Begin the thawing of Nancy Grace!!
In the case of Denver PD’s 911 dispatch audit, which revealed 1 in 5 calls did not follow established protocol (and it references life saving response was either late or not even initiated) I would be against firing any individual dispatcher. In Denver’s case ( see my link above), the 911 supervisor should have been fired, for allowing a systemic breakdown.
My responses are not limited to the male or female CPD dispatcher, or Denver’s, but to any city or county or state PD dispatch that has gross negligence, that adversely affects tax payers safety and well being.
This is simply more evidence of why you shouldn’t live in Cleveland.
I have had my own experience with a misguided 911 dispatcher.
For years, I car pooled with a coworker to Indianapolis. Along the route, on I-465, was a huge bill board, that had a police officer saying " if you witness an impaired driver, call 911". One day, there was a very intoxicated driver near us. I called 911.
the 911 dispatcher answered, and I told him my location, as well as a full description of the drunk driver. This asswipe got upset with me, and told me they could not act unless they witnessed the DUI themselves. He hung up on me when I told him of the PD’s own bill board, as I was reading it to him.
The car later crashed (failed to negotiate a curve) - no other cars involved, and likely no injuries. I knew beyond doubt it was going to crash.
Dispatchers are not paid to make up their own rules. They are paid to follow established rules.
Period.
Yeah, like listening to Betty Ong’s call from Flight 11 or Sandra Herold’s call about her pet chimp that was chewing off her friend Charla Nash’s face and fingers. In hindsight, we know what was happening. But would we have reacted any differently in their place at that time? Maybe, and maybe not.
Iggy
Thanks for your reply.
Here is the Charles Ramsey call:
[Dispatcher]
Cleveland 911. Police, ambulance, or fire
[Charles Ramsey]
Yeah, hey bro. I’m at 2207 Seymore, West 25th. Hey, check this out. I just came from McDonald’s, right. I’m on my porch eatin’ my lil’ food, right. This broad is tryna break out the fucking house next door to me. So, it’s a bunch of people street right now and shit. So we like, what’s wrong, what’s the problem? She like, this motherfucker done kidnapped me and my daughter and we been in this bitch. She said her name was Linda Berry or some shit. I don’t know who the fuck that is.I just moved over here, bruh. I don’t … that, you know what I mean.
[Dispatcher]
Sir, sir, sir, sir, sir. Sir, you have to calm down and slow down. Is she still in the street?
[Charles Ramsey]
Uh, uh, Seymore Ave.
[Dispatcher]
And miss, is she still in the street or where did she go?
[Charles Ramsey]
Yeah, I’m lookin’ at her. She right now, she callin’ y’all. She on another phone.
[Dispatcher]
Is she black, white, or hispanic?
[Charles Ramsey]
Uh, she white, but the baby look hispanic.
[Dispatcher]
Okay, what is she wearing?
[Charles Ramsey]
Uh, white tanktop, light blue, uh, sweatpants. Like a wifebeater.
[Dispatcher]
Do you know the address next door, that she said she was in?
[Charles Ramsey]
Yeah, 2207, I’m lookin’ at it.
[Dispatcher]
Okay, I thought that was your address. So that, that house…
[Charles Ramsey]
No, no. I’m smarter than that, bruh. I’m telling you where the crime was, not my house.
[Dispatcher]
Okay look, sir, we can’t talk at the same time. Do you wanna leave your name and number?
[Charles Ramsey]
Charles Ramsey, R-A-M-S-E-Y.
[Dispatcher]
What’s the phone number?
[Charles Ramsey]
…
[Dispatcher]
Are the people she said that did this, are they still in the house?
[Charles Ramsey]
I don’t have a fuckin’ clue, bruh. I’m just standin’ out here with McDonald’s.
[Dispatcher]
Can you ask her if she needs an ambulance?
[Charles Ramsey]
You need an ambulance, or what? She need everything. She’s, she’s in a panic, bruh. I bet she been kidnapped, so put yourself in her shoes.
[Dispatcher]
We’ll send the police out. Thank you.
[Charles Ramsey]
There you go!
Iggy, we are looking forward to your critique. IMHO, this one is nothing compared to the female dispatcher, but I will defer to your opinion, given your title.
