Refusing to investigate 911 call mistakes, OUC continues years-long failures, putting property and lives at unnecessary risk

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by Jonah Goodman
guest contributor

On July 3, 2025, Leticia McCray called 911 for a family member experiencing a medical emergency. Luckily, Fire and EMS Station #24, the “Pride of Petworth,” is located only two blocks away from Leticia’s home and serves her area of the neighborhood. Help should have been there extremely fast. However, that didn’t happen — the 911 operator mistakenly routed the service call to FEMS Takoma Station #22. Mistakes like this continue to happen with OUC, and are costing precious time, property damage and potentially lives.

The Office of Unified Communications (OUC), the agency that answers and directs responses to 911 calls in DC, made a mistake and entered the wrong address for the Leticia’s emergency. Fire and EMS Station #22 in Takoma was dispatched to an address in their service area — not Leticia’s address. For over 8 minutes, the FEMS crew searched for a person needing help without finding anyone. When they called OUC back and asked them to confirm the address, OUC realized they made a mistake, updated the address and dispatched help from Station #24. Approximately 10 minutes were lost getting help to Leticia. OUC has refused to investigate this mistake.

The original call came from a property two blocks from FEMS Station 24. The OUC operator entered the wrong address and instead dispatched Engine 22 to a wrong location several blocks north.

This error is one of many examples over the years where OUC is aware of their mistake and yet refuse to investigate, despite being required to do so by DC law.

I reached out to Leticia about her 911 call and OUC’s subsequent mistake. While she was surprised to learn there was a dispatch error, she said looking back on the evening she was waiting for a long period of time for someone to arrive. She shared that she intentionally called from a land line instead of her cell phone because she thought it would pinpoint her exact location.

If the OUC investigates their mistakes as opportunities for improvement, then when mistakes happen, and they will, they can be fixed and addressed going forward. The DC Council provided legislation to allow OUC to investigate itself when they make mistakes responding to 911 calls. In fact, OUC publishes data about their calls, including mistakes, on their own website dashboard. If you look at the bottom of the dashboard for the July 3rd mistake… you won’t see it. It is one of dozens of mistakes in 2025 that are known to have occurred and are missing from the OUC dashboard.

OUC is facing pressure to make changes after the Mayor demoted and fired Cleo Subido, the former Director who raised concerns about OUC, and who then filed a whistleblower lawsuit in 2023. Subido’s lawsuit claims the District “repeatedly sought to conceal errors and mismanagement by OUC and to downplay serious, life-threatening — and often fatal — mistakes.” 

One manner in which OUC hides mistakes is through an internal policy that requires the original 911 caller to know OUC made a mistake and report it. If anyone else reports the mistake, OUC won’t investigate. The original caller’s phone number is a requirement for investigation submission, otherwise they consider reports of mistakes as “general feedback.” Hypothetically, if you are a bystander and call 911 to help a neighbor in need, you would need to review 911 call recordings to find out if OUC made a dispatch error. Then you would need to know OUC has a specific form on their website as the only means to file an investigation request. In the July 3rd incident, Leticia didn’t even know there was a mistake until I reached out to her for this article.

Mr. Statter reported the July 3rd OUC dispatch error through OUC’s online forms This is the confirmation email from OUC stating they received this information. OUC will later say they have no records of any report.

Dave Statter, who investigates 911 mistakes, sent OUC a report of the July 3 error. He posted the audio recording of OUC dispatching the call to the wrong address and the FEMS radio traffic telling OUC about the mistake. OUC ignored his report because he didn’t know the original caller’s phone number. This is the second time OUC was made aware they made a mistake in this case.

I asked Leticia her thoughts on OUC deciding to not investigate when Mr. Statter and I both reported the mistake. “That’s a ridiculous rule,” she said. “Anyone who catches the mistake should be able to say something is amiss and have them look into it. This is a 911 system for medical emergencies. If you botched this anywhere does it matter who reports it? How are we supposed to even know how to report it?”

When I asked Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who chairs the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee with oversight of OUC, about this July 3rd issue, she said OUC told her staff they don’t have records of it. This is the third time OUC is made aware of the mistake; however, OUC told Pinto’s staff they consider the case closed.

Email from a staff member on the DC Council Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety informing Petworth News that OUC can’t find any documents and considers the issue closed.

We followed up with a FOIA request for the report, sharing OUC’s automated confirmation that a report was submitted. This is the fourth time OUC was made aware of the mistake. Yet OUC won’t comply with the FOIA request, responding that all mistakes are listed publicly on the OUC dashboard. This is how OUC errors end up in a cycle of denying they happened, and OUC underreporting their own mistakes.

There are solutions to this cycle:

  • Whenever OUC changes an address in their dispatch notes, it should trigger a review to determine if there was a mistake. If a mistake was made, it should be tracked on the OUC dashboard and reviewed for process improvement. Some changes are always necessary, so there should be a fast way to triage these.

  • Whenever OUC receives information about a mistake, through any channel, they should be compelled by law to review them.

  • The DC Auditor should review reported mistakes against what OUC publishes to understand how many mistakes OUC is possibly underreporting and the process improvements to address them. Advisory Neighborhood Commission 4C in Petworth and 3C in Cleveland Park have both passed letters requesting OUC follow this process, given how widespread this issue is across the District.

Councilmember Pinto backed OUC’s decision to not investigate all known reports of mistakes, saying it would be resource-intensive for OUC to look up calls with only time of incident, data and address.

Leticia sees it differently, “We are your most important resources. If there is a mistake that causes harm or loss of life because of a mistake going to a wrong address and they didn't get there in a timely manner, then what? The blood is on your hands because you didn’t want to waste resources. What are you going to say to the family of that person? It wasn’t worth the extra money.”

Other Councilmembers, including Chairperson Phil Mendelson, have said OUC regularly investigates mistakes Councilmembers send with less details and doesn’t understand why a phone number would be required. 

An email from Chairperson Phil Mendelson regarding reporting 911 mistakes to OUC.

Last year Councilmember Brianne Nadeau tried to introduce legislation that would allow DC Fire and EMS to take over dispatching calls for their units, given how often OUC was making mistakes. The legislation was sent to the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee. Ultimately Councilmember Pinto refused to schedule a hearing on the proposed legislation. 

I reached out to Councilmember Pinto for a comment on the July 3rd case and OUC’s practice of not investigating reports of mistakes if the original caller’s number is not known. Pinto did not respond.

The OUC’s mistakes continue. As recently as November 12, 2025, OUC sent FEMS response crews to the wrong address at 13th and Upshur North East… for an emergency call at Roosevelt High School in North West DC, here in Petworth.

Recording of 911 call between OUC and FEMS trying to determine location of emergency. (credit: Dave Statter, @STATter911)

Looking forward, the DC Council and Chairperson Mendelson, who assigns committees, needs to take a harder look at why OUC reforms are not moving forward and why 911 calls continue to have issues after so many years. Unfortunately, it’s not hyperbole to say your life may depend on it.

Jonah Goodman is a Petworth resident and former Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner.