A man called 911 five times while his house burned down and never got through.
Newsom spent $502 million to fix that – and made it worse.
Now California's 911 system is on the verge of catastrophic failure – and life or death calls could be met with silence.
How Gavin Newsom Spent $502 Million and Made California 911 Worse
In his first week as governor, Gavin Newsom called California's analog 911 system "antiquated."
He promised a modern replacement within three years.
The original estimate: $132 million.
Seven years later, California burned through $502 million – nearly four times the projection – on a regionalized system so broken it had to be scrapped entirely.
California made a fatal mistake from the start.
Every other state that successfully deployed Next Generation 911 chose a single statewide provider.
Newsom's team divided the state into four sectors, each with its own contractor – an approach no other state had ever attempted.
Nobody on the planet had built a system like this.
When it collapsed, that wasn’t an accident. It was predictable.
California 911 Calls Are Being Dropped and People Are Dying
Tuolumne County went live first – and immediately fell apart.
Dispatchers couldn't process calls, identify caller locations, or pull up phone numbers.
Transfer a call and the line went silent.
The county's network blacked out for 12 hours straight.
A man called 911 five times to report his garage was on fire and couldn't get through.
Dispatchers were unable to connect after receiving what internal records described as a 911 call of an active heart attack.
A whistleblower put it plainly: "Could you imagine making the scariest phone call of your life and thinking no one is coming?"
In Riverside County, Desert Hot Springs dispatchers logged more than 100 trouble tickets between 2023 and 2024 – dropped calls, failed callbacks, dead audio.
One dispatcher told a woman requesting an ambulance for her boyfriend that the transfer system was "not working," causing what records called a delay in emergency medical aid.
In 2025, a woman called 911 for her stepfather – fallen, unresponsive.
The system kicked out multiple dispatchers before rebooting.
Emergency personnel eventually reached the home and found the man dead on the floor.
A Desert Hot Springs dispatcher filed a whistleblower complaint directly accusing the Next Gen system of contributing to the man's death.
California’s Office of Emergency Services said the incident had nothing to do with their new system.
The man is still dead.
California 911 System Outages Are Getting Worse and Nobody Has a Fix
The 1970s analog backup now holding everything together is collapsing under years of deferred maintenance.
California's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office warned that the legacy system is "in very poor condition and is subject to failure."
The outage numbers tell the story.
In 2017, California's legacy 911 system averaged 17,000 minutes of outages per month.
By 2022, that jumped to 59,000 minutes per month.
Between October 2022 and June 2024, the system logged 22,001 total hours of outages.
Since then, Cal OES quietly stopped publishing the data.
As of this past February, 339 dispatch centers hadn't had maintenance on their call-handling equipment in seven to ten years or more.
Some parts are no longer manufactured.
Oakland's 2023 grand jury found dispatchers ordering components off eBay because no supplier carried them anymore.
One vendor had a single technician left in the entire company who could still read the legacy software code.
The grand jury's conclusion: Oakland faces "catastrophic failure" of its 911 system.
In 2019, an off-duty Oakland cop named Danny Chor was stabbed in the neck while confronting a woman vandalizing cars.
He called 911 multiple times.
Every call failed.
A bystander's call also failed.
Someone reached dispatchers through a private employer line.
First responders drove Chor to the hospital in the back of a patrol car because they didn't think he'd survive waiting for an ambulance.
The Contractors Who Failed California 911 Got Rewarded With New Contracts
After the Next Gen system collapsed, the Newsom administration announced the same failed vendors could bid on the new statewide replacement contract.
One of them – Atos Public Safety, which collected $198 million under the failed regional program – was handed an interim contract extension through 2026.
California is paying more money to the same company that already failed.
Jeff Schlueter, COO of Synergem Technologies, another vendor that cashed in on the failed system, was blunt: "It's going to be hundreds of millions…to actually redo what they've already built."
The Legislative Analyst's Office recommended the state "pause" all implementation until Cal OES can answer basic questions – including, remarkably, "What Is the Nature and Scope of the Problem?"
Half a billion dollars spent and seven years gone.
The state still can't define what it's trying to fix.
Cal OES set a new completion target of 2030.
Dispatchers aren't buying it.
"They said that ten years ago," one told City Journal.
Pennsylvania deployed a working NG911 system.
Massachusetts deployed a working NG911 system.
North Carolina completed its upgrade.
California chose a design no other state had attempted, signed contracts with four vendors instead of one, watched the whole thing fail, and is now asking the same contractors to try again.
A systems expert formerly with LAPD told City Journal exactly what it will take for Sacramento to get serious: a "come-to-Jesus" system failure.
His prediction for what follows: "we're effed."
Gavin Newsom bragged about fixing this in 2019.
The dispatchers are still buying parts on eBay.
And somewhere in California tonight, someone is going to need to call 911 – and Gavin Newsom will have no answer for what happens next.
Sources:
- Christopher F. Rufo and Haley Strack, "California's Antiquated 911 Dispatch Is on the Verge of Going Dark," City Journal, April 29, 2026.
- Laurel Rosenhall, "Calif. Scraps $450M NextGen 911 System, Proposes New Design," Government Technology, November 24, 2025.
- Dan Walters, "Newsom's 911 Debacle Is California's Latest Failed Tech Adoption," CalMatters, December 2, 2025.
- StateScoop, "California's Extended Pause on Next-Generation 911 Project Raises Concerns," May 22, 2025.
- Alameda County Civil Grand Jury, Oakland 911 Dispatch System Report, 2023.
