charles fivecoat is wasco police chief.ys he's recently noticed major improvements in how responsive state contractors have been when new 911 problems pop up. your reporting probably is what's causing these vendors to show up on my door every week. chief fivecoat is referring to our series of reports late last year revealing major public safety concerns with cal oes new half billion dollar nextgen 911 network. the tuolumne county sheriff's office near yosemite was the first to get the new system records from their department show. within a year of launching, tuolumne experienced a failure a month, which included a 12 hour 911 outage. new records we obtained show cal oes find gia more than $132,000 last july for call routing problems and failing to provide a report on what went wrong for one of tuolumne e's outages. as our investigative unit filed more records requests, we found dozens of similar concerns at other 911 cents across the state, including at desert hot springs pd in the coachella valley and now wasco. given the

last november, wasco's i.t. manager wrote in an email, 911 calls were not coming through the system, and callers were receiving busy signals. gia is one of the companies the state contracted with to create this new network. according to that it manager's email, the problems happened more than once, and then a few months before that, the department's records administrator wrote their entire call handling system went down in a six hour 911 outage. fortunately, we haven't had any major tragedies as a result of the system coming online. given the reporting and the new concerns that have come to light, you still want next gen to continue at your police department? oh, absolutely. i think we're in a position candice where we don't have any choice. when you start making major technological changes, there's always unintended consequences that come with the technology. naeher and the california office of emergency services, which is in charge of this project, tell me they are assessing and addressing these challenges. ca