The former interim director of D.C.’s Office of Unified Communications, the agency that oversees the city’s 911 calls, filed suit against D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser this month for alleged retaliation after she spoke up about “dangerous inefficiencies” in the city’s long-critiqued emergency response agency.

“I would like to see a very open and transparent change in the culture of the agency,” says Cleo Subido, who led OUC as interim director from January 2021 to March 2022. “I would like them to do something to address some of these critical shortcomings and failures, because in the long run, all of those things add up to lives.”

For years, residents and officials have raised alarms about issues at the 911 center, especially after OUC errors that resulted in a death. For example, several times OUC has sent emergency responders to the wrong address, losing out on crucial minutes. Subido says she tried to address some of these failures, but was repeatedly silenced by Bowser administration officials. “Those seconds add up to lives, and I think it is what they owe the community of the District,” she says.

A lengthy complaint, filed in D.C. Superior Court earlier this month, documents a series of instances over a period of two years in which Bowser and administration officials allegedly attempted to silence Subido’s efforts to correct systemic failures and increase transparency at OUC.

Named as defendants in the case are Bowser, the Office of Unified Communications, and DC Fire and EMS — where Subido was transferred after her interim stint at OUC, and where she was terminated in January of this year in a move she alleges was made without reason. At the time of her termination, she was working at DC FEMS to improve communication systems.

“In November of 2022, I was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation that the OUC initiated,” Subido says.  “And on January 31, 2023, I was terminated for that same investigation. I was not provided information on really what the investigation was about.”

A spokesperson for Bowser’s office said they do not comment on ongoing litigation, and a spokesperson for OUC did not return DCist/WAMU’s request for comment. A spokesperson for DC FEMS directed DCist/WAMU to the Attorney General for D.C.’s office, who did not immediately return the request.

Subido became the interim director of the OUC on January 22, 2021, after the former director — Karima Holmes —  resigned in late 2020. Holmes, who had led OUC since 2016, left her post as the office faced scrutiny and a forthcoming audit for a series of bungled responses. (Holmes was reinstated to her role after Subido’s departure, but faced so much criticism for her past performance that the mayor was forced to withdraw her nomination to the post. In January of this year, Bowser appointed Heather McGaffin, the former deputy director, as acting director.)

While acting as interim director, Subido says the Mayor and her administration repeatedly tried to quell her attempts to draw attention to OUC failures, and removed her from her FEMS position as retaliation for her continued efforts to shed light on the mismanaged agency. The suit, filed March 2, accuses the the city of retaliating against a whistleblower and retaliatory harassment — both violating the city’s whistleblower protection laws.

The complaint draws attention to several instances of OUC failures — some of them with deadly outcomes — and alleged attempts by Bowser’s administration to cover them up.

For example, in 2019, it took OUC more than four minutes to dispatch responders to a row house fire in D.C. — far more than the national standard of 60 seconds. Two people died in the fire, one of them a nine-year-old boy. (In response to the delay, Holmes allegedly said four minutes was “as fast we could,” per the complaint.) In 2020, a 13-year-old girl called 911 because her mother had collapsed. The girl provided the correct address in Northeast, but the OUC communicator mistakenly entered the address in the Northwest quadrant of the city. It took responders 20 minutes to respond, and the woman later died. In a third example, an OUC communicator sent responders to the wrong address for a call about a baby in distress, delaying response by 30 minutes. When FEMS arrived, the baby was in cardiac arrest, per the lawsuit. And finally, in August 2020, three men boating on the Potomac River made a maritime distress call, which was routed to OUC. Instead of sending teams to the Potomac River, OUC dispatched responders to the Anacostia River — over five miles from where men placed the original call. The three boaters were later found dead in the Potomac.

In September 2020, while Holmes still led the agency, the Office of the D.C. Auditor moved ahead with an audit after the spate of dangerous errors; a few months later, Holmes resigned. According to the complaint, when Subido took over as interim director in Jan. 2021,  she “was astonished to discover problems at OUC that were worse than previously publicized, and which exceeded any she had seen in her previous 31 years of experience as a public safety professional.” (Subido had started her career in 911 operations in the 1980s with the Seattle Police Department, and was the Chief of the Office of Professional Standards and Development at OUC at the time she was promoted to interim agency head).

She started her own internal audit as the D.C. Auditor conducted its own, finding that the office was understaffed (sometimes with one supervisor managing up to 20 staff), lacked adequate supervision and training, and needed upgraded technology, the complaint says. She also observed the agency’s chronic failures to answer calls in a timely matter, its failures to track complaints properly, and its refusal to release 911 audio, according to the suit.

