In this episode of TiPS: Today in Public Safety, Fletch takes a hard look at one of the most under-discussed risks of artificial intelligence in emergency communications: AI hallucinations.

When an AI system is confident and wrong, the consequences in a 911 environment can be severe. From misinterpreted caller intent to fabricated assumptions and inflated confidence scores, AI doesn’t pause to ask questions, and it rarely admits uncertainty.

This episode explores:

What an AI hallucination actually is (and what it isn’t)

Why 911 is a high-risk environment for confident AI errors

How automation bias quietly overrides human judgment

Why “assistive” AI must never become authoritative in life-or-death workflows

AI absolutely has a role in emergency communications, but only when it is transparent, interruptible, and designed to support human decision-making, not replace it.

Because when the system is confident and wrong, the public pays the price.

For more updates and insights, you can follow me on social media at Fletch911, and you can visit 911tips.com for a complete archive of our previous episodes.

My blogs are available online at Fletch.tv, and my professional website is at Fletch911.com.

Copyright ©2025 Fletch911, LLC Media Productions

http://Fletch911.com

NG911 was designed to connect everything—networks, data sources, enterprises, vendors, and public safety agencies—to deliver better information and faster response.

But that connectivity raises an uncomfortable question few want to answer out loud:

When everyone connects to NG911, who actually owns cybersecurity?

Is it the PSAP?

The ESInet provider?

The enterprise feeding data into the system?

Or the vendor that promised their solution was “secure by design”?

In this episode of TiPS: Today in Public Safety, we dig into the NG911 cyber mandate, the myth of “not my network,” and why shared responsibility without clear ownership creates real risk. As NG911 ecosystems expand, cybersecurity can no longer live in silos—and pretending otherwise may be the most dangerous vulnerability of all.

If you’re involved in NG911 planning, governance, procurement, or operations, this is a conversation you can’t afford to ignore.

Copyright ©2026 Fletch911, LLC Media Productions

http://Fletch911.com

For more episodes, visit 911TiPS.com

Follow on X: @Fletch911

Blogs and video content available at Fletch.TV

In this episode of TiPS: Today in Public Safety, Fletch breaks down what it really means now that NG911 has Washington’s full attention — from congressional hearings and letters to white papers, oversight, and something the public safety industry isn’t always comfortable with: accountability.

This isn’t about federal takeover myths or Washington “running your PSAP.”

It’s about visibility, scrutiny, expectations, and the uncomfortable reality that NG911 is no longer just a local science project.

Using the real-world momentum behind 911 Goes to Washington, this episode explains how years of outages, cybersecurity warnings, stalled migrations, and underfunded infrastructure finally forced the national question: Why does critical emergency infrastructure have no national strategy?

How NG911 became a federal issue — and why now

What congressional attention actually means (and what it doesn’t)

Why funding without outcomes is no longer acceptable

The growing pressure for consistency, metrics, and measurable progress

Where governance gaps and undefined ownership are about to get exposed

What local PSAPs should be doing right now to prepare

This episode is not a warning shot.

It’s a reality check. 

Because Washington isn’t just coming to save 9-1-1.

They’re coming to understand why it still breaks — and who owns the fix.

TiPS: Today in Public Safety is a short-form podcast and video series hosted by Fletch, a NENA-certified ENP, focused on the technology, policy, and real-world realities shaping emergency communications today.

No vendor hype.

No talking points.

Just straight talk for the people responsible when systems fail.

That wraps up today’s episode of TiPS: Today in Public Safety.

Thanks so much for listening.

For more updates and insights, you can follow me on social media at @Fletch911, and you can visit 911TiPS.com for a complete archive of previous episodes.

My blogs are available at Fletch.TV, and my professional website is Fletch911.com.

Stay safe, thanks for listening — and if you are in Public Safety, thanks for what you do, every day.

I’ll see you next time.

Copyright ©2026 Fletch911, LLC Media Productions

http://Fletch911.com

Phones were down.

Dispatchers were sweating.

And somehow… 9-1-1 was still working.

How is that possible?

In this episode of TiPS: Today in Public Safety, Fletch breaks down a real-world outage scenario that exposed something far more dangerous than a phone failure — single points of failure hiding in plain sight inside PSAP network designs.

Using the Jessamine County, Kentucky incident as a teaching moment, this episode explores why data paths survived when voice paths didn’t, why the Internet wasn’t the villain many expected, and how legacy assumptions about “redundancy” quietly fail when everything rides the same last mile.

Why phones can fail while NG911 data still flows

The difference between redundancy and diversity

How mesh networks reroute automatically when infrastructure breaks

Why the “last mile” is still public safety’s most common failure point

How platforms like RapidSOS can preserve situational awareness during outages

The hidden risk of assuming backup paths exist without validating them

This isn’t a vendor pitch. It’s a design reality check.

Because resilience isn’t something you buy — it’s something you design on purpose.

