KGUN 9News

Actions

TFD and TPD are understaffed in their emergency response call center

Posted at 9:28 PM, Sep 12, 2017
and last updated 2017-09-13 01:15:27-04

If you called 9-1-1 lately you may have experienced a longer wait time. 

That's because the Tucson Fire Department and Tucson Police Department say they are understaffed in their emergency response call center. 

Geoffrey Kuhn with TFD says they've been trying to fill the job positions for the better part of this year. 

"We've been looking to combine our efforts and start a recruitment process to fill a combined 25 positions." 

Those positions would eventually turn into a consolidated call-taker. That way regardless of who answers the phone first, no phone transfer would be necessary before sending the information of the incident to dispatch. 

"Both police and fire are going to hire from this list and we are also looking for these employees in the future to be trained in both disciplines and become our consolidated combined call-taker that we see as the future of our consolidation." 

Kuhn says he sees call times decreasing when they begin to bring on new hires and when the consolidation is hopefully complete by 2018. 

Applications will continued to be accpeted until October, 4.

Job link: https://www.jobaps.com/Tucson/sup/bulpreview.asp?R1=1709&R2=6304&R3=001[jobaps.com]