Dane County 911 center staff made errors- homicide, no police dispatch

[undeterred]

MATTHEW DeFOUR
608-252-6144
[e-mail]

Dane County 911 center staff made three errors Monday night in handling two calls about a disturbance in Lake Edge Park that resulted in a homicide, according to a report released Friday.

The most serious error, which may have prevented police from stopping a fight 90 minutes before Mark Gregory Johnson, 37, was found beaten to death, was made by a newer 911 operator who failed to correctly code the second call as a higher priority. The report released Friday looks at why police weren't dispatched after a neighbor made two non-emergency calls to the 911 center saying that an argument at the park was escalating.

The report, which omits all names, indicates the male operator is a "newer, probationary communicator" who was on the job for seven months "and as such his overall skills are still developing, … though they are overall acceptable." While on the phone, the operator was looking up the first call in the center's computer system to add comments which "limited his ability to actively listen and react to the caller."

The caller indicated the "volume and the violence" of the previously reported argument was "escalating." The call-taker wrote that things were "getting very loud out there now." Another error was the operator who took the first call incorrectly assured the anonymous caller that a police officer "absolutely" would be dispatched.

Police officers are assigned to noise complaints if two units are available. The report said officers were available for eight minutes between the first and second calls, but for five of those minutes, another incident was taking up the Madison police radio channel.

The third error happened when a dispatcher dropped the original call from the dispatch queue at 10:48 p.m., four minutes before a third call came in reporting a body in the park. The dispatcher apparently didn't notice there was a second call related to the first call, the internal investigation found.

"I know that both of us regret that these errors occurred," 911 center interim director Kathy Krusiec wrote to Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk. "I am working with internal staff, as well as the Employee Relations Division and Corporation Counsel to apply the corrections deemed necessary to make such errors much less likely in the future."

The report indicates the incident was complicated by Madison police being busy with two other high priority calls during the time of the first two calls. One was a report of a man with a gun and the other was an intoxicated man yelling at a passerby.

Madison police criticized the report for playing up the role of Madison police officer availability. "If done correctly, this would have been handled in a seamless manner," Assistant Chief Randy Gaber said. "There is no fault on the officers in this case at all."

http://www.madison.com/wsj/topstories/313391

No police were dispatched when the UW student Brittany Zimmerman called 911 as she was being murdered either, and that homicide is still unsolved. :wtf:

[undeterred]

1. Update: Dispatcher didn't hear screaming police insist was on 911 tape, Dane County officials say

WED., DEC 3, 2008 - 1:25 PM
Update: Dispatcher didn't hear screaming police insist was on 911 tape, Dane County officials say
MATTHEW DeFOUR, ED TRELEVEN and SANDY CULLEN
Wisconsin State Journal

A day after accounts of Brittany Zimmermann's murder and 911 call were unintentionally released to the public, Dane County officials said they still don't know why a 911 operator didn't hear screams and a struggle. But 911 center interim director Kathy Krusiec said steps have been taken to reduce the chance other errors — like the failure to call back Zimmermann's phone after the call was disconnected — will happen in the future.

She also reaffirmed the center in May ruled out outside distractions, equipment problems and the operator's hearing as factors in the operator's inability to hear the screaming. The operator wasn't working overtime and the center was fully staffed at the time.

Still, many details of the county's internal investigation into what happened on April 2, the day Zimmermann, a 21-year-old UW-Madison student, was killed in her West Doty Street apartment, are unknown. Officials have yet to release an unedited version of the center's findings — partially because of an ongoing disciplinary investigation into the employee's actions. It's unclear whether the redacted part of the report contains the operator's account of what happened.

Officials at the union that represents the county's 911 operators haven't commented on the matter since the county released the partial report. The operator had requested to transfer to a different county job before the incident because of required overtime, a union spokeswoman said in May.

The county has said its disciplinary investigation hasn't been completed because officials could not use information tied up in the ongoing police investigation. Krusiec said Tuesday she anticipates the personnel investigation will be completed sometime this month. The county also hasn't released an audio recording of the 911 call, and law enforcement officials said Tuesday they will continue to request that the recording remain a confidential part of the investigation.

Attorneys representing a group of media organizations, including the Wisconsin State Journal, that have sued for the withheld documents and 911 recording asked Dane County Circuit Court Judge Richard Niess on Tuesday to order the documents be released immediately because of the information disclosed Monday.

