Taking a few days off can be hell. As anyone in the job place can attest…Mondays suck. In my case, I am returning from the Idaho equivalent of the dark side of the Moon. A cold, constantly windy, rural area where the Internet is still required to wear the same day glow orange warning triangle so prevalent on all the slow moving farm vehicles in the area.
I find myself actively avoiding the Internet when I am there, despite it’s siren call to me. So I am behind in the news. I spent yesterday just trying to catch up.
So now I am forced to pick one of the many topics I fell behind on…Iranian plutonium, Immigration, the Moussaoui trial…but I’ll stick with one close to my heart.
For those of you who have been following my rants and raves, you know I spent a number of years in law enforcement. So the horrible issue with 911 in Detroit has me foaming at the mouth.
A 5-year-old boy called 911 after his mother collapsed and lay dying. The boy did absolutely the correct thing. He called for help. The trained 911 operator at the other end of the line offered no help and no comfort. Instead she assumed the call was a prank and berated the child and threatened him, saying he would get in trouble.
Police did eventually show up at the scene. Unfortunately too late to be of any aid to the boy’s mother, she died.
The outrage over the incident prompted the release of another incident that occurred last year. A woman called police after her husband had shot her in the head. The “trained” dispatcher listened in disbelief and then asked if the woman was a mental patient. She further stated that if she had been shot in the head she couldn’t very well be making the 911 call and that it must be “a miracle”. The woman called twice for help and was disregarded twice. Help was only sent after the woman called her son in another state and HE called for assistance.
So now they are being sued. Good! I hope the city is prepared to hand out a couple very large checks. Believe me they will settle. They don’t want this to go to court.
Despite groups coming forward to defend the dispatchers…their behavior in indefensible. Now they are spinning it to highlight understaffing and poor training. Well, despite “understaffing” the calls got through, only to be disregarded. Poor training…I believe, but it doesn’t take any training to treat someone with basic human dignity and respect. All these dispatchers had to do was pass on the information so a Police Officer could have checked it out in person.
That my friends…is the procedure. Even if the dispatcher believes the call may be one of the many bogus or non-emergency calls that flood dispatch offices across our nation everyday.
These people deserved better. They deserved to be taken seriously. They deserved some reassurance from the dispatchers that someone might just be willing to help. These dispatchers took it upon themselves to negate the entire process. To be judge and jury based of a few moments of desperate conversation.
They were wrong and they deserve to be held fully accountable for their actions or more appropriately in this case, inaction. I just hope they are also personally sued in addition to the lawsuits being directed at the dispatch center and local government.
Still…whatever happens to the dispatchers cannot bring back the young boy’s mother or return feeling and mobility to the woman who was shot and left paralyzed. These things may have come to pass even if the dispatchers HAD done their freaking jobs, and despite heroic efforts by police and emergency personnel, but now we will never know.
All I do know is that I would have preferred to read a story about a heroic young boy who saved his mother by calling 911 instead of this horrific example of callous neglect.
If any of you can think of anything that might sway my opinion about the dispatcher I’d love to hear it…because I did some dispatch duties and cannot think of anything to say in their defense.
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