The Fresno Police Department has historically failed to answer 911 calls quickly enough, but it has begun to make some progress in meeting a standard set by state law.
In 2022, Fresno’s dispatch center answered 63% of 911 calls in 15 seconds or less, falling short of the state-mandated 90%. With steady annual increases, that jumped to over 75% in 2025.
The Fresno Bee analyzed data from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) reporting 911 call answer times from 2021 to 2025 for the state’s 438 dispatch centers, also known as Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs).
Despite the improvement, Fresno’s department remains well below the nationwide gold standard for dispatch centers to answer 90% of 911 calls within 15 seconds, which is mandated across the state by Cal OES. A spokesperson declined to answer questions on whether Cal OES has penalized Fresno PD for consistently failing to meet the standard and said the state agency will “continue to monitor” Fresno’s call wait times.
Fresno PD officials credit its improved call answer times to expanded staffing, primarily spurred by a recent pay raise for dispatchers, though some vacancies remain. An understaffed dispatch department can lead to back-to-back calls and longer wait times in the call takers’ queue when multiple emergencies hit at once, or several people call to report the same incident at the same time.
Fresno PD has 99 out of 114 budgeted dispatch positions filled. Four or five of those just started work in mid-July. An additional five are going through the background check process, and the department is actively interviewing candidates, Jaime Fahlsing, emergency service dispatch manager for Fresno PD, told The Bee.
“Being able to get those positions filled and dispatchers fully trained, I’m confident we’ll be able to reach those numbers,” Fahlsing said of reaching the state standard.
Training dispatchers is an extensive process that can take up to a year. Agencies across the country have struggled to keep positions filled for the stressful job that often comes with low pay and difficult hours, impacting call answer times.
The data shows that California failed to meet the standard by a slim margin in 2025. Fresno’s city and county dispatch centers were two of 27 PSAPs that fell below the 90% mark, most serving large cities with high call volumes, such as the Los Angeles Police Department.
Fresno PD’s center answers all calls within city limits and typically receives over 1,000 911 calls a day, averaging over 375,000 emergency calls a year.
The sheriff’s office provides dispatch services for all unincorporated areas of Fresno County, plus the cities of Fowler, Kerman, Kingsburg, Mendota, Orange Cove, Sanger and San Joaquin.
The department has hovered around answering 80% of 911 calls within 15 seconds over the past five years, according to CalOES data. It receives an average of 275 emergency calls a day, typically over 100,000 a year.
‘… dispatchers should be paid more’
Like Fresno PD, issues with dispatch staffing have been the sheriff’s office’s biggest roadblock in meeting the state standard, Matt Mendes, Fresno County Sheriff’s Office Dispatcher Supervisor, told The Bee.
The sheriff’s dispatch center has 12 vacancies and four trainees with a staff budgeted for 49 dispatchers. Mendes can’t remember a time since he started at the county office in 2006 that the sheriff’s center has been fully staffed.
Mendes believes pay plays a role in the shortage of dispatchers. Entry-level dispatchers earn a base salary of $53,300 a year at the county. That can range up to around $75,500 depending on rank and experience.
“Working the long hours, the mandatory overtime, hearing the calls that we do, I think that dispatchers should be paid more, and we should have a better retirement,” Mendes said.
Dispatchers in Fresno and the county take calls from residents experiencing everything from shootings to mental health crises, domestic violence and robberies. They also answer all non-emergency calls that come to each department, with 911s prioritized.
“Anything you can think of, somebody in here has answered that call,” Fahlsing, Fresno PD dispatch supervisor, said.
Fahlsing worked as a dispatcher in Fresno for over 10 years before becoming a supervisor. She will never forget when a mother couldn’t find her son and later called back to report he had committed suicide.
Another that has stayed with her is when a woman called to report her rapist as the sexual assault was taking place.
“There is one dispatcher behind everything. The first, first responders is what we like to say,” she said.
