Vallejo police refute news story over dispatch center staffing shortage
(Graphic by Solano NewsNet)
The Vallejo Police Department said a recent news story published on the website of KRON-TV contained numerous inaccuracies regarding the agency’s ability to staff its emergency call center overnight.
Last week, the Vallejo Police Officers Association claimed the city’s 9-1-1 dispatch center may have to close overnight due to a lack of workers, and that city officials had been weighing the option of outsourcing emergency calls to another agency.
One day after the blog post appeared, KRON-TV (Channel 4) published a story that incorrectly attributed the claim to the Vallejo Police Department, according to a copy of the story that was reviewed by Solano NewsNet.
The story was updated when a police spokesperson issued a statement that noted the differences between the agency and the police union. The spokesperson added that the emergency call center dispatchers are not represented by the Vallejo Police Officers Association, and that the blog post published by the union contained “mistruths.”
“Maintaining staffing levels for City of Vallejo Emergency Dispatch is an ongoing challenge, like many other areas of city operations,” the police spokesperson affirmed. “At present, the City has roughly a 30 percent vacancy rate citywide among all positions.”
But the spokesperson said it was untrue that the City of Vallejo might be forced to close its dispatch center overnight, as was claimed by the union and reported by KRON-TV.
“That statement could not be further from the truth,” the spokesperson said. “No staffing decisions have been made by either Chief Williams or the City Manager.”
A source within KRON-TV’s newsroom told Solano NewsNet on Saturday that a station intern was responsible for writing and publishing the story. The article did not go through an editor, nor was it fact-checked, before it appeared online, the source affirmed. No other media organization made the same mistake.
It was the second time in less than a year that an article about Solano County published by KRON-TV had to be corrected due to inaccuracies.
In September, KRON-TV wrongly reported that the Solano County Board of Supervisors had responded to an increase in COVID-19 infections by instituting a county-wide public mask mandate. The Board of Supervisors had actually voted to re-instate a mask mandate for county-operated buildings. No county-wide indoor mask mandate had been issued. The station eventually corrected the article after Solano NewsNet pointed out its errors.
Jim Rose, the station’s general manager, has not yet returned a request for comment.
Although the Vallejo Police Department refuted the claim that the closure of the 9-1-1 center was imminent, it affirmed that it had “made adjustments to shift scheduling that ensures the dispatch center is staffed 24-7.” The police union complained dispatchers were forced to work 12- to 16-hour shifts.
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