In Snohomish County, just north of the King County Socialist Republic, a call made to the local 911 call center has made the news this week.
A 14 year old girl calls 911 after hearing what she thinks is someone trying to break in. The call receiver takes the info and says that she’ll get an deputy out to her. After waiting 20 minutes, the girl calls back saying that she still hears someone trying to break in and that no officer has arrived. The 911 call taker once again says she’ll get someone out there and once again no deputy arrives.
The parents come home an hour after the girl’s first call to find her in hysterics and now the story is news.
According to the Sheriff’s Department, a deputy drove by twice, but never actually went up to the house. The house is down a driveway almost 1/4 of a mile long and cannot be seen from the road. The department is being accused of negligence.
John at Just Some Poor Schmuck is an employee in a 911 call center in Oregon. He reads this story and says that this is the end result of a failure to communicate. I find that explanation to be quite correct. As John states, calls of residents scared at noises are waaaay too common and sometimes tend to get downplayed by some folks in the business.
But that is only the first of three problems on both sides of the story. I’m not even going to get into response times because not only was there probably a communcation breakdown to the point that the deputy probably did not know or didn’t understand what exactly the call was about, but as you can probably tell by the brief description of the residence, the area is rather rural.
No, the second problem is that this girl has been taught to rely on complete strangers for her protection. As has been shown in every legal case pertaining to the duty of police agencies to protect the people in their jurisdictions, there actually is no statute stating that they have to do a damn thing when you call 911.
Your safety and protection is your job. The constables are just there to mark where the bodies ended up. I have spoken to officers who have had go and calm down fully grown males who have locked themselves in their own bathrooms with their portable phones and waited for officers to arrive. This is just disgusting to me. I told one of these stories at a casual party and was surprised to be called “scary” when I said that if the wife heard something that bothered her, I would arm myself and go check it out.
Which leads to the third problem in this scenario that, while hypothetical, is not far-fetched in the least: That if the girl had told the person at the 911 center who took her call that she had heard someone banging on the windows trying to get in and that she had armed herself in the event that they successfully made entry, you can bet your first born that said emergency call would have turned into a priority call and every deputy in the area would have gone code to the girls address.
At which point they would have disarmed her, called the parents and possibly had Child Protective Services talk to the parents about the dangers of leaving firearms out where the yoots could use them to protect themselves.
Sad.
“I’ll go get a flashlight and check it out.”
(The one attached to the accessory shotgun)
OK, let’s cut to the (Police) chase here. First, the bona-fides: the Rivrdog, a retired cop, started his career as a 911 dispatcher (except that 911 hadn’t been invented yet).
This call goes into the category of “prowler NOW, unseen”, and in my day would have been dispatched IMMEDIATELY, with a backup car, ON ANY SHIFT. Bear in mind I worked for a Sheriff’s Office with suburban and some rural responsibility, just like Snohomish County.
Bearing in mind that there have been SOME changes to dispatching (mostly relating to the fact that there aren’t as many cars to dispatch now), let’s grade the Sheriff’s performance here.
Response time: failure. In a semi-rural county, the response time shouldn’t be much over 10 minutes, or the district patrol setup is faulty (even with fewer cars).
Dispatcher: Failure. In this “sensitive” age, the dispatchers are supposed to be able to calm some of the worst fears of those calling to report problems. This dispatcher evidently did nothing along those lines, although it would be interesting to hear at the tape and see any intra-dispatcher messages in the CAD system.
The police emergency response system clearly failed this caller.
Now, as to the alternative: self-reliance. OK, so far as it goes, but who is doing the training? Can you know that just because Dad might be proficient at standing his ground while armed, in his house, that he would be capable of passing that necessary skill along to his daughter? Do you know whether she would be capable of accepting and utilizing the instruction if he were capable of giving it?
Too many variables here, can’t make a judgment, I’m afraid.
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