911 Concerns: LPD Chief Did Not Want ‘90% of the Information’ Added to Official Document

BY JAMES CLARK COURTESY OF EVERYTHING LUBBOCK

An active shooter full-scale exercise in late May would have resulted in additional simulated fatalities – victims who could have been saved – because of reasons revealed in public records when the City of Lubbock provided the response to an open records request by EverythingLubbock.com.

Official records made available on July 20th described problems, including some in the Lubbock Police Department’s 911 call dispatch center.

The city manager (see his comments further below) said some changes have already been made to 911 while others are still to come.

Quick Facts ~ There were 183,436 calls to the LPD 911 center in 2022. 30,017 of those calls to 911 were abandoned by the caller before a dispatcher answered (which is more than 16%).

The dispatch center called back 26,448 (more than 88% of abandoned calls) in 2022.

From June 2022 through June 2023, the average wait time for a 911 call ranged from 7 to 9 seconds.

The full-scale active threat exercise was held in late May at Terra Vista Middle School in the Frenship ISD. LPD and other agencies participated roughly one year after the realworld deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Nineteen students and two teachers lost their lives in Uvalde.

The open records request revealed Police Chief Floyd Mitchell challenged City of Lubbock Director of Emergency Management Joe Foster Moudy for documenting 911 dispatch center staffing issues.

Moudy was preparing an after-action report in late June – roughly a month after the middle school exercise. Moudy documented in an email that he intended to include in an official report that an “overwhelmed dispatch center” caused a 3-minute delay in information getting to first responders during the active-shooter training. The proposed documentation said: There were also numerous calls reported by role-players regarding injured students in the library. The library was where the shooting started and was the first room when responders were entering the building. Due to missed information, and challenges with command and accountability, first responders did not enter the library until thirty-eight (38) minutes after the shooting started. In a real situation, this would have resulted in several additional fatalities that could have otherwise been saved.

The proposed documentation also said, “During the exercise, there were several discussions regarding the number of vacancies in LPD dispatch and that limitations on the number of dispatchers had been implemented as a budget control measure.”

The Chief Writes Back ~ “I do not believe that 90% of the information contained within this email is relevant to the ‘exercise’ operation and therefore should not be contained within an official document,” Mitchell wrote in response to Moudy.

“Most of the information deals with personnel and administrative views on how communications should be staffed and operated by those who have little to no knowledge of how calls are routed in and handled on a daily basis or during a real-world critical incident,” Mitchell chided.

“This information needs to be discussed in person and not handled via email,” Chief Mitchell concluded in his response to the Director of Emergency Management. EverythingLubbock.com first reported trouble with the 911 call center on July 7, quoting a statement from Mayor Tray Payne. A few days later, EverythingLubbock.com was first to report LPD had more than 30,000 abandoned 911 calls in 2022, which had more than doubled from 2020.

The Lubbock Emergency Communications District offered the following definition: “Abandoned calls are calls in which the caller hung up before the call was answered.” More than 88 percent of the abandoned calls in 2022 resulted in a call back.

“Chief Mitchell is working directly with our senior Dispatch team and changes have already been instituted to make us better and more improvements are in the works.”

CITY MANAGER JARRETT ATKINSON ~ We Requested Comment From the Chief

Despite repeated requests since July 7, Chief Mitchell chose not to participate in an oncamera interview with KAMC, KLBK and EverythingLubbock.com. Instead, LPD said written questions could be submitted. Questions submitted in writing the week prior were still unanswered as of July 26th morning.

On July 11, Mitchell appeared in a preproduced social media video in which he made a presentation with no interviewer to ask questions.

Mitchell admitted in the video that he lowered the minimum staffing (from nine dispatchers to seven) on duty at any given time. The change happened on May 6. Mitchell said he set the minimum to eight on July 1 “based on recommendations.” The reduction happened as numbers were on track (if the trend continued) for just as many abandoned 911 calls in 2023 as 2022.

A Real-World Case Was Reviewed ~ The open records request also revealed a “missed” (abandoned) 911 after a baby was accidentally shot in March 2022 at a home in North Lubbock. The child later died.

“When the family tried to call 911, no one answered the phone,” an internal police memo said. The child was taken by private vehicle to University Medical Center and died from blood loss.

LPD reviewed the case and found in that