A Lauderdale County (Ala.) sheriff’s dispatcher was beaten and shot to death by her estranged boyfriend last Friday night, one event in a sad, related series of murders and suicides. The body of Regina Russell, 37, was discovered in her car, parked in a rural nature preserve outside the city of Florence. Police immediately linked ex-boyfriend Christopher Robertson as the suspect, and a description of his car was broadcast. The next day his car was spotted by a state trooper, who followed the car briefly as it drove to the former home of Robertson’s brother. The home was the scene of a grisly murder-suicide last January—Robertson’s brother shot and killed his ex-wife and his nephew, then killed himself. In this incident, the state police say a trooper ordered Robertson out of car. He complied, but then put the gun to his head and fatally shot himself. Sheriff Ronnie Willis said Russell had been a part-time dispatcher at his agency for the past five years, and that she lived about three miles from where she was found. She was scheduled to work the midnight shift the night she was killed, he said, and that his department was taking her absence hard. ”We’re all very close like family, and this has really affected us,” he said. “Everyone in our department is hurting.” Willis said Russell had two daughters and a young granddaughter. Deputies will serve as pallbearers at Russell’s funeral on Thursday.

A lawsuit filed by the family of a woman who wandered along a snowy New Mexico highway in 2007 with her 15 month-old child is specific: when a passing motorist dialed 911 to report the woman at 3:30 a.m., one Torrance County dispatcher was asleep, the supervisor was watching a TV sitcom on his laptop in an office, and calltaker Jeanine Arnold was working the fourth night of 12-hour shifts. The woman put the child down at some point, and the infant was later found dead in a field. According to depositions, Arnold relayed a wrong location of the motorist to a state police dispatcher, sending troopers 16 miles from the actual sighting. She also didn’t notify her supervisor of the incident, and coded it only as a welfare check, the lawsuit states, instead of something more serious. The wandering woman, Diana Willis, was traveling with a 15 month-old baby, and apparently suffered from psychiatric problems. She pulled off the road and began walking into a field, and at some point she put the child down and continued walking. Troopers didn’t find the woman after a 35-minute search. Willis stumbled into a highway department yard later that morning. However, the lawsuit claims, the sheriff didn’t start a search promptly or focus on the correct area. The child’s body was found the next day about two miles from the highway yard. Arnold was later fired from her dispatcher job. Read more about the lawsuit here.

A Pierce County (Wash.) dispatcher who picked up a ringing 911 line didn’t hesitate for a moment—the man on the other end calmly said he had just shot his wife, so she began asking him questions. Indeed, Carol Parsons was inside a nearby church, dead from five gunshot wounds from a .45-cal. pistol. Federal Way police found that caliber of pistol on the hood of Charles Parsons’ pick-up truck in the parking lot, where he was waiting for police. On the logging tape, the dispatcher methodically asks Parsons questions about the incident and himself, including his middle initial. Towards the end of the call the sound of a siren begins to grow louder and louder in the background as officers arrive. At the end of the call, Parsons tells the dispatcher he is lying down in the parking lot. Read about the incident here, and then listen to the 911 call and decide what questions would you ask or what would you tell a person confessing murder. [audio:http://mp3.911dispatch.com.s3.amazonaws.com/federalway_murder_911.mp3]

When Lee County (Fla.) dispatchers fielded a call from an elderly woman who complained of breathing problems, they didn’t give arriving firefighters enough information to justify immediately breaking into the of the home, according to the fire chief. Instead, the firefighters spent 14 minutes ringing the doorbell and calling for a deputy before they took the door off the hinges and found the victim dead inside. Bayshore Fire-Rescue chief Larry Nisbet now says firefighters acted properly, and instead pointed to dispatchers. He said the dispatchers should have told firefighters they could hear the doorbell over the open 911 call, should also have told the firefighters that the woman was initially talking, and then went silent during the 911 call. But county 911 program manager Matt Rechkemmer says the dispatchers followed policy, and hasn’t recommended discipline or any procedure changes. Read more about the incident here and ponder your comm center’s policies for a similar incident.