“I think one of the very first things I discovered was the issue of the knowledge of the geography of the district, and how that was affecting our ability to respond appropriately,” Subido tells DCist/WAMU. “It was something that I never seen in any of the centers I’d ever been associated with.” In one instance, she counted 10 times in one day where OUC sent responders to the wrong address, she says.

She says she started making plans for improvement, enhancing trainings and improving technology capabilities, and brought up her concerns to her boss — former Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice, Chris Geldart — during their monthly meetings. But Geldart, who resigned from his post last year after facing assault charges, allegedly told Subido to “tread carefully and not pursue her concerns as it would upset Mayor Bowser and would likely result in Mayor Bowser firing Subido,” reads the complaint. At one point, after speaking with Channel 4 about mistakes at the agency, the complaint alleges that the Office of Communications stopped granting Subido permission to speak directly with press or media, “in an effort silence her and quell her attempts to increase public transparency.” Subido also testified about the issues she observed before the D.C. Council.

In July 2021, months into her tenure, Subido sent an email to staff announcing mandatory overtime, even on scheduled days off, as the agency was in a staffing crisis. The memo was leaked to the media, and although the complaint states it was not shared by Subido, Bowser allegedly then refused to support Subido’s nomination for permanent director. The Mayor’s office also disliked Subido’s willingness to give complete acccess to the D.C. Auditor’s office as they were conducting their audit during her tenure, according to the complaint. (That audit, released in October, corroborated many of Subido’s concerns with the agency.)

When Subido was tapped as interim director, the city announced it’d be launching a natione-wide search for a new director. During her time at the helm, according to the complaint, multiple officials — including Deputy Mayor Geldart, Police Chief Robert Contee, and Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly — told her she’d be appointed as the permanent director. She’d also won praise from D.C. councilmembers and the D.C. Auditor.  But on Feb. 23, 2022 Bowser announced that she’d asked Holmes to lead the agency again — a move decried by councilmembers, eventually leading Bowser to pull the nomination or risk it being slapped down by the District’s legislative body.

After getting snubbed for the directorship, Subido was offered a job at FEMS, working to improve communications between FEMS and OUC. According to the complaint, Chief Donnelly told Subido on one occasion that she was passed over for the directorship because “of the attention she drew to OUC’s failures during her tenure at OUC’s Interim Director.”

Nonetheless, the lawsuit states Subido continued to point out OUC failings in her role at FEMS, as she says she watched some of her progress become undone. In July 2022, it took responders nine minutes to respond to a call about a newborn baby in cardiac arrest, and the baby later died. A month later in August, a three-month-old baby was left in a hot car, and it took responders more than 13 minutes to arrive on the scene after confusion from dispatchers canceled the service call. The baby died. Geldart himself admitted that in that situation, an “ambulance [should] be there within two minutes for something like this,” according to the complaint.

In September of 2022, the D.C. Auditor released another report, finding OUC had made minimal progress from the previous year’s audit. The agency had only implemented one of the 31 recommendations.

“To my knowledge, things have reverted, unfortunately,” Subido says of the agency’s performance since Holmes resumed leadership in 2022.

Finally in November 2022, as it looked unlikely Holmes would be confirmed as OUC’s permanent leader after public pushback, Subido was placed on administrative leave from her position at FEMS. According to the suit, Donnelly handed her a letter that stated her leave was due to an investigation by OUC. He was unaware of specific allegations, according to the complaint. In January, a human resources representative reached out Subido and told her she was being terminated. A letter from Chief Donnelly referenced a pending investigation but did not specify further conduct, and to this day, Subido does not know what the investigation was about. (When she filed for unemployment benefits in the city, the mayor’s office allegedly could not provide evidence of her “misconduct” to the D.C. Office of Unemployment Compensation Benefits.)

“I think you know, what my biggest concern is that there is a culture of retaliation. And I think that that is dangerous for any government agency,” Subido says. “It makes people not want to speak up. And when you don’t speak up, and you don’t identify and acknowledge the issues that you have, you can’t possibly fix them.”

Previously:
D.C. 911 Has Made ‘Minimal Progress’ On Recommended Changes, Audit Says
Facing D.C. Council Opposition, Bowser Withdraws Nominee To Lead 911 Agency
Bowser Defends Nominee To Head Troubled D.C. 911 Agency Ahead Of Uncertain Confirmation Vote
Former Head Of D.C.’s 911 Agency To Return To The Job
D.C.’s 911 System Struggles To Pinpoint Where Emergencies Are Happening, Audit Says