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Police unhappy with dispatcher’s response to 911 call by Powell case worker
9-1-1 in the News, Job | April | February 8, 2012 at 3:51 pm
SEATTLE, WA — Washington state authorities say they’re not happy with the performance of a 911 dispatcher during last weekend’s murder-suicide involving the husband of a missing Utah woman.
The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office said when a social worker called to report that Josh Powell had taken his two young sons into his home during what was supposed to be a supervised visit, the dispatcher left her with the impression that no help was immediately on the way.
A sheriff’s spokesman said that was bad etiquette, but he does not believe it resulted in any unnecessary delays.
“The etiquette, the manners of the call could have been handled better,” said the sheriff’s spokesperson.
Meanwhile, investigators continue to uncover more details about what Josh Powell did before setting the fire that killed him and his two young sons.
According to court documents filed, police say Josh Powell withdrew $7,000 from a Bank of America branch on Saturday. Pierce County sheriff’s investigators are tracking the money and were seeking surveillance photos from the bank.
The sheriff’s office has also filed a search warrant to seize the phone, phone records and voicemails of Josh Powell’s sister, Alina Powell. Upon learning Josh was dead, Alina showed detectives four emails he had sent her, but wouldn’t allow them to copy them and refused to give them her phone.
Alina became upset and refused to allow Det. (Gary) Sanders to copy the emails and refused to provide the phone to Det. Sanders, said the court documents.
A search warrant on a storage unit rented by Josh Powell was not returned. A sheriff’s spokesman said investigators did not find anything of interest there.
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Yet another tragedy and yet another line of soothsayers critiquing the performance of a dispatcher and saying “I told you so.” If only life really was that simple and easy.
Incidents that result in death, especially ones where young lives are cut short, are regrettable, but sadly, they are a fact of our society. The event in Seattle is the focus of attention more because of the dramatic explosion and fire assumed to have been created by a father fighting a custody battle, than the actual outcome. However, the attention has brought scrutiny on the conduct of the dispatcher who received the 9-1-1 call from the social worker supervising the children’s visit with their father.
Hopefully, an investigation into this incident will be subjective and broad enough to consider more than just the dialogue between the social worker and dispatcher. Josh Powell’s wife had been missing for some time, his children were subjects of a custody battle, was this murder-suicide an accident just waiting to happen one way or another?
An article in The Salt Lake Tribune quotes an expert from a Utah-based company that supplies dispatch protocols and training who states, “From our point of view, that call went on way too long and gathered very little as far as actionable information goes.” It is ironic that similar comments have often been made by other dispatchers and PSAP managers regarding the consequences of adopting the system his company supplies!
There might actually be a more deeply rooted issue at stake here as the approach used to handle this call at this center was not an isolated event. A training supervisor from the agency that manages the PSAP was quoted in The Olympian as suggesting that the abrupt, impatient tone of the dispatcher highlighted by listeners of the 9-1-1 call is the way they are supposed to sound: “What we look for is people who have a slight Type-A personality…They need to take control of the conversation. We don’t want them to be wishy-washy.”
Is it possible that the agency has lost its focus regarding the role of the dispatcher when handling emergency calls? Protocols or structured questioning used during calls will not alone prevent events like this from happening. There is an endemic problem across the entire 9-1-1 industry in maintaining an effective and credible QA culture that learns from each and every event or call. Buying third party systems to do this will not ensure results unless there is a committed desire from every level within an agency for the program to succeed. For that to happen, the commitment needs to be as fundamental as accepting that when a phone rings, you answer it. QA is not a luxury nor a nicety (“something we’ll get around to when we have time”) nor something that has to be done because legislation decrees it. The mindset of ongoing QA should come BEFORE the protocols, BEFORE the training, BEFORE the call is answered. Complacency is the greatest hazard 9-1-1 dispatchers face. In the midst of countless silent calls, malicious calls, hysterical callers, confused callers, aggressive callers and routine calls, there will be that one that has the potential to ignite a firestorm of public interest. Training will help dampen those flames, as will structured questions to guide the dispatcher. But behind this, the culture within every agency has to continually and proactively question their actions and performance at every level. When you QA a call, what happens to the information the process provides? QA isn’t an extra step that has to be resourced and adopted separately to everyday operations; it has to be acknowledged as, “It’s what we do.”