A dispatcher for the Morehouse College (Atlanta) police department was the only link to safety for four students who were kidnapped at gunpoint by three robbers, and taken to a nearby ATM to withdraw money. The safe ending was slightly overshadowed by the victims’ questions about how four of their 911 calls to the Atlanta police department didn’t generate a police response. Morehouse PD dispatcher Karen Wells answered the call of one victim, who had programmed in the college PD’s number into his cellular phone. Two victims were in the back seat of a tan Buick headed to a nearby bank, and two other victims were locked in the trunk. Wells was able to obtain the color and description of the car, and its probable destination, all through the sounds of yelling and car noise. The suspects’ car arrived at the bank and was quickly surrounded by several police cars. The victims were unhurt and two suspects were captured. One suspect fled and is still being sought. The victims later complained that they made four 911 calls that did not go through. However, Atlanta 911 records showed that two calls were answered by a dispatcher who tried to talk to the victims. However, the caller apparently never realized the call had been connected, and the logging tapes contain only background noises and talking. Two other 911 calls from the men were not answered for over 30 seconds, police acknowledged, and were then either hung-up or disconnected. Read more about the incident, see a photo of Wells and listen to the two Atlanta PD 911 calls and Wells’ handling of the call for help here. [audio:http://mp3.911dispatch.com.s3.amazonaws.com/atlanta_carjacking_911_2.mp3]

One week after legislation was introduced in the U.S. House to cancel a previously-required auction of D Block 700 MHz spectrum and directly assign it to public safety, the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) has issused an “Alert” to members asking them to contact members of the House asking them to support the bill. The bill could end two years of intense debate and political lobbying over the 10 MHz of spectrum, which Congress ordered be sold to the highest bidder in 2005, along with several other slices of spectrum. However, the Jan.–March 2008 auction resulted in just one bidder who didn’t meet the minimum bid. Since then the FCC has been pondering how to move forward, and a wide range of public safety, wireless and other groups and companies have lobbied the Commission and Congress on the best course of action. Then last month the FCC released a landmark plan to advance the country’s broadband infrastructure, and in that proposed a re-auction of the D Block, which re-ignited debate over the spectrum. In the lastest action, U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) introduced H.R. 5081, which would amend existing law, effectively canceling the auction that Congress originally ordered, and giving two 5 MHz allocations to a single public safety licensee. The law also sets out certain interoperability requirements for the network. Conspicuously, the bill does not include the word “funding” or any reference to who would pay for a nationwide wireless network. Download (pdf) the text of the bill, which has been referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. read more

It’s definitely produced, filmed and billed as entertainment, but NBC’s “Trauma” series nevertheless presents a view of emergency medical operations that many people take as authentic. So, to the extent that the TV show presents reality in a distorted way, it’s counterproductive for America’s public safety personnel. But by the time Monday’s episode was over, focusing on 911 and the San Francisco comm center, the viewers must have been just confused, not entertained. The comm center was operating “analog” because of some unspoken technical problem, and for some reason that meant that every response time was 23-1/2 minutes longer than the agency’s goal. Paramedic Tyler Briggs was upset, ranted sarcastically on the radio, and then stormed down a hallway towards the comm center saying, “They’re lucky if there’s not going to be violence,” a workplace threat so obvious as to be scary. Of course, in pure entertainment fashion, Briggs got “schooled” by a gravely-voice comm center supervisor, who immediately sat him down at a console and made him answer 911 calls and dispatch units on the radio so he’d know how tough it was. As if putting an untrained person on the phones wouldn’t increase your liability way beyond a 30-minute response time. And after that…well, the issue of comm center incompetence and response time delays just disappeared into the relationship problems the other characters were having. Obviously, the episode’s title “Crossed Wires” referred to the characters, not the communications. When the episode was first promoted, public safety leaders were fearful it was another comm center hit piece. As it turned out, it touched so lightly on the issue of communications and response times that the script inaccuracies were obscured. So it was neither a hit piece or a meaningful piece. Just entertainment.