Unless I’m missing something, this is an unacceptably racist remark. Back off.
cougar58, you are somewhat strident in this thread; you might wish to take a few deep breaths. I understand you have had some experience with this type thing, but let’s not let this discussion escalate please.
Thanks
Ellen
Ellen, I concur.
PS oddly enough, I am going to Cleveland on a business trip - to implement corrective actions with a supplier. And, no one will get fired. Its the ISO-9000 way, but I have a feeling I won’t get far selling ISO irreversible corrective actions that are required after a single non-conformance, - with everyone on this post. I only wish I could just stop Monday morning quarterbacking it, and role play the idiot on my pond, fishing the next 3 days, then act surprised when the defect surfaces again in 3 months…and a thousand Ford F150s have a major safety recall.
And as far as needing help while in Cleveland ( a city that I cherish, by the way), in lieu of dialing 911, I will instead opt to send smoke signals, or a well penned note in a bottle, set afloat in the Cleveland River.
Have a nice day,
I guess you need to answer 911 calls for a good while before you can really understand where the dispatchers are coming from. . . but, it seemed fine to me. I guess everything worked out, as far as the calls went.
Based solely on the transcript provided by cougar58 in post #26 above:
All Caller’s Interrogation
NOTE: Call takers are not particularly praised nor criticized for information which is given unprompted by a caller.
Caller provided address without prompting. It is always good to clarify just to be doubly sure (i.e. You said 2207 Seymore, West 25th. I want to confirm that is on Seymore Avenue just down from the Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church.) Some jurisdictions might have a Seymore Road, Seymour Blvd, Seemore Way, etc… with slight variations in spelling and/or street designator. But they could be located in entirely different areas. Could have been better, but not bad. B- for failing to verify.
The call taker asked to clarify the location of the victim. VERY GOOD! 
Victims are not always at the scene of the crime by the time police arrive. And many not necessarily be with the caller.
The call taker did ask for verification of the name and phone number of the caller. GOOD! (It appears to the phone number was edited out in this transcript. This is not uncommon in a publicly released call/transcript as a mentioned before.)
Call taker asked if the victim needs an ambulance. GOOD! That would normally prompt questions about the patient and nature/extent of injuries. I don’t see such follow up. That’s BAD!!! 
Third Party Call
This call started out as a third party call - the caller (Mr Ramsey) was not directly a party to the event (the kidnapping). HOWEVER… the caller, unprompted, said the victim was calling 9-1-1 from another line. This should be a red flag for the call taker.
While it is generally preferred to speak directly to a party to an incident, it is not proper for a call taker to presume that the party directly involved in the incident can provide good information. The call taker SHOULD continue to question the caller and ask incident specific questions.
(Though the victim did know the name of the suspect in this case, it is easy to imagine that a kidnapping victim may not know that information. However a neighbor might very well know such information. Thus the importance of properly questioning a third party caller.)
Incident Specific Questioning
This was almost completely lacking. :smack: NOT ACCEPTABLE!!! The call taker asked, “Are the people she said that did this, are they still in the house?” And that’s it. Really that is the only real relevant incident specific question asked. Even though there is almost certainly not a specific guide card for such an incident, the call taker fails to ask any obvious common sense follow up questions: (name(s) of suspect(s). where are they now? description? direction/means of travel? any weapons involved? etc…) BAD!!!
Unprompted, the caller did reveal existence of two victims - whom he describes as a lady he names as “Linda Berry” and her daughter. The call taker fails to ask obvious common sense based follow up questions. (anyone else involved? where are they? names and descriptions?) :mad:
The call taker asked for a description of the victim. This is occasionally done. Whether this is a priority might depend upon local protocols. The call taker gets no criticism from me but no bonus points either.
Now my wild speculation. —
I am guessing that Mr Ramsey was a bit excitable during his call and was speaking a bit fast. The call taker seems to allude to that.
It can be quite difficult to get all of that information so quickly. We have the benefit of repeatedly reviewing a transcript or replying the audio several times to be sure we get it all. The call taker does not have that luxury.
So it is important for the call taker to take control of the call. Slow down the caller. Reassure them once help is on the way. And I would certainly expect to stay on the line with the caller until help arrives, or in this instance, until I can be sure the victim is on the phone with another 9-1-1 call taker who will stay on the line until help arrives.
I’ll listen to the call later. I know full well that a transcript and audio recording can seem very different even if it is of the same event.
