It would almost certainly improve the situation for the next family to have to call 911 in a similar situation. If they are seriously going to let this woman continue to work there after this colossal lapse in judgment, then what, short of a large settlement against them, will convince them that they do so at their own risk?
Oh, and partly thanks to this dispatcher’s inaction, a kid is now without his mom. A large sum of cash would certainly (and deservedly) improve his situation too.
My point was that suing a public service such as 911 is only going to serve to benefit that one family when they receive their check in the mail. Let’s not further punish the citizens of the town for the really really stupid actions of one individual by suing the system, who now have an underfunded emergency services which doesn’t serve to benefit anyone.
I think the idea, OneCentStamp, is that suing the emergency services deparment for $20 million (for example) isn’t exactly going to leave lots of money left over to improve the services.
This person absolutely needs to be fired. “long service” is not a valid reason to allow a person to remain on the job when they screw up this much. Other people with long service can then take it for granted that, no matter how badly they perform, they will keep their jobs. If you can’t fire someone for doing such a bad job that a person dies, then when can you?
My point is that civil judgments often serve another purpose than simply making one person or group rich at the expense of another. There’s also the punitive/deterrent element. If the City of Detroit really doesn’t think this dispatcher should be fired, and should be allowed to continue taking 911 calls, then maybe they need to know that they’re opening themselves up to similar lawsuits in the future by doing so.
And yes, I still think the little kid should be well taken care of for his loss, which may well have been avoidable if the dispatcher was doing her job in the first place.
This is apalling. I didn’t think this could happen. I thought that whenever ‘9-1-1’ was dialed, someone HAD to come and investigate it. About ten years ago I lived in a duplex and there was some strange gremlin in the phone wires that made it seem that someone was calling from the unit next door, even though it was empty and there was no phone service there. The cops came at least half a dozen times, mostly in the middle of the night before we got it sorted out. Even my putting up a ‘Nobody here has dialed 9-1-1’ sign did not deter them from knocking. And what about those miracle cases where the dog or cat or bird or whatever has dialed ‘9-1-1’ and saved either themselves or their owners? And what if you dial and then pass out?
I expect the 911 operator is a union employee; if she has “years” of service, firing her would probably violate the contract and could result in a wildcat strike being called. I personally would hope the boy’s family would contract with a seven foot tall, 300 pound grief councilor who would call on the woman and council her on the grief he was going to cause her.
Bullshit. It’ll also make sure that they get this incompetant asshole out of there, rather than allow her to keep her job because of seniority.
This is outrageous. Even if it WAS a prank call, sending over the police to scare the shit out of the boy would probably be in order. Once, when I was thirteen and pissed at my mom, I started dialing 9-11, saying I was going to report her for abuse, but she pressed the disconnect on the phone. They still sent over an officer who tore me a new one for wasting his time, the emergency worker’s time, and for being a spoiled little brat.
The sad thing is, I’m not surprised it happened. I am surprised it hasn’t happened sooner, however. I feel sorry for that kid, but I’m not at all surprised that Detroit’s 911 operator blows chunks.
This is the same city’s 911 service that, when my grandmother called them because someone was breaking into her house while she was there, told her that the police wouldn’t arrive for at least half an hour to an hour and would she please detain the intruder for them until they (police) arrived.
I don’t understand what happened here, either, but I hope there is more to this story than we’re seeing. I can (somewhat) understand the 911 operator’s supervisor not firing her if she has been an exemplary employee up to this point and this was her first mistake. Unfortunately, she’s in the kind of work where you simply aren’t allowed to make mistakes, because people die. She sounds like someone who’s been at it too long and has become complacent about the repercussions of her actions.
What’s the best outcome from this? Detroit has a massively overhauled 911 system that is improved in every possible way, and the young boy is given a settlement that makes his life without a mother easier financially. As for the employee, I don’t what should be done with her with so little information. If you fire everyone who makes a mistake at life-and-death jobs, there would be no one left working at them.
Oops, I appear to have contradicted myself. What I mean is that everyone in life-and-death jobs should try to achieve 100% accuracy 100% of the time, but in reality, no one is perfect and everyone makes a mistake eventually.
I can think of one good reason to keep this woman on, but I don’t know how valid it is. I’ll float it here anyway.
Emergency services might be seriously understaffed. They need everyone they can get. And they don’t get a whole lot of job applicants. When they do, the training is long, difficult, and expensive. And not every trainee has The Right Stuff. Many fail. Therefore, when they get an operator they have a significant asset and investment. An operator with 30 years experience is even more of one.
Now suppose this particular asset has a track record of saving hundreds or thousands of lives. Let’s say she’s saved 1000 and lost 1. That’s a pretty good batting average.
And after all, some surgical patients die on the table because a surgeon screwed up. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. In most cases, after an investigation, the doctor will continue to perform surgery. One mistake shouldn’t kill an entire career, especially if that career is otherwise illustrious.
Could that be a possible reason they’re keeping her on?
There are acceptable and unacceptable mistakes. If she sent the responders to 325 Franklin Street instead of 325 Franklin Avenue that would be a mistake that might be acceptable, if it was the first one in a long service. Failing to send responders at all is not an acceptable mistake.
That would be fine if it were a mistake, as in she got the address wrong or something. There’s a difference between the doctor slipping the scalpel a bit too far and showing up to the OR drunk. This 911 operator assumed the child was making a prank call, and did not send over police to investigate. I think in 911 cases, you err on the side of caution. As Guin stated, she got the stuffing scared out of her for calling when it was not an emergency.
Whenever we went to visit my grandparents, us kids had to be able to recite their address by heart and demonstrate how to call 091 (national police; now all emergency services in spain can be called by using 112) before we could even go to the bathroom without a parent in tow.
I’ve had people reject my resumé because my voice sounds young (sorry, it’s genetic). They’ve placed an ad in the newspaper and the only contact information is “call this number”, so I call. Kind of cute when they say “oh, no no, we’re not interested, you see, we’re looking for someone with more than 2 years experience” and I say “oh well, I have 10, but since you can’t be bothered to ask before you reject me…” and I hear them sputtering as I lower the phone.
Now I imagine having been lost in Barcelona, going to the nearest pay phone (back when they existed), calling 091 and being hung up on for being too young to be taken seriously!
Mind if I do my swearing in Spanish? English never seems quite strong enough for complete assholes like that 911 operator :mad:
