Tom Chase says it took about 10 rings, nearly a full minute, for Minneapolis 911 to pick up when he called after his wife fell and hit her head. A few days later, he says, he called again after watching someone steal a catalytic converter outside his home — and this time, no one answered at all after 20 rings.
“I counted it 20 times, and there was no answer,” Chase said, according to KSTP, which first reported his account. Chase posted about both experiences on the Nextdoor app, and he says several other people responded that they'd run into the same problem. He wants the city to act. “The only solution I see is hire more 911 operators,” he said.
The city's own numbers show it is close to, but still short of, the national benchmark. In October 2026, Minneapolis reported answering 83% of calls within 15 seconds and 90% within 30 seconds, per the same report. Joni Hodne, director of the Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center/911, said the center's target has never changed. “Our goal has always been to meet and exceed the national standard of answering 90% of calls within 15 seconds,” she said.
Why Calls Are Taking Longer to Answer
Hodne pointed to several factors straining the call floor. She said the demanding nature of the job, combined with the wide range of leave options employees can use for illness and family needs, cuts into available staffing at any given moment. She also said calls themselves have gotten harder to handle, particularly those involving mental health crises, which take more time to work through.
Newer hires add another layer to the challenge, the center's report notes. Those employees need more time to process calls as they build experience, and ongoing training pulls even seasoned staff away from the call floor periodically. Hodne has said that hitting the center's answering targets without running up significant overtime costs and risking staff burnout remains a constant challenge.
A Staffing Climb That Hasn't Closed the Gap
The center has made some progress on headcount. An earlier KSTP report found that staffing had grown from a low of 44 operators and dispatchers the previous December to 52 at the time of that report, with Hodne saying 70 would be the ideal number and that the center was still looking to fill 18 positions. She said the new hires had brought some relief but that dispatchers were still working a lot of overtime.
That same earlier report cited city records showing Minneapolis answering 86% of calls within 15 seconds and 89% within 20 seconds, against a national standard recommending 90% within 15 seconds and 95% within 20 seconds. Separately, the Star Tribune reported that Hodne described a spike in 911 calls in January during a federal operation, turning what is typically a quieter winter stretch into a chaotic one for call-takers and dispatchers.
Minneapolis Isn't Alone in the Struggle
The pressure on 911 centers isn't unique to Minneapolis. A Mother Jones investigation found that of 68 dispatch centers that provided records, nearly half failed to meet the national standard last year, and more than 1.3 million callers across 18 cities waited at least 40 seconds to reach a telecommunicator in 2025.
Some cities fared far worse than Minneapolis by comparison. Oakland callers waited at least 40 seconds to connect more than 123,000 times in 2023 — 40% of that year's total calls — according to the Mother Jones investigation. The Los Angeles Police Department's Metropolitan Dispatch Center answered only 64% of its 2.9 million 911 calls within 15 seconds in 2025, and in Kansas City, Missouri, police telecommunicators answered just 56% of calls within 15 seconds that year, with more than 100,000 callers left waiting a minute or longer.
For Chase, the broader numbers don't change what happened at his own front door. He's still asking the city to put more people on the phones so the next call doesn't ring 20 times before someone picks up.
