Metro Council’s Women’s Caucus seeks answers on 911 dispatch service

Some members of the Metro Council’s Women’s Caucus are pushing for answers about the management of the Metro Department of Emergency Communications, which runs the city’s 911 and dispatch service.

The caucus heard from current 911 dispatchers at a February meeting. The employees described a culture of intimidation and inconsistent management at the office, led by director Stephen Martini since 2020. All councilmembers also received a lengthy anonymous email about the culture of the department around the same time.

“Everyone from assistant directors to frontline employees has been berated, threatened, and cajoled into submission,” the anonymous account wrote. “The mental and physical health of employees suffers due to the stress created in this environment. We’ve been told there is no retaliation, yet the disciplinary actions tell a different story. Again, there is a claim of no retaliation, but the workloads are so overwhelming that no one can keep up.”

But the complaints predate the February meeting and the anonymous email. At a Monday caucus meeting, councilmembers and city officials said reports date back several years.

Metro Human Resources Director Shannon Hall told the caucus that there were no “current complaints,” but acknowledged that anonymous emails had started arriving three or four years ago, with the most recent one more than a year ago. Her office, she said, worked with DEC leadership and SEIU, a union representing DEC employees, “for a number of months.” DEC and union representatives then resumed labor management meetings without HR involvement.

Martini, who faced pointed questions at Monday’s meeting from some caucus members, acknowledged that there had been “opportunities for engagement with central HR” and executive coaching sessions. External HR consultants have also worked with the department in recent years.

In early 2023, law firm Ogletree Deakins submitted an assessment of the DEC office culture commissioned by Metro in response to some of the complaints. The report found that some aspects of Martini’s leadership have been well received, including the relaxation of uniform and shift policies and support for an enhanced pension for DEC employees. Some employees also appreciate that Martini started his career as a dispatcher himself, unlike past department leadership from police or fire ranks, and sees the profession as an important piece of the first responder machine.

But the 2023 report also identified employee concerns about favoritism, seesaw policy changes and “heated exchanges” with senior leadership.

“In sum, the overall mood expressed by the majority of interviewees is that the way changes in policies and practices are handled causes additional and unnecessary stress to employees who are already experiencing a significant amount of stress because of the nature of the work,” the report stated. “Many interviewees expressed a belief that employees are reluctant to speak publicly about their concerns for fear of termination, being ostracized or simply falling out of favor with Senior Leadership or their supervisors. Instead, they either complain amongst themselves or quit.”

The report made several recommendations for changes to workplace policies and leadership training. However, according to the February email, things have only worsened since then. The two most active councilmembers in the Monday caucus meeting are taking different approaches in seeking a resolution.

“The conditions we’ve heard about are unacceptable,” Councilmember Joy Styles told Martini at the meeting.

Her preference is to allow the mayor’s office, SEIU and Metro HR to continue to work on improvements at DEC, and bring department leadership back to future caucus meetings to check on progress. That approach is favored by the mayor’s office and SEIU, a representative for which declined to comment.

“Solutions is all we want to come up with,” Styles said. “This is not a personal attack.”

Councilmember Tasha Ellis is seeking more immediate action.

“We are doing the workers a disservice,” she said.

Ellis is calling on the mayor’s office, both in pointed remarks to mayor’s office operations chief Kristin Wilson at the caucus meeting and in a newly filed council resolution, to investigate the department and its leadership.

Wilson, Martini’s supervisor, requested time to allow city officials to work with SEIU. That work began as early as Tuesday, when Metro HR was reintroduced to regularly scheduled labor-management meetings between DEC and SEIU. The department is also working with the Office of Family Safety to help provide dispatchers with assistance related to the traumatic phone calls they receive daily.

“We haven’t engaged improvements for some of the things that have been brought up here today because we haven’t heard them,” Martini said. “Hopefully when we receive them and have an opportunity to engage we will do so.”

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