The Vancouver Police Department has seen a significant decrease in the number of abandoned calls to its non-emergency phone line after improvements were made by the agency responsible for taking the calls.
Abandoned calls were down 59 per cent in 2024 (22,414) when compared to 2023 (55,223), for a total decrease of 32,809, according to VPD data and a recent presentation to the Vancouver Police Board by E-Comm 9-1-1, the agency that handles the calls.
“It's actually great to see the non-emergency response numbers improved and the abandoned call rates reduced,” said Steve Eely, a retired VPD superintendent who is the police board’s representative on E-Comm 9-1-1’s board of directors.
A report that accompanied Eely’s presentation said E-Comm introduced “a new, interactive contact centre platform” in 2024 for non-emergency call taking. The platform offered Lower Mainland callers options including wait-time estimates and call-back requests.
“The new technology combined with E-Comm’s dedicated non-emergency call-taking team has led to stronger service levels, faster answering times and a significant decrease in abandoned non-emergency calls,” the report said.
91,193 calls abandoned in 2022
Eely also pointed to the efforts by the VPD to highlight the importance of citizens to contact the non-emergency line. A video was posted via social media and information was circulated to community policing centres and business improvement associations.
For several years, the VPD and the police board have criticized E-Comm for the increasing number of abandoned calls to the department’s non-emergency line. The criticism was at its peak when data showed in 2022.
That was a 10-year high for the department.
A recent VPD report to the police board said abandoned non-emergency calls “cause significant concerns and have a negative impact on the public and reputation of affected police departments” using E-Comm.
“Callers often do not distinguish E-Comm from the police department they are trying to reach,” the report said. “Abandoned calls also result in undercounting crime, leading to an underestimation of the true demand and need for policing in Vancouver.”
'Previous negative experiences'
The VPD’s analysis of 88,000 abandoned calls in 2021 suggested there would have been an additional 1,700 reports of break-ins to homes and businesses last year.
Added to those crime reports would have been 1,000 thefts, 600 assaults, 500 calls related to mischief and 200 for fraud.
Over the years, BIV and Lodestar Media have also been contacted by citizens who say they don’t bother reporting break-ins to their vehicles or broken windows, vandalism or graffiti to their businesses.
“E-Comm has implemented strategies to strengthen and improve their services, providing monthly updates to police and government partners,” said the VPD report to the police board.
“However, previous negative experiences by members of the public may dissuade them from calling again even if caller wait times improve.”
Callers frustrated
The VPD pointed out caution should be used in interpreting data derived from E-Comm’s Genesys call-answer system, which was implemented in May 2024.
“E-Comm considers that a call was ‘served,’ if it was answered in the first instance by an agent or there was a successful call-back,” the VPD report said.
“Comparisons with previous periods must therefore be interpreted with caution because the historical ‘calls answered’ definition is not directly comparable with the ‘calls served’ in the new system.”
A complaint that went before the police board in 2022 provided an example of the frustration people have when calling the VPD’s non-emergency line.
A citizen complained about waiting two hours on a non-emergency line to report a man lighting a fire on a sidewalk near Broadway and Collingwood.
He never got connected to an operator.
The next day the citizen, whose name was redacted in his written complaint, made a second attempt to report the incident and got the same disappointing result.
Deputy Police Chief Howard Chow said at the April 24 police board meeting that while he sees "a bright future ahead" with changes at E-Comm, "one of the areas that we're still struggling with is the public aren't calling, particularly with non-emergency calls."
Crime continues to drop in Vancouver
The decrease in abandoned calls in 2024 came during a year in which crime continued to drop in Vancouver. Break-and-enters to homes, businesses and vehicles all saw significant decreases when compared to data collected by police in 2023.
Violent crime, for the most part, saw decreases across all categories, although that statement is based on an average taken from data collected from the city’s four policing districts.
The overall downward trend in crime is not new to Vancouver.
Statistics dating back to 2019 show the total number of crimes reported to police decreased from 56,807 in 2019 to 46,259 in 2023.
That’s a decrease of 10,548 in a five-year span.
Adam Palmer, who recently left his position as Vancouver’s police chief to join the RCMP, previously told BIV that the number of abandoned calls to the VPD’s non-emergency line has to be factored into the analysis of fewer crimes reported.
The VPD's non-emergency line can be reached at 604-717-3321.
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