An Ontario (S. Calif.) police dispatcher who allegedly received sex-related text messages sent by an OPD officer using his city-issued pager is a plaintiff in a civil lawsuit being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Dispatcher April Florio was the girlfriend of officer Jeff Quon in 2003 when an audit of pager messages revealed the explicit messages, and that Quon had frequently gone over the message limit for the city’s pager account. Quon sent messages to Florio, his estranged—a former OPD dispatcher—and to an OPD sergeant, according to the federal lawsuit that claims the city had no right to read the pager messages. In 2007 a jury sided with the city’s contention that the pager and account belonged to them, that Quon had signed the city’s electronic device policy, and that they had the right to examine the account and messages. But a U.S. District court reversed the jury’s decision in 2007. The city appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that court heard oral arguments on the case last week. The decision, expected this fall, is expected to set an important precedent on workplace privacy, especially involving company-owned cellular phones, pagers and Internet-connected devices. The court’s decision could apply not only to the privacy of the senders of messages, but also to the receivers. Read more about the details of the lawsuit here. read more

A notorious Kansas City (Mo.) murder case was concluded with the assistance of two dispatchers, and now a victims’ rights group has honored them for their assistance in obtaining a conviction. KC police dispatcher Dina Sauer and MAST ambulance dispatcher John Chipchase received the annual Sara Andrasek Memorial Award from the Platte County prosecutor’s office. The incident occurred in 2008, originally as a landlord-tenant dispute over rent. The tenant arrived to move out but found he’d been locked out. When he broke into the apartment to retrieve his property, the landlord dialed 911, told Sauer he was going to shoot the tenant, and then hung up. Just 38 seconds later, the landlord shot the tenant several times, while the victim was on a 911 call. Chipchase handled a 911 call from the victim’s wife, and tried to give her instructions on giving the victim aid. Read the DA’s press release here, and about the award here (911 calls posted).

A Port Richey (Fla.) police sergeant who threatened suicide in front of two fellow officers on April 1st was not ordered to undergo any psychiatric evaluation, and a week later had an outburst in the department’s comm center where he yelled at a dispatcher and threatened, “I swear to f—ing God I’m going to shoot myself in the head.” A story in the the St. Petersburg Times newspaper says Sgt. Robert Kern was still not removed from duty after the comm center incident nor ordered to undergo any evaluation. Chief Dave Brown says simply that Kern “has my trust.” Kern has been the subject of several complaints and has been disciplined 31 times over his 24 years, the newspaper notes, including two incidents last month. The newspaper notes that suicides among law enforcement officers are not uncommon. Specifically, the story noted a suicide by a Florida Highway Patrol officer earlier this month while the officer was on the phone with a dispatcher. Read the entire story here.

A group of Detroit (Mich.) 7th-grade students who says they’ve encountered skeptical public safety dispatchers while making 911 calls is now drafting state legislation to institute training for dispatchers on handling calls from children. The city has experienced at least two high-profile incidents where a dispatcher dismissed a child’s 911 call for help, including one in 2006 that ended with a woman’s death. The students from the Detroit International Academy tackled the 911 training issue as their annual school project, and have surveyed dispatchers nationwide about training programs for kid calls. According to the Detroit News, only two of the state’s approved dispatcher training programs include a section devoted to handling 911 calls from children. The 7th-graders have been invited by the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) to the annual Michigan chapter conference in Lansing to present their project, and the class is now raising money to pay for the bus ride. Read more about the class project and state training programs here., and watch a video after the break. read more

The spectrum is in turmoil as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) pushes forward with plans to re-auction a slice of the 700 MHz band, Congress considers plans to allocate the band to public safety, and as radio companies announce plans to build out public safety networks, long before anything is decided. Earlier this month Motorola announced it was seeking $50.6 million in federal grant funding to build an LTE-based radio network for the San Francisco region. Then last Monday, EADS Defense & Security and Alcatel-Lucent announced a agreement to jointly develop and market LTE radio system for the public safety market. In a press release, the two companies said they will jointly market systems to support voice, data and video transmission, all with complete interoperability. EADS is primarily an aerospace and defense systems provider, and is headquartered in Europe. Alcatel-Lucent provides a wide range of networking and telecomm solutions, and is headquartered in Paris. Read (pdf) the EADS-Alcatel press release here. Coincidentally, the FCC just posted a technical paper on the cost modeling for funding a nationwide public safety wireless network. The paper says the network could cost $6.5 billion over 10 years, equipping over 41,000 existing towers with gear and building another 3,200 towers in rural areas. After that, the FCC paper says, it would cost $1.2 billion a year to maintain the system Download (pdf) the paper here.