New York City changed how it handles 911 calls last year, but the debate about the switch is on-going, and has been spotlighted again by the death of a 91 year-old woman last week in Staten Island after a wrong address was entered into CAD by a 911 calltaker. The family of the victim says she died quickly, and the 20-minute delay didn’t contribute to her death. But an official of the union representing dispatchers used the incident to renew a call to separate the 911 calltaking functions for the respective agencies, like they were previously. Before CAD and other upgrades last year, 911 calls came to a central calltaker at MetroTech in Manhattan, who would determine what type of emergency was being reported. Fire and EMS incidents would be transferred to those agencies’ separate comm centers for dispatching. The MetroTech calltaker would directly handle police-related incidents and enter them into CAD for dispatching to units. Now, the 911 calltaker fields and handles all types of incidents, verifies the location and enters the incident into CAD. The actual radio dispatching is still performed by separate teams of radio dispatchers for each agency, all located at MetroTech. read more

For Jesse Avery, her attempt to be come a dispatcher at Cripple Creek Emergency Communications (Colo.) began with an application at age 19. When told there was a requirement to be 21, Avery wasn’t deterred—she waited two years and applied again. Luckily for Cripple Creek. Earlier this month Avery was honored by the E9-1-1 Institute at at a Washington (DC) banquet as their 2009 Dispatcher of the Year, recognizing her professionalism, positive attitude, and for handling a series of critical incidents in the small Rocky Mountain town (pop. 1,012). Center director Diann Pritchard nominated Avery, describing her as a humble person who goes above-and-beyond what is required, and often follows up on the calls she handles. Pritchard recalled several incidents that Avery handled in a superior way, including a suicide threat via text message, a major vehicle accident and a 911 call reporting a possible hostage situation. read more

The police department in the District of Columbia launched a citizen alerting system via text messages in October 2008, but at least one dispatcher didn’t get the message. According to a citizen who posted a message on an Internet fourm, her husband called in response to an alert about a shooting, and dutifully gave the “event number” at the end of the message. But, the citizen wrote, “The dispatcher…had no idea what he was talking about.” Her husband was eventually transferred to a supervisor who fully understood the program, the citizen said. Police chief Cathy Lanier later personally responded to the Internet posting, saying all the comm center employees had been trained, and that the comm center director would investigate. Read more here.

The chief of the Punta Gorda (Fla.) Police Department took part of the blame for a dispatcher’s mistake that created a 28-minute delay in an ambulance response that ended with an elderly woman’s death. Chief Albert Arenal said dispatcher Nancy Morris will receive a written reprimand for her error, which he called “inexcusable,” but which he also said wasn’t serious enough for termination. “We’re not going to throw out the baby with the bath water,” Arenal said, noting that Morris has six years of exemplary service. Morris answered a phone call from an allied agency about an unconscious woman last month, and dispatched EMS personnel promptly. However, Morris assumed the call was from the county sheriff, and that the sheriff’s dispatcher had already dispatched an ambulance. In fact, the call came from Lifei Care Center, and no ambulance was enroute. The mistake wasn’t noticed until 14 minutes later, creating the delay. Chief Arenal took some of the blame, noting that Morris was distracted by non-dispatchers in the comm center, and was fatigued after working nightshift overtime. He said he’ll be changing policies to eliminate both of those problems. Watch a TV report here.

A Milwaukee (Wisc.) police sergeant assigned to the communications center has been disciplined after encouraging other supervisors to promote a ticket-writing slowdown by officers, all to protest on-going problems with the city’s public safety radio system. Sgt. Willie Murphy was handed 20 days off without pay for sending a text message to 33 other sergeants urging a protest, in violation of a department regulation. Milwaukee police officers and their union have been critical of the city’s radio system since it was installed in 2003, saying the OpenSky, digital system has bad coverage and other problems. The city originally paid $17.5 million for the radio system, but now faces additional expenses to cure reception problems. According to the complaint against Murphy, he sent a text message to other sergeants while off-duty, asking them to urge their officers to stop writing traffic tickets, as a way of protesting the city’s claim they are working with Harris Corp. to fix the problems. The union has turned up their spotlight on the radio system lately, resulting in many news stories. Download (pdf) the complaint filed against Murphy here.

