Emergency 911...Detroit style.

[DennyMcLain]

Woman would have lived had 911 operator listened to boy; lawsuit coming

April 9, 2006

By BEN SCHMITT
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Southfield Attorney Geoffrey Fieger told a national audience Sunday morning that he believes a 46-year-old woman would have lived had a 911 emergency dispatcher taken a call for help from a 5-year-old Detroit boy seriously.

Fieger appeared on the Today Show holding hands with Robert Turner, now 6, as Robert recounted the Feb. 20 incident in which he twice called 911 as his mother, Sherrill Turner, lay dying from complications of an enlarged heart in their west side Detroit apartment.

A recording of the calls, which family members gave the Free Press on Friday, revealed that the boy's pleas for help weren't taken seriously. The Today Show also played both calls Sunday morning.

"In general, this indicates an endemic problem," Fieger said. "There's a discounting of children. Robert did exactly what he was taught to do and if we're concerned in the United States about the welfare of children, as I know we all are, we better be concerned when they call to ask for help, as much as anybody else."

Robert, clad in a shirt and tie and seated in between Fieger and his older sister, Delaina Patterson, explained that his mother taught him to call 911 in case of an emergency.

Of the operator who took at least one of calls, he said: "She thought I was playing on the phone."

Detroit Police are investigating the incident.

Fieger is scheduled to hold a press conference at 11 a.m. Monday, at his law office at 19390 W. Ten Mile Road, Southfield, to announce the filing of a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the family.

Sad, but true.

The operator also said half of what the boy said was indecipherable.

Robert Turner = Anchiello?

[Glenn]

This story sucks.

I saw it on the news and they started playing the 911 tapes from the little kid's call and I had to turn the channel.

It's fucking bullshit when someones incompetence causes people to die.

[Anthony]

It's fucking bullshit when someones incompetence causes people to die.

You have no idea...

[Matt]

i overheard on the radio that 25-30% of 911 calls are hoaxes. definitely not excusing the operator in this situation.

but i'm wondering why they don't have harsher penalties to get the hoax-rate down.

[DennyMcLain]

There's got to be more to this story.

Locally here in L.A., KABC had an interview with the head of the New York 911 operators, and he said that within 45 seconds they can determine whether or not the call is a hoax through a series of questions.

The operator asked the boy to hand the phone to his mother, and he replied "She can't come to the phone right now", or something to that effect. I'm sorry, but if my mom was having a heart attack, and I was 5, I'd be freaking out. The kid gave off an impression of calmness.

Yet, the operator said she'd have the police come over, and they never did....TWICE!!!

We don't know anything about the kid, the mother, or the family situation. We don't know if a hoax call had ever been placed from that number. A half an hour later, the kid called up again. A half and HOUR!!!! Couldn't the child run outside and scream for help, or run to his neighbors house?

It's sad, but something's not right here. Too many questions on BOTH sides of the ball.

[Glenn]

Maybe.

In an ideal world, they would treat every call as if it were real and they would just have to deal with the ones that were not LATER. I know, it would be expensive, and it all comes down to $, but come on!

Harsh fines and legal penalties should be enough to put the kibosh on pranksters once the word got out.

It sucks that they need to spend 45 seconds trying to decide whether or not to repond or not, that might seem like just a little bit of time, but it can be an eternity in these situations.

[DennyMcLain]

Well, charges against the two 911 ops are in.

They could get a year in prison.

There goes social services.

911 calls will now route through India.

Can't sue Akbar from New Delhi.

That is all.

Have a nice day.

And don't cry wolf too many times.

[Taymelo]

There's got to be more to this story.

Locally here in L.A., KABC had an interview with the head of the New York 911 operators, and he said that within 45 seconds they can determine whether or not the call is a hoax through a series of questions.

The operator asked the boy to hand the phone to his mother, and he replied "She can't come to the phone right now", or something to that effect. I'm sorry, but if my mom was having a heart attack, and I was 5, I'd be freaking out. The kid gave off an impression of calmness.

Yet, the operator said she'd have the police come over, and they never did....TWICE!!!

We don't know anything about the kid, the mother, or the family situation. We don't know if a hoax call had ever been placed from that number. A half an hour later, the kid called up again. A half and HOUR!!!! Couldn't the child run outside and scream for help, or run to his neighbors house?

It's sad, but something's not right here. Too many questions on BOTH sides of the ball.

I'm sorry.

But this is bullshit.

I'm now dumber for having read it.

I swear to god. Why don't you just say "I don't like black people. They don't take care of themselves, then sue someone else, and end up making things more expensive for me".

That's what I read in your post.

PPS: I think the reason this bothers me is... kinda off point but not really... I had a friend who died of an enlarged heart after a high school basketball game.

Another guy I know kept saying "it had to be drugs. I can't accept that a 17 year old would just die of natural causes. There must be something else to the story".

Within two years, the guy who said that had an epileptic seizure, choked on his own vomit in his sleep while living in a dorm at college, and died. He was not drunk