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Sheriff’s Office: Opportunities to Better Support 911 Callers with Behavioral Health Concerns
February 10, 2026
While the King County Sheriff’s Office 911 Communications Center is taking steps to improve service and mitigate risks for some vulnerable 911 callers, it has limited engagement with the growing set of alternative response options available to address behavioral health crises. In addition, while the communications center is meeting standards for promptly answering 90 percent of 911 calls within 15 seconds, this comes at the cost of incurring a significant amount of mandatory overtime for some employees because of low staffing levels. Half of the mandatory overtime at the communications center backfills employees taking compensatory time off, which they earn for working overtime, creating a costly and fatiguing cycle. We make recommendations to make the Sheriff’s Office 911 Communications Center more organizationally efficient and to enhance the experience for callers.
Audit Highlights
The options for helping callers with behavioral health concerns are expanding in King County, but the King County Sheriff’s Office 911 Communications Center does not have a standard operating procedure to guide call receivers on when and how to use these alternatives to police response. Instead, officers are responsible for referring people to services, which consumes limited law enforcement resources. Further, behavioral health-related calls that do not have an associated law enforcement issue may not receive attention, missing the chance to connect a person with services that could help. A rotating captain position oversees the communications center, which has created challenges with continuing initiatives, including efforts to standardize responses to behavioral health issues.
The 911 Communications Center trains its call receivers and radio dispatchers on anti-racism and ways to mitigate implicit bias. Contracted interpretation services assist callers that speak a language other than English, but this can delay response times. Different than for deputies, there is no process to certify 911 call receivers who are bilingual and want to act as interpreters to speed call response.
The communications center relies on mandatory overtime to meet required standards (answering over 90 percent of 911 calls within 15 seconds). However, mandatory overtime is a drain on morale. Backfilling for employees taking compensatory leave creates around half of the need for mandatory overtime. Managing overtime and schedules without suitable software takes supervisors away from quality assurance activities, instead requiring them to update changing schedules with paper, pen, and whiteout.
We recommend establishing procedures and training to handle behavioral health calls, hire a civilian professional to lead the communications center, certify bilingual call receivers, and ensure the needs of the communications center are included in efforts to acquire new software.
The 911 Communications Center at the King County Sheriff’s Office fields over 300,000 emergency 911 calls and 200,000 non-emergency calls per year, connecting the public with vital services. The increasing prevalence of behavioral health issues (which include mental illness and substance use disorders) complicates the traditional 911 options of police, fire, or medical assistance. Research has shown that law enforcement is often unable to help people in behavioral health crises. New and expanded alternatives to police response contribute to an improved but fragmented system. This audit reviews how the communications center serves vulnerable populations, as well as ways it could address challenges with staffing and scheduling.