Jaime Fahlsing, the Emergency Services Dispatch Manager for the Fresno Police Department’s 911 Communications Center, talks about the services they respond to from calls, Friday, June 26, 2026, in Fresno. Data shows the dispatch center is increasing its success in answering 911 calls within 15 seconds. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com ‘We have to hear the screams’
The job can take a mental toll, Fahlsing and Mendes agree. For Mendes, instances of child drownings are some of the toughest calls to take after almost drowning himself as a child. Dispatchers rarely get closure after sending an officer to a scene, he said.
“We have to hear the screams and the cries for help. We have to make up the scenarios in our heads,” Mendes said. “I do think that we have it tough. We may not see the bodies, but we still have to hear it.”
In 2022, Fresno PD had a major drop in dispatch staffing, Deputy Police Chief Burke Farrah told The Bee. It’s the same year the percentage of 911 calls answered in 15 seconds fell to the low sixties, over a 10% decrease from 2021.
Impacts of COVID-19 may have contributed, Farrah said, but it was also found that Fresno’s dispatchers were not compensated at the same level as other dispatchers across the state.
“It made it very difficult to be competitive when it came to hiring and with retention, too. It’s not the easiest place to do dispatch work,” Farrah said. “We’re busy here, and it’s important. So there were options for some of our folks to work not as hard and make more money.”
The City Council adopted an average 14% pay raise for Fresno PD dispatchers in 2023, and the department’s call answer times have improved each year since.
Staff are seen at the Fresno Police Department’s 911 Communications Center on Friday, June 26, 2026, in Fresno. Data shows the dispatch center is increasing its success in answering 911 calls within 15 seconds. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com Fresno PD closer than ever to meeting state standard in 2026
Fresno PD’s numbers for 2026 so far are on track to be the closest they have ever been to achieving the state standard, according to Fresno Police Chief Mindy Casto.
Around 85% of calls have been answered within 15 seconds this year Casto said at a city budget hearing in June, a significant jump from 2025.
Casto and Fahlsing believe the brand-new 911 communications center currently under construction will be key to Fresno eventually meeting the standard.
“Sometimes we busy out on 911s, and it’s terrifying for me on Fourth of July or New Year’s Eve,” Casto said while presenting the police department’s FY 2027 budget requests to the City Council. “When we move, the new system will not busy out ever.”
At $16.9 million, the bond-funded project broke ground in July 2025 at El Dorado and G Street, which has the capacity to house more dispatchers, advanced technology and an emergency operations center. The 12,000-square-foot facility will replace the aging, windowless dispatch center located in the basement of police headquarters.
The department is on track to move to the new location in early 2027 once construction is complete. In the meantime, dispatch staff have filled a wall at the current center with photos tracking the new building’s construction progress.
The Fresno Police Department’s 911 Communications Center staff respond to a wide variety of calls for different services, photographed Friday, June 26, 2026, in Fresno. Data shows the dispatch center is increasing its success in answering 911 calls within 15 seconds. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com Sheriff’s Office numbers are up in first half of 2026
The County Sheriff’s dispatch center’s 911 call answer times are also up for the first half of 2026.
From the beginning of January to the end of June, 85.5% of calls were answered in 15 seconds or less, according to the department’s internal data provided by Tony Botti, Fresno County Sheriff’s Public Information Officer.
Mendes believes the improved numbers could be thanks in part to a recent policy change. It used to be that if someone called 911 and hung up before the call was answered, dispatchers were required to call back twice if the first call back was not answered, leave a message and take notes. For the past few months, they have only been required to call back once.
“When people hang up, they call right back,” Mendes said. “Well, their call is still in the queue. We’re trying to call them back, so it’s like they’re not knowingly delaying their own call for help.”
Ultimately, a fully staffed dispatch center is needed for the Sheriff’s Office to meet the state standard, Mendes said.
“I could see, yes, if we got more call takers, and that’s something that we aim to do,” Mendes said.
The Fresno Police Department’s 911 Communications Center is seen Friday, June 26, 2026 in Fresno. Data shows the dispatch center is increasing its success in answering 911 calls within 15 seconds. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com
This story was originally published July 21, 2026 at 7:14 AM.
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