CHARLESTON, W.Va. (Legal Newsline) – The parents of a five-week-old infant who can sue a West Virginia county for what they claim is a 911 dispatcher’s bad advice to drive the baby to a hospital instead of waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
After the high profile mishandling of a 911 call hours before a mass shooting in Philadelphia’s Kingsessing neighborhood, City Council’s Committee on Public Safety held a hearing on Tuesday intended to look at problems and possible solutions to issues in the city’s 911 dispatch system.
The next year will see some important steps forward as Arlington County looks to uncouple law enforcement from its response to homelessness and behavioral health crises.
In 2024, the county will implement new protocols and a call system to ensure people experiencing behavioral health crises — due to a mental illness, substance use disorder or disability — receive services rather than get arrested and jailed.
June 27, 2022, around 1:44 a.m., a man lost in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona called 911. An emergency services dispatcher for Pima County answered. The man, clearly distressed, tried to describe his surroundings and explain that he was lost, wet and freezing. But before he could finish, the dispatcher interrupted him, saying, “I don’t understand, un momento,” and abruptly transferred the call to the U.S. Border Patrol. The agent who picked up shushed the caller as he started to speak —“Cállate!” (“Be quiet!”) — and spoke to the dispatcher instead, in English. Then they hung up, leaving the man to the agent. An incident report suggests that no actions were taken to follow up or locate the lost caller: “No additional calls have come from the subject. … At this time the caller has not been identified and not located.”
Both firefighters and dispatchers certainly deserve to get a pay raise. Firefighters are ready to charge into a burning house to save someone at the drop of a hat. Several county firefighters are also paramedics, so they are usually the first people you will be there to help you in a medical emergency.
“The text read, ‘this is Akron, we got a 911 call, is everything okay?’ And then she literally responds back with ‘help’ and the address,” Capt. David Laughlin with the Akron Police Department told WJW.
Police told WEWS they were able to locate the woman who called 911 along with a 26-year-old man in the home who had been shot and was in critical condition.
