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Milwaukee FPC oversight committee: Q2 2025 report shows 911 answer times exceed city standards
Summary
Fire and Police Commission audit staff reported that Milwaukee emergency call centers met and exceeded the department''s mandatory 15-second standard for answering 911 calls in the second quarter of 2025, with high percentages across police, fire, and cross-trained universal call takers.
The Fire and Police Commission Oversight and Accountability Committee heard a communication from FPC staff on the second-quarter 2025 911 call-wait-time report showing that both police and fire emergency call centers met the department''s mandatory answer-time standard.
FPC staff told the committee that the city''s mandatory standard requires that 90% of all 911 calls be answered within 15 seconds; a second, nonmandatory standard is that 95% be answered within 20 seconds. The staff presentation said police calls met the 15-second standard 97.9% of the time and the 20-second standard 98.4% of the time. Fire calls met the 15-second standard 98.7% of the time and the 20-second standard 98.9% of the time.
The presenter also reported high performance on other measures: on average in Q2, 99.9% of police 911 calls and 99.8% of fire 911 calls were answered within 90 seconds. A separate measure for universal call takers''call takers cross-trained to handle both police and fire calls''showed roughly 98.4% of those calls were answered within 90 seconds.
Staff said staffing levels rose in Q2: the average number of emergency call takers was about 165. The FPC conducted a recruitment in February and 12 new call takers began in August; staff reported that nine of those hires remained in training at the time of the presentation. The report also noted that training universal call takers can reduce time lost to transfers between police and fire queues.
Committee members asked about outliers''rare calls that took longer to answer. FPC staff said, by an internal definition used for analysis, outliers were calls answered in 180 seconds or more. Causes include temporary staffing shortages, simultaneous high call volume, or extended on-line handling when call takers are providing lifesaving instructions such as CPR. Staff noted that nonemergency lines have more frequent long-answer outliers because a smaller pool of call takers handles those calls and can be pulled to cover 911 lines during surges.
The presentation was a communication file and required no committee action. The committee moved on to the next agenda item after questions and discussion.