TiPS: Today in Public Safety is a short-form podcast and video series hosted by Fletch, a NENA-certified ENP, focused on the technology, policy, and real-world realities shaping emergency communications today.

No hype.  No marketing spin.  Just practical insight for the people who answer the call.

For more updates and insights, you can follow me on social media at @Fletch911, and you can visit 911TiPS.com for a complete archive of our previous episodes.

My blogs are available online at Fletch.TV, and my professional website is at Fletch911.com.

Copyright ©2026 Fletch911, LLC Media Productions

http://Fletch911.com

Nothing went wrong this year.

No major outage.

No catastrophic failure.

No after-action report.

But in public safety, the most dangerous incidents are often the ones that almost happen — and then quietly disappear.

In this year-end episode of TiPS: Today in Public Safety, Fletch takes a hard look at near-misses in emergency communications and why they represent one of the biggest blind spots in modern PSAP and ECC operations.

From calls that barely routed correctly…

to GIS data that was wrong — but lucky…

to failovers that worked just long enough…

Near-misses don’t show up in the headlines, but they reveal cracks in systems, dependencies, and assumptions that can’t be ignored.

This episode explores:

Why near-misses are often dismissed instead of documented

How NG911 has made failures quieter — and harder to see

The difference between being resilient and being lucky

Why “nothing happened” may be the most dangerous outcome of all

As we close out 2025 and look toward 2026, this episode challenges leaders, technologists, and call takers alike to ask a different question:

Not “What went wrong?” — but “What almost did?”

Because the incident that never happened is often the one trying hardest to happen next.

Copyright ©2025 Fletch911, LLC Media Productions

http://Fletch911.com

Everyone loves to talk about redundancy in NG911.

Dual fiber paths.

Geographically diverse data centers.

Hot-hot architectures and five-nines availability.

But what if the biggest point of failure in your ESInet isn’t technical at all?

In this episode of TiPS: Today in Public Safety, Fletch dives into the uncomfortable truth behind many NG911 deployments:

while the infrastructure may be physically resilient, the governance, control, and operational models often are not.

This episode breaks down:

Why physical redundancy does not automatically equal operational resilience

How centralized governance and decision-making create hidden ESInet single points of failure

The risk of shared, undocumented dependencies across “independent” systems

Why statewide failures often come from policy, funding, and organizational assumptions — not technology

What true ESInet resilience actually looks like in the real world

If your NG911 design assumes:

One authority is always available

One vendor is always responsive

One GIS truth source is always correct

One funding stream is always protected

Then your system isn’t resilient — it’s optimistic. And optimism is not an architecture.

This episode is required listening for:

✔ 9-1-1 authorities

✔ PSAP leaders

✔ ESInet architects

✔ GIS managers

✔ State and regional NG911 planners

✔ Anyone responsible for designing or governing critical public safety networks

TiPS: Today in Public Safety delivers informed, sometimes uncomfortable, always honest conversations about emergency communications, NG911, technology, policy, and operations — without the marketing fluff.

New episodes drop every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Podcast archive: https://911tips.com

Blogs: https://fletch.tv

Professional site: https://fletch911.com

Before Congress adjourned for the holidays, one number quietly hovered over a U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing like an unpaid bar tab: $15 billion.

That’s the estimated cost to fully modernize America’s 9-1-1 system to Next Generation 911 (NG911).

So here’s the real question:

If NG911 is critical national infrastructure…

Why are states, counties, and local PSAPs still being asked to figure it out on their own?

In this episode of TiPS: Today in Public Safety, Fletch breaks down what that $15 billion number actually represents—where it comes from, what it includes, and why funding NG911 remains one of the most unresolved public safety issues in the country.

Drawing directly from the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing, this episode cuts through the talking points to examine:

Why NG911 is expensive now because we waited too long

What end-to-end NG911 really costs (ESInets, GIS, cybersecurity, training, and operations)

Who has been paying so far—and who hasn’t

Why grant programs alone don’t solve a national infrastructure problem

How cybersecurity requirements continue to raise the stakes

What all of this means for PSAPs operating right now

This isn’t a vendor pitch. It’s not a policy fantasy.

It’s a field-level reality check. Because NG911 done halfway isn’t “next generation”— it’s legacy 9-1-1 with more failure modes.

For more updates and insights, you can follow me on social media at @Fletch911,

visit 911TiPS.com for a complete archive of our previous episodes,

read my blogs at Fletch.TV,

and find my professional work at Fletch911.com.

Stay safe, thanks for listening —

and if you are in Public Safety, thanks for what you do, every day.

I’ll see you next time.

Copyright ©2025 Fletch911, LLC Media Productions

http://Fletch911.com

⚠️ Important Note: “Sim City, PSAP Edition” is NOT a real or commercially available video game. This episode uses the concept as a spoof and thought experiment to explore how high-fidelity simulation environments could—and should—be used to train Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) for real-world emergencies.