An 19 year-old woman was found dead along a rural Saskatchewan (Canada) road, and three members of her extended family were found barely alive 37 miles away, seven days after the group made a 911 call to an RCMP dispatcher asking for a tow truck to pull their car out of deep mud. The RCMP is defending how the 911 system operates in general, but admits the handling dispatcher might have erred. According to police, Kerri Canepotatoe was driving with her cousin, and her cousin’s two children when the vehicle became stuck west of Meadow Lake. They dialed 911 twice, but neither call was connected. Their third call was answered by the 911 center in Prince Albert, who transferred it to the RCMP in Regina. Police say one of the woman asked for a tow truck and gave her location, but the cellular call was dropped. The dispatcher attempted to contact a tow company for the family, but was “unsuccessful,” RCMP chief Supt. Randy Beck told a radio station. The dispatcher then became involved in handling an emergency incident, and never re-tried to contact the tow company or to call the family back. Beck says both dispatchers believed the incident was not an emergency, and so no police or other emergency units were dispatched. The day after the 911 call began walking for help, but became exhausted along the road and collapsed, 37 miles from the car. Her body was found by a passerby four days later, sparking a search for the three other travelers. They were located on the seventh day after the 911 call, in weak but stable condition. Read more about the incident here, and view a map after the break. Update: In Sept. 2010 the RCMP formally apologized to the family for the dispatcher’s “error.” Read more here. read more

The next episode of NBC’s prime-time series “Trauma” will focus on San Francisco’s comm center, dispatchers and the 911 system, where the show is set, and includes an addressing mistake that delays an EMS response by 30 minutes. “When 911 screws up, people die,” a lead character states in the preview to this Monday’s episode, which is titled “Crossed Wires.” At another point in the preview, a dispatcher radios the EMS crew that there are “technical problems” at the comm center. Producers for the series reportedly contacted comm center managers to research the script for the episode, including asking about technical 911 details. Watch the episode preview here.

An official at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has suggested that a nationwide wireless network for public safety agencies could be funded with a 50 cent monthly fee tacked on to subscribers of broadband Internet services. Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau chief James Barnett Jr. mentioned the amount of the fee during an interview about on-going plans to allocate 700 MHz spectrum to a public safety network, and a debate over a Congressionally-mandated plan to auction certain bands to commercial communications providers. Public safety organizations generally oppose the auction plan, and instead want Congress to pass legislation directly assigned the spectrum to public safety. The FCC’s plan for a public safety network have included a fee as a possible funding source, but Barnett’s talk of “50 cents” is the first time a specific amount has been mentioned. Read more about Barnett’s remarks here.

The Wisconsin legislature has passed a bill that would add 911 logging tapes to the list of records exempted from the state’s open records law, a response to lobbying by the family and boyfriend of murder victim Brittany Zimmermann, who was murdered in April 2008. Police say an intruder apparently entered her apartment, and Zimmermann was able to dial 911. The call was received by the Dane County comm center, but because of dispatcher errors, no officers responded to investigate the hang-up call. Zimmermann’s boyfriend later found her body inside the apartment and called police. No suspect has ever been publicly identified by police. The bill passed by the 67 to 30 says simply, “An audio recording of a call by a person dialing the digits “911” is not subject to inspection or copying” under the open records law. The bill is generally opposed by the state’s media, who believe that access to logging tapes help watch over government activities, including the performance of dispatchers. The bill must now be passed by the state Senate and signed by the governor. Read more about the bill’s passage. here, and download (pdf) a copy of AB 612 here.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to prohibit the transmission of false caller IDs on voice networks, a practice known as “spoofing,” and a technique used by pranksters when making false 911 calls. The bill, H.R. 1258, is identical to a Senate bill passed last February, and it’s now headed to the President’s desk for signing. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Tex.) introduced the bill specifically to criminalize deceptive caller ID information on VoIP calls, but the bill covers “any real time voice communications service.” Pranksters have used VoIP services to make false 911 to distant cities, and falsely report critical incidents such as shootings and kidnappings, a practice called SWATing. The false ANI/ALI displayed to the calltaker makes the 911 call appear authentic. Download (pdf) a copy of the bill here.

A former Detroit (Mich.) police dispatcher’s recollections of 911 calls in fall 2002 have refocused attention on whether the city’s police department and then-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick tried to block an investigation into the death of an exotic dancer at the mayor’s official residence. According to a deposition given by Sandy Cardenas in a civil lawsuit filed by the victim’s family, she fielded several 911 of a disturbance at the mayor’s mansion, and that officers and supervisors from four districts responded. Cardenas claimed the doors to the mansion were locked when officers arrived and that those inside would not open the doors for officers. She added that when the wife of former mayor Kilpatrick showed up, “things really heated up.” Cardenas also said that a co-worker later told her that logging tapes of the entire incident were taken away by an internal affairs officer the next night. Those logging tapes later surfaced with the seals broken on the boxes. State attorney general Mike Cox says he found no evidence that a party ever took place, but critics claim Cox is protecting his bid to run for governor. Read more about the incident here.