Overview
- City Council President Zeke Cohen scheduled a Legislative Investigations Committee hearing for Feb. 19 to scrutinize the computer-aided dispatch system.
- Officials and first responders have documented recurrent outages, including a June incident when police waited nearly an hour for medics during the detention of Dontae Melton Jr., who later died at a hospital.
- Baltimore’s former IT chief and the 911 director have described the platform as outdated and bug-prone, with a manual backup they say delivers inferior service.
- The mayor’s office said the June freeze was under review as vendor CentralSquare issued a subsequent software update, and the city renewed CentralSquare’s contract for $2.7 million in October.
- Decision-makers will weigh a potential replacement estimated at up to $15 million against further vendor-managed upgrades, with missing dispatch audio complicating accountability.