In this episode, we take a serious look at how virtual dispatch simulations can help prepare 9-1-1 professionals for the chaos they face every day—without putting lives at risk.

Borrowing the familiar Sim City metaphor, we discuss how realistic, scenario-based PSAP simulations could allow agencies to:

Stress-test staffing, SOPs, and technology

Practice CAD outages, GIS failures, call floods, and NG911 data overload

Train dispatchers using consequence-based decision modeling

Improve readiness, confidence, and muscle memory

Support hiring, training, wellness, and retention

This is not a video game—it’s a conversation about operational rehearsal, similar to flight simulators used by pilots or cyber ranges used by security teams.

If your PSAP has never practiced failure before it happens…

this episode explains why simulation matters now more than ever.

🎧 About TiPS: Today in Public Safety

TiPS delivers practical, sometimes provocative discussions on emergency communications, NG911, ECC operations, AI, and the technologies shaping the future of public safety.

For more updates and insights, you can follow me on social media at Fletch911, and you can

Visit 911tips.com for a complete archive of our previous episodes.

My blogs are available online at Fletch.tv, and

my professional website is at Fletch911.com.

Stay safe, thanks for listening, and if you are in Public Safety, thanks for what you do, every day. I will see you next time.

Copyright ©2025 Fletch911, LLC Media Productions

http://Fletch911.com

A human heart stops.

The brain begins dying in four minutes.

And across America, whether someone survives often depends on one thing:

Did the dispatcher have a standardized Telecommunicator-CPR (T-CPR) protocol… or not?

In this episode of TiPS: Today in Public Safety, Fletch takes a hard, honest look at T-CPR standardization, why states are moving rapidly to mandate it, and how inconsistent or missing protocols are costing lives in the most critical minutes of a cardiac arrest.

This isn’t about technology.

It’s about time.

Why the first four minutes after cardiac arrest matter more than anything else

How dispatch-directed CPR (T-CPR) fills the gap before responders arrive

What goes wrong when T-CPR is inconsistent or left to memory

Why standardized scripts reduce hesitation and save seconds

How states like Arizona, Texas, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Washington, and others are legislating T-CPR requirements

The measurable results of T-CPR standardization, including increased bystander CPR and improved neurological outcomes

The key question every PSAP should be asking:

How long does it take in your center from call answer to first compression?

T-CPR is one of the lowest-cost, highest-impact improvements available in 9-1-1 operations today.

No new hardware.

No new satellites.

No multimillion-dollar systems.

Just:

✔ A standardized protocol

✔ Training

✔ Quality assurance

✔ And confidence at the console

Because survival should never depend on which side of a county line your heart stops on.

👍 If you work in a PSAP, ECC, EMS, Fire, Law Enforcement, or Public Safety leadership — share this episode with your team. Lives depend on it.

That wraps up this episode of TiPS: Today in Public Safety.

Follow me on social media at @Fletch911.

Visit 911TiPS.com for a complete archive of episodes.

Read my long-form blogs at Fletch.TV, and learn more at Fletch911.com.

Thanks for listening — and if you’re in Public Safety, thanks for what you do every single day. Stay safe.

Copyright ©2025 Fletch911, LLC Media Productions

http://Fletch911.com

What happens when your CAD system crashes in the middle of a priority call?

No tickets.

No unit statuses.

No AVL.

Just dispatchers, radios, paper forms, and experience.

In this episode of TiPS: Today in Public Safety, Fletch breaks down the real-world ECC Dark Mode playbook — how 9-1-1 dispatch centers continue operating when Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) goes down.

This episode is built for Public Safety Telecommunicators, ECC supervisors, PSAP directors, NG911 planners, and field responders who know that technology can fail — but operations can’t.

Why CAD outages still happen, even in cloud-based and NG911 environments

When and how to declare a CAD outage to prevent operational chaos

How to run an effective paper CAD workflow

Radio discipline techniques that keep responders safe

How to manage units when AVL and mapping fail

Tactical reroute strategies for Fire, EMS, and Law Enforcement

Why the scribe role is critical during CAD downtime

How to safely restore CAD service without losing incident history or timelines

Whether you work in a 9-1-1 center, manage ECC operations, design NG911 networks, or respond in the field, this episode delivers practical, battle-tested guidance for one of the most feared scenarios in public safety communications.

Because when CAD goes dark…

dispatchers become the system.

👍 If your center has ever gone manual and survived, like, subscribe, and share this episode with your team.

Follow me on social media at Fletch911.

Visit 911TiPS.com for the complete archive of episodes.

Read my blogs at Fletch.TV, and learn more at Fletch911.com.

Thanks for listening — and if you’re in Public Safety, thanks for what you do every single day. Stay safe.

Copyright ©2025 Fletch911, LLC Media Productions

http://Fletch911.com