"It is apparent that the public was previously misled as to the alleged importance of maintaining the confidentiality of this information, or at the very least, that any such interests have been greatly overstated," attorney April Barker wrote. Dane County Corporation Counsel Marcia MacKenzie didn't dispute the need to hold a hearing on the matter as soon as possible. A hearing is set for Dec. 10.

On Tuesday, the county wouldn't confirm or deny a description of the 911 call contained in a Madison police detective's sworn statement in a search warrant unsealed Monday. The Madison detective said "the disconnect call started with the sound of a woman screaming and the line remains active and open picking up the background sounds of a struggle for short period of time."

Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, who listened to the recording in early April, said the detective's description of the call was accurate. Cieslewicz said the Zimmermann 911 call has raised two issues: the information on the tape as it relates to catching the killer and the information on the tape as it relates to the overall management of the 911 center.

"Clearly in my mind the first trumps the latter," Cieslewicz said. "I wasn't going to push for the release of information that would compromise their ability to find the person who did this. … The issues with regard to the management of the 911 center have been pretty well vetted and discussed and changes are being made in response to those things without the release of the tape."

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk spokesman Josh Wescott said the county isn't discussing the content of the call "out of respect for the wishes of law enforcement and the district attorney."
Since the Zimmermann incident, Dane County has changed its policy for how police are dispatched to cell-phone calls and added to the 2009 budget a new computer system, police dispatch software and 11 new positions to address overtime.

The center also mishandled a call last month in connection with a homicide. A neighbor of Lake Edge Park called twice to report an escalating argument, but an operator coded the second call incorrectly and police weren't sent until 90 minutes later. A man found severely beaten later died and police arrested a suspect. Following the incident, Falk ordered the center to review its dispatch policies.

Madison police and District Attorney Brian Blanchard are continuing to oppose release of the audio tape of the 911 call made from Zimmermann's phone at 12:20 p.m. April 2. Police did not respond until 48 minutes later, after a second call to 911 from Jordan Gonnering, Zimmermann's fiance, who found her dead at their West Doty Street apartment. Gonnering was quickly ruled out as a suspect.

No request to reseal six search warrants related to the Zimmermann case was filed before the previous seal expired last week — an "oversight" according to law enforcement officials. Blanchard and police shared the blame for the details of the case being released. Blanchard said he wasn't aware of any steps that needed to be taken to prevent a repeat.

"Out of the hundreds of sealing orders, I don't know of any instance of this ever happening before," Blanchard said. "I don't anticipate it happening again."

Blanchard and Police Chief Noble Wray have defended keeping the details of the case and the 911 call confidential because releasing the information may jeopardize the police investigation. Blanchard pointed to false confessions, for example, saying "we need to be able to test them against the reality that we know."

"The presumption of newspapers is that everything is open. The presumption of the criminal justice system is that facts of a crime should be treated as confidential because we don't know what facts we will come up with. These are all guesses about the future," Blanchard said.

As time goes on, he said, the presumption of openness grows and prior information will be less and less critical, to the point where a judge might find no reason to keep it sealed. "The reason we seek confidentiality is that we don't know how (release of the warrants) will impact the case."

Police Central District Capt. Mary Schauf said she believes that at the time the search warrants were sealed "it was needed."

Schauf said she would have preferred the search warrants remained sealed so that details, such as the time of the 911 call from Zimmermann's cell phone, were not made public. But Schauf said that while she doesn't see "any huge harm" in what was released, it is hard to predict whether the fact that any particular detail is now known to the public could have a negative impact on finding Zimmermann's killer in the future.

http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/316867

The 911 problems could be the undoing of Kathleen Falk- she is up for re-election in April for Dane County executive and has an opponent who is making an issue of it.

[ewagner]

2. Zimmerman is from

our City....

This is one of the most disturbing cases of 911 call center screw-ups I've ever heard...but it looks like it is the "norm" for Madison

Our Central dispatch just took a big hit for their reaction to a call about a plane crash...the hit was well-deserved.

[undeterred]

3. Not only did she lose her life

but the person who murdered her in cold blood in the middle of the day has not been apprehended. She lived a few blocks from a police station. No police were dispatched till her boyfriend found her dead almost an hour later.

I moved here from Chicago in part because it was safer, but the 911 dispatch seemed to work better in Chicago.

Kathleen Falk is a competent executive and a Democrat- but for this to happen 2 years in a row is indefensible. I don't think electing a Republican is an answer, but people are justifiably angry.