Yeah, remember when that woman saw the naked teenage boy outside Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment, and the officer snickered and said, “Intoxicated naked Asian male, returned to his sober boyfriend. My partner and I are getting deloused at the station” and then Dahmer killed the boy? :rolleyes: :mad:
My primary concern would apply to both calls, really.
They should have stayed on the line until police arrived. That would also be in the police’s best interests - if the kidnapper has returned, and is armed, for example, it would be important for them to know that!
I blame all the idiots who call 911 erroneously and make it harder to distingush real callers from whackjobs. I used to work closely with policeman and dispatchers and it was only a matter of time before they were confronted with a crazy person whose emergency existed only in their head. After hearing the 911 call from the person who called because the McDonald’s drive thru lane was going too slowly, I can see how hard it is to filter out true emergencies. “I was kidnapped 10 years ago, and just escaped” is a pretty implausible scenario, no?
Honestly, had I not known in advance that it was a real emergency, I’d have initially thought that Charles Ramsey was trying to pull one over on me. Or an SNL character!
Isn’t it the dispatcher’s job to treat all calls as legitimate emergencies until proven otherwise, though? I mean, that’s just my assumption, but I kind of don’t want the guy on the other end of the line to be making a judgment call about whether my emergency sounds “too crazy to be true” or not.
You need the police right away? You’ve been kidnapped and held for 10 years, along with 2 other women and a child? *And your abductor is due back any second? * And he’s violent?
Now, now, child, no need to panic. Just calm down and have a nice cup of tea while we sort this out. One lump or two?
If all of your potential responding officers are off checking out previous 911 calls, how do you decide which one of them to retask for the newest call?
There is one good plausible reason for the 911 operator getting off the line instead of staying on until police arrived, and that is if there were calls queuing at the time. In that case, the operator wouldn’t know if someone who might be having a heart attack is stuck on hold, when they should be a bigger priority.
For you people who work/have worked in 911 call centers, do your phone lines ever queue up? If not, how much downtime do operators usually have between calls?
I dunno. I assume there’s some kind of protocol for this. I mean, if that protocol is “go with the least crazy-sounding caller” then OK; it’s just that I’m not sure that’s a really great standard to use when you’re dealing with extremely emotional people who are calling in the middle of major emergencies.
We get LOTS of calls that are not in any real sense an emergency. It takes up a lot of our time. We talk to lots of babies playing with a phone. And some extra special callers provide false information hoping to speed up police response.
Something like this “I was kidnapped 10 years ago” call does sound pretty amazing – hardly believable. But apparently two calls were received on it (one from the victim and one from the neighbor) which tends to add credibility.
Absolutely. But do not turn off your internal bulls–t detector. If it sounds unreal it probably is unreal. Trust but verify. And verification usually requires sending an emergency responder.
Unfortunately some people make false 9-1-1 reports in an effort to divert police away from a particular area. This allows the caller and/or his/her accomplice to engage in criminal mischief elsewhere with a lesser chance of being caught in the act.
Prioritize. The officer dealing with the lowest priority call gets diverted first. Some slight allowance may be made depending upon the totality of the circumstances.
So an officer dealing with a complaint of loud music from a party SHOULD get diverted if a call reporting a burglary in progress comes in. If such an officer is still on the lowest priority of all the active calls and a report of an active shooter/shots fired comes in then that officer SHOULD be diverted again.
Our performance standard is to answer 99% of our calls within 10 seconds (about 3 rings). That standard may vary from location to location. The phone system is capable of handling more calls than we have people available to answer the calls so we can get overwhelmed.
This occasionally requires briefly placing a 9-1-1 call on hold to answer another. Most any call is subject to being placed on hold unless the 9-1-1 call taker is in the middle of giving CPR instructions.
A significant problem is the need to weed through numerous calls coming in on very public events (e.g. car accident backing up traffic at a major intersection) without missing a similar event at a different location (different accident at different intersection). So a brief questioning of every caller is required to be sure they are not reporting a different event.
We can go straight from one call to the next at times. Other times (say at 3am on Tuesday morning) it could be several minutes between calls. This may vary tremendously according to size of the population served and staffing levels.
Interesting stuff, you should do an ‘Ask the emergency dispatcher’ thread.
I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that like the emergency services in general its not an exact science, its a job about people at the end of the day and we all know how problematic that can be!