It was a rustling at his front door that Theo Meadows said first woke him up just before 5 a.m., but it wasn’t until he went downstairs that he realized it was actually the sound of glass breaking.
“I’m directly across from the front door and there’s a guy breaking the window, and most of the window is already gone. As soon as we made eye contact, he put a gun through the window,” Meadows told CBC Toronto.
Meadows said that’s when he raced to his room on the second floor of his Orangeville, Ont., home — where his 5-year-old and 2-year-old were still asleep — to call for help.
“That was when I called 911 for the first time. And as soon as I put the call through, I got a like, ‘please hold’ response. It was like a pre-recorded ringtone sort of thing. So it was just ‘OPP, please hold, OPP please hold.'”
Meadows said the group made its way into his home and held him at gunpoint, demanding money and valuables.
As he was beginning to tell them where to find valuables, he said his 5-year-old daughter came out of her bedroom. He told CBC Toronto that’s when one of the men turned the gun away from him and onto her.
“It’s … the most desperate, helpless feeling I’ve ever had and that’s kind of the only way to describe it,” said Meadows, adding that one of the intruders had a machete.
Meadows said he directed the group to some minor valuables in his closet and a safe. He said the man with the gun went downstairs to get the keys the safe, and that’s when Meadows said he managed to call 911 two more times. Both times, he said, he was put on hold.
It wasn’t until after the armed group left his house that Meadows said he was able to reach an operator when he called 911 for the fourth time, but even then, he said, they couldn’t hear him properly.
“I mean at this point I’ve kind of completely given up on the police response coming to help us because … everything’s done,” he said.
Meadows said he is sharing his story to prompt changes to 911 service in his area — a region that’s covered by the OPP. In a statement, the OPP told CBC Toronto it couldn’t comment on Meadows’s case because it’s an active investigation.
Internal documents obtained by CBC News show that 911 wait times of more than two minutes are common in Toronto.
Reports, emails and snapshots of the city’s 911 call queue paint a picture of an emergency service struggling to retain staff.
Meadows said no one was injured in the Nov. 3 incident, and the whole ordeal lasted around five minutes. But, he said, being left on hold has left him questioning his own safety.
“This isn’t 911 in Canada,” he said.
“If we’re not able to answer our 911 calls in Canada, there’s a problem.”
In a statement, Dufferin County told CBC Toronto that on the morning in question, its third party dispatching system — which directs calls to the OPP —”functioned as designed” and that “each call was directed to the OPP dispatch centre without unnecessary delay.”
Finding and keeping staff
CBC Toronto has reported extensively on 911 wait times in Toronto. Documents obtained showed staffing and burnout were major issues — and it’s a problem that some advocates say still exists countrywide.
“Public safety communications … is having similar problems to most other industries in Canada in that it’s difficult to find staff,” said Robert Stewart, past president for the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials.
Hiring is just half the battle, Stewart said, as the demanding nature of the job also makes it hard to keep them. He said he believes those in the industry are often forgotten.
“If we don’t … take that step and start investing in our public safety communicators, the problem that you’re seeing in parts of Ontario, it’s not going to get better and it’s probably going to get worse,” he said.
CBC Toronto reached out to Ontario’s solicitor general for comment about OPP funding and wait times, but did not receive a response.
911 hang-ups a growing issue, OPP says
In the OPP statement, a spokesperson wouldn’t confirm if staffing issues are leading to an increase in 911 wait times, saying the service doesn’t report on staffing levels for “officer and public safety purposes.”
Last summer, the OPP shut down one of its call centres in Smiths Falls, however, it maintains that decision had “no impact on OPP service.”
The OPP said it’s seeing a “dramatic” increase in 911 hang up calls, which it said is having a direct impact on response times, because in each instance a staff member has to follow up with the caller to confirm whether they are in need of help.
“The process, involving call back and text messaging, can take between four and seven minutes for each hang up call. This in turn takes the 9-1-1 Communicator out of the rotation of answering live calls,” the OPP said.
When a caller is put on hold, the service said the most effective way to get service is to stay on the line.
“When a member of the public hangs up on 9-1-1 and then calls back, their call is returned to the bottom of the 9-1-1 queue. This results in both a longer wait time for the individual, as well as taking another 9-1-1 Communicator out of the answering loop.”
Of the 1,060,705 911 calls the OPP received last year, it said 75 per cent were answered within 14 seconds.
That wasn’t the case for Meadows, who said he’s pushing for changes to how the service operates because he doesn’t want someone else to endure what he did that day.
“All I know is that on the worst day of my life, it didn’t work at all,” he said.