A Pickaway County (Ohio) sheriff’s dispatcher has been fired after failing to take action on two citizen calls reporting that a highway intersection stop sign that had been obscured with plastic wrap by two teenagers as a prank. Hours after the calls, two vehicles collided at the intersection, killing an 83 year-old woman and injuring her 80 year-old sister. Kimberly Chapman was fired today for neglect of duty, incompetency and malfeasance when handling the calls on Aug. 17th. According to Lt. John Monce, the teens purchased plastic wrap at a Walmart store and wrapped it around the stop sign. A passing motorist called the sheriff’s office to report the problem at 10:30 a.m., and Chapman fielded the call. She assured the motorist she would notify the state highway department, but never did because she was apparently busy with other incidents. Another motorist reported the obscured stop sign about two hours later to another dispatcher, who reported it to Chapman. Again, Chapman said she would notify the highway department, but never did. About 3½ hours later, the fatal accident occurred. The teens have been arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter. Read more about the incident here.
7 comments… add one
It’s a shame that people do not realize that Telecommunicators are human and subject to mistakes. We are supposed to be perfect 24-7-365. With the little bit of information given in this report, Iam not sure I would not have held that call. A SWAT call, accident with serious injuries, and a stop sign defaced?? People that are not familiar with Communications have no idea what they go through on a daily basis and how we have to prioritize minute by minute. Everyone says”I couldn’t do that job”! But no one actually knows just what Telecommunicators go through on a daily basis.
For that Telecommunicator to get fired is a little extreme I think. She will have to live with that daily for the rest of her life. Suspension or something like that should have been the 1st course of action. (But someone had to take the fall huh?)
Yeah, the 2nd call could have been a reminder but what other calls were going on at that time? God Bless this Telecommunicator and may God give you His strength and peace at this difficult time!
Well said Mary Jo – I have gotten all the way home after a busy night and called back in to tell someone I forgot to call DOT about a tree down or make a copy of something to go to another division…. There is so much going on in a Comm Center during a critical incident you have to prioritize. There’s so much the article doesn’t say… Staffing, call volume at the time of the call, why didn’t the person who answered the call the second time process the call? Is this her first mistake or the last of many? Try not to judge people, for you just never know….
The 2 callers recognized that it was a stop sign. You would think that the stop sign has been at that intersection for a period of time and most people would be familiar that there is a stop sign. Were any charges filed against the driver who ran through the intersection?
Error aside, how is it we always read about dispatchers being fired? Do these people not have civil service or union protection? We never know the disciplinary history so it’s hard to make sense if termination is warranted.
On the other extreme sometimes it’s too hard to get rid of trouble. In my center you’d have to kill someone 10-times over, negligently, before you got fired. Then again, we had a dispatcher slide his “raised middle finger” into camera view during a live news remote from our dispatch floor–and he got fired–so??
Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about!
Following the rule that nothing begins or ends at the 911 center will keep you out of trouble as a dispatcher…always pass on the information….It is very possible to “forget” something that seems not quite as important when there are other pending emergencies that you are dealing with….but if one takes notes….we can remind ourselves of something that needs to be reported to another agency or utility. Apparently this problem with the stop sign was reported more than once….so there is no excuse for the information not being forwarded. Should she have been fired? Although there is no excuse for her inaction, I don’t think she should have been fired. Suspension seems more appropriate. The two youths that caused this problem are the real ones to blame. And I wish that some of these people that take the time to call in a report of this nature…could have simply gotten out of their vehicle and took the plastic off the stop sign themselves…it probably would have taken less time than making the phone call.
I agree that all information should be documented and dealt with, however that may be; relay, dispatch, phone call.
From what I am reading, the individual who was responsible and fired had some rank, i.e., Corporal. That may have something to do with the firing. Also, as one other comment stated, none of us know what her history may have been with regard to disciplinary action.
Nevertheless, with two calls received, it needed to be documented and forwarded or dealt with in someway.
I agree that firing the dispatcher seems pretty extreme! (Did the second dispatcher recieve any reprimand? The second dispatcher could have taken the time to make the notification is he/she was not busy.) I think the dispatcher should fight their decision to fire her, if she still wants to be a dispatcher after this.
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