Police Release 911 Tape of Road Rage Shooting

With a lawsuit hanging over the department, this week Denver Police released the logging tape of a 911 call from a road rage victim, and as the caller spoke to a dispatcher, the second motorist returned, opened fire with a handgun and killed one man. The incident occurred in April 2012 near the city’s border with Lakewood. After the road rage incident, the victims drove to a relative’s apartment about three blocks into Lakewood, and then dialed 911. Calltaker Juan Jesus Rodriguez told the men they had to return to Denver in order to meet with an officer to file a report—officers would not leave the city to handle incidents. During the call the men drove back to the scene of the original incident in Denver. Almost immediately, the other party in the road rage drove by and fired at the victims. The entire sequence was captured by the 15-minute 911 call that was just released. A city audit issued in February found a culture of poor call handling by dispatchers, including inaccurate incident locations, failure to dispatch EMS units appropriately, and other mistakes. Overall, the audit found that dispatchers received a failing grade on 20 percent of the calls they handled. Rodriguez was fired (pdf) for his role in the incident, but the family of Jimma Paul Reat has filed a lawsuit over his death. Listen to the 911 call here (transcript, pdf).