Fla. House Committee Passes Training Bill

A Florida state House of Representatives committee has approved legislation that would set up a voluntary 208-hour training standard for the state’s dispatchers, after hearing tearful testimony from the father of Denise Lee, who was kidnapped, raped and murdered earlier this year. Rick Goff, who is a sheriff’s sergeant for Charlotte County where the abduction occurred, urged the legislators to support the bill in an earlier e-mail. “It is the family as well as the whole communities’ opinion that if this call would have been handled correctly that my daughter would still be alive and home with her family,” Goff wrote a legislator. After the hearing, Sen. Dave Aronberg (D) told a reporter, “”Because of our poor budget year, we’re not going to make it mandatory. Hopefully everyone will voluntarily subscribe to these standards.” Of the 31 states with dispatcher training standards, 28 make them mandatory, a legislator pointed out. A Senate committee will consider their version of the bill next week.