A logging tape of telephone and radio traffic after the March 15th shooting death of Elyria (Ohio) Off. James Kerstetter reveals the sadness and chaos of the moment, but also the strength and expertise of the dispatchers who handled the incident. Kerstetter was dispatched to investigate reports of a naked, deranged man in a residential neighborhood, and was shot as he entered the suspect’s home. Arriving back-up officers confronted the suspect and killed him as he pointed a gun at them. Dispatchers coordinated an EMS response for both Kerstetter and the suspect, including an EMD helicopter, and dealt with phone calls from off-duty supervisors asking for information. The logging tape documents the sad result—news from the hospital that Kerstetter did not survive. Read more about the tragedy here, and listen to the logging tapes. [audio:http://mp3.911dispatch.com.s3.amazonaws.com/elyria_officershooting_radio.mp3]

A Livingston County (Mich.) dispatcher Debra Laberdie has many childhood memories—some of them very bad. In the most recent edition of APCO’s Public Safety Communications, Laberdie tells of watching her father physically abuse her mother. Laberdie originally told the story during an in-house training session last year, but was convinced by a co-worker to take her experience to a wider audience through APCO’s monthly magazine. A local newspaper has now spotlighted Laberdie and her magazine story, noting that an aunt who was a dispatcher pointed her to a comm center career in 1995. Read about Laberdie’s experience here.

As Erie County (NY) sheriff’s investigators searched their law enforcement databases to learn the identity and locate a woman linked to a 2006 murder, down the hall in the comm center, a dispatcher was closing in on the same information by using social Web sites. As detailed in an edtion of “20-20″ on ABC, the unnamed dispatcher found out the true identify of a woman who had carried on a Internet relationship with two men, ending with the murder of one of them. On the show, then-sheriff Ron Kenyon said, “One of our young dispatchers was very fluent with…I’m not sure what Internet meeting site,” he said, and found a Facebook page while investigators were coming up empty using the local, state and NCIC databases. View the episode here.

The District of Columbia’s Office of Unified Communications (OUC) has been honored by several public safety and 911 groups for their performance in handling the inauguration of President Barrack Obama last January. The groups made the award during the annual “9-1-1 Goes to Washington” conference. The groups also honored Blackhawk County (Iowa) comm center director Judy Flores with a  Government Leader Award, primarily for her center’s adoption of 911 text messaging, the first in the country. The DC center was formed with the merger of separate police, fire and EMS comm centers in 2004, and now use Intergraph CAD to handle incidents and track field units. In a press release, Intergraph says 1.8 million people visited Washington to witness the inauguration, resulting in a 50 percent increase in 911 call compared to an average day, or about 6,000 calls for assistance. Despite the increase, 96 percent of 911 calls were answered within five seconds, the company says, while calls to the 311 non-emergency number were answered within 30 seconds. At the peak, more than 300 OUC personnel, including calltakers and IT professionals, were on-duty. Flores helped implement 911 text messaging (SMS), which allows anyone to contact the comm center without dialing 911 and making a voice call. E911 Institute executive director Gregory Rohde said the link would allow, “greater access to emergency services for more people, especially those with special needs.” read more

A decision by a San Jacinto County (Tex.) sheriff’s captain not send deputies in response to several calls about a deranged man turned deadly—the man shot and killed three relatives and then himself. The incident spotlights how an unnamed sheriff’s dispatcher was put in the middle of calls from people who felt they were in danger and who wanted help for Oliver Bills, and a supervisor who told the dispatcher, “Ohh, no! We don’t want to do that!” Bills may have had psychiatric problems last November, and his mother called on a non-emergency line to report him behaving erratically. The sheriff’s dispatcher said he would send a deputy, but first consulted with Capt. Carl Jones about a “welfare check.” But upon hearing that suggestion, Jones emphatically said, “No!” and explained to the dispatcher, “All you going to do is wind up creating an issue…that may hurt us in the long run.” So instead, the dispatcher told subsequent callers to ask a judge after the weekend for a mental health warrant for Bills. A deputy wasn’t dispatched until seven hours later, despite several calls from Bills’ mother and others. The deputy found the four bodies. Jones later told reporters that the four on-duty deputies were too busy to respond to the initial calls, but dispatch logs contradict that claim. Sheriff James Walters said no one has been disciplined, and defended the response. He noted that dispatchers called the family several times to check on their welfare. Read the entire story here, and a follow-up story about the sheriff’s call for more training.

The Speaker of Florida’s House of Representatives has withdrawn his support for proposed legislation that would have restricted the public release of 911 call logging tapes, virtually killing the bill. A spokesperson for Larry Cretul said he still believes in the purpose of the bill, but withdrew his support so a political battle over the bill wouldn’t become a “distraction.” Logging tapes in Florida are subject to the state’s open records laws. The proposed changes would have restricted the release of audio tapes, but would have allowed printed transcripts of calls. Newspapers, TV stations and media groups opposed the bill, while the families of some victims supported keeping crisis moments confidential. Interestingly, the family of murder victim Denise Lee opposed the bill, saying it would help conceal errors and misconduct by public safety personnel that should be exposed. Read more here.