If you're lucky, the number of times you will have to call 911 over the course of your lifetime will be insignificant. But if you do need to, your wait time might be longer than you expect. That's because America's 911 system is in the throes of its own emergency due to an increasingly dire lack of dispatchers.
Why? A host of chronic labor issues: grueling conditions, mandatory overtime, and a punishingly slow hiring process. All of which threatens a core piece of our civic infrastructure. From freelancer Byard Duncan:
In early 2026, I submitted records requests seeking five years’ worth of answer time data from more than 100 dispatch centers in and around America’s largest cities. Of the 68 that have so far provided records, nearly half failed to meet the NENA standard last year. The Los Angeles Police Department’s Metropolitan Dispatch Center, for example, picked up only 64 percent of its 2.9 million 911 calls within 15 seconds in 2025; more than 500,000 callers waited at least 40 seconds, according to state data. In Kansas City, Missouri, records show that police telecommunicators answered just 56 percent of 911 calls within 15 seconds last year. Its department left more than 100,000 people waiting a minute or longer on hold—278 callers per day, on average.
As Byard notes, it's a crisis that "is bicoastal and slices across socioeconomic strata." For more, head to Byard's investigation.
—Inae Oh
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