HIALEAH, Fla. – The mayor of Hialeah is set to address concerns over the city’s 911 call center.
Documents reportedly show deficiencies in the department, including emergency calls that go unanswered.
More concerns and more questions were brought to light Wednesday in front of Hialeah City Council members over the emergency call center.
The state of Florida standard says 90% of all calls should be answered within 10 seconds.
City of Hialeah call logs show in 2021, just over 61% of calls met the standard.
This year, call logs do show improvement, but the answer rate remains below the state’s minimum standard.
The figures also appear to show how many 911 calls have gone unanswered.
In May, 1,840 calls were “abandoned.”
The same file shows the average time those abandoned 911 callers were left waiting was 38 seconds.
Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo, who’s defended the 911 center in the past, did not respond directly to Councilman Bryan Calvo’s discussion of the documents.
Bovo was not available to take Local 10 News’ questions about wait times and staffing Wednesday, but sent a statement that read, in part:
“The narrative being constructed on the state of the City’s 911 Call Center is not only willfully misinformed, it is dangerous…we should not play cheap political games and put the public’s well being at issue when nothing could be further from the truth.”
A spokesperson for the city told Local 10 News that Bovo will be holding a press conference on Thursday to clarify what he describes as misinformation.
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