911
Three digits that save lives. So simple a five-year-old can do it. Detroit Freep:
The first 911 call was coded by operators as “pk” for prank.
The second call, three hours later, was coded “family trouble.”
On both occasions, a 46-year-old woman lay unconscious in her nightgown on the floor of her Detroit apartment as her 5-year-old son tried to get help. And on neither call did dispatchers request EMS.
On the first call, 911 dispatcher Sharon Nichols, 45, told the boy, Robert Turner, “I’m gonna send the police to your house and find out what’s going on with you.” Then she hung up, according to transcripts. She never requested any action.
Only after the second call and a scolding did 911 operator Terri Sutton, 48, request a police response. Police arrived and found Sherrill Turner dead. They then called for EMS assistance. It was later learned that Turner died of an enlarged heart.
But before calling police, Sutton told Robert: “You shouldn’t be playing on the phone,” and “Now put her on the phone before I send the police out there to knock on your door and you’re going to be in trouble.”
Both operators are on trial in Detroit’s 36th District Court, charged with misdemeanor counts of willful neglect of duty in connection with the Feb. 20, 2006, phone calls at 5:59 p.m. and 9:02 p.m. They face up to a year in jail if convicted.
Robert, now 7, dressed in a Spider-Man T-shirt, testified Tuesday that he put his hands on his mother’s chest and didn’t feel a heartbeat. He said he called 911.
“She hung up on me,” Robert said. “She said, ‘Stop playing on the phone.’ ”
When Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Lora Weingarden asked him how the operator treated him, the boy replied, “Not good.”
E.J. Reeves, who supervises the 911 call center in Detroit, testified that if a child calls in and says his or her mother has passed out, then EMS should be requested before police.
She also testified operators are trained to “assume any call that comes in is an emergency.”
Sutton’s lawyer, David Lee, contended in his opening statement that his client called police, proving she did not ignore the boy.
Nichols’ lawyer, Cornelius Pitts, told jurors that Robert’s mother already was dead when the call came in. He said the trial will expose flaws in Detroit’s 911 system and that the city is trying to scapegoat the dispatchers.
“It was a rush to judgment based on this city administration’s cowardice, ineptness, their interest in saving their own hides, to blame the operators,” Pitts said.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco,AP:
SAN FRANCISCO - One of the men mauled in a Christmas Day tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo pleaded for help and asked why it was taking so long to get it, according to a 911 recording released yesterday.
A dispatcher told the young man that paramedics could not go to his aid until they could be sure they weren’t in danger of being attacked themselves. Either Paul or Kulbir Dhaliwal made the 911 call, though it was not immediately clear which one.
“It’s a matter of life and death!” the young man shouts minutes into the call.
“I understand that, but at the same time we have to make sure the paramedics don’t get chewed out, because if the paramedics get hurt then nobody’s going to help you,” the dispatcher replies. Seconds later, the brother shouts, “My brother’s about to die out here!”
The dispatcher tells him to calm down before the frustrated caller asks, “Can you fly a helicopter out here? Because I don’t see a (expletive) ambulance.”
Teasing tigers, bad. Emergency personnel hanging back while people bleed to death, not good.
Topics: incompetence, moronocy
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:45 am on Wednesday, January 16, 2008
4 Responses to “911”
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January 16th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Although this is the U.S. Navy’s “catch and release system” , I think it should be tried on those that think it’s a nuisance, to do their jobs.
Granted, I’m sure ‘they’ receive crank calls, but after a few of the above, of course with a phone so ‘they’ can dial 911, ‘they’ would probably take their duties with a tad more seriousness.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Damn it….Let us try this, again. This is what I meant…I think.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Ta Da…it woirked.
January 17th, 2008 at 1:50 am
So this is what happens when we train our children to call 911 in an emergency? Outrageous. It is difficult to imagine what that poor child went through for over three hours. Let us hope that more happens to these operators than a series of sensitivity training classes. Like maybe lose their jobs.