Pols want city to release independent report on 911 system

Local pols and fire union officials blasted City Hall Tuesday for trying to keep a review of the city's 9-1-1 emergency system under wraps.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer urged Mayor Michael Bloomberg Tuesday to immediately turn over the 216-page independent report.

"City Hall has kept us in the dark far too long," Stringer said in a news conference Tuesday. "We need to understand exactly what is going wrong or right with this system."

"Clearly the system is in need of major reform and overhaul," he added.

In a separate and unrelated news conference, Bloomberg called the review a "preliminary report," and said it wasn't ready to be published.

"When everything's clear ... we'll be happy to release it," Bloomberg told reporters. "You don't just take all the working papers of any agency and put them out there."

But Stringer, who is believed to be eyeing a mayoral run in 2013, slammed Bloomberg's defense that the report was only a draft, calling it "a delay tactic."

"If this report is simply a draft, then give us what you know," he said.

The city began an overhaul of its 911 system in 2004, which is over budget and behind schedule.

Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy said the new system is "artificially reporting lower response times" to fire and medical emergency calls by not counting time spent by police officials collecting information before they transfer the calls to the FDNY.

Bloomberg said "response times are better than they've ever been."