto Police Services announced the start of the campaign.
The “Make the Right Call” campaign was launched Monday as a joint project with the City of Toronto and the TPS to educate the public about when to call 311, 411, the city’s non-emergency line 416-808-2222, or 911.
Police said that staffing shortages weren’t the only issue they faced, which led to the long wait times previously reported by the Toronto Police Association. Police noted that three out of ten 911 calls are non-emergency calls, which leads to backlogged phone lines.
“Call volume and wait times are linked, and it’s a complex issue,” a police representative said. Staffing is an issue. Staffing is an issue industry-wide. It’s not a Toronto problem; it’s an industry problem. We are hiring and have been aggressively.”
Police said they receive 1.2 million 911 calls a year and around 664,000 calls on the TPS non-emergency line, but too many calls to 911 should be directed to another line.
In an annual report from Toronto’s auditor general for 2022, released in January of 2023, it was reported that 57% of 911 calls were non-emergency, today police report that number has decreased to 30%.
Police say another issue is when callers hang up after calling 911. They have to call back each person who hangs up, which takes valuable time away from real emergency calls if it was just a “pocket dial” or someone frustrated with long wait times trying to call again.
“When you call 911, and you are on ‘wait,’ please, stay on the line because we are committed to calling people back in Toronto,” Deputy Police Chief Lauren Pogue said. “In one particular instance, the people had called and hung up several times, and when the operator finally got through, they found out that another call operator was actually on the phone with them.”
Pogue said highway accidents or public event incidents could cause a high volume of calls in a day as well.
“An accident on our collision on the gardener or the DVP can cause 50 to 100 calls at the same time,” She said. “So those calls all have to be answered, and our operators work diligently to clear the queue as quickly as possible, but it fluctuates daily as call volume fluctuates.
In response to the TPA’s announcement of 11.7-minute wait times, Pogue said that these numbers reflect wait times on a high-volume day, but on an average day, she said calls are answered “within seconds to a minute.”
She also said that the average response time for police after receiving a call has been down to 17.5 minutes in the last “several months.”
Chow wanted Torontonians to know that for mental health crises in which someone isn’t a danger to themselves or others, calling 211 will get a trained professional help, which involves a follow-up call.
Residents are urged to call 311 instead for maintenance issues such as garbage pickup, “dubious”-“-looking branches on a tree, or reporting a dead animal. Every other non-emergency issue should go to the city’s non-emergency line at 416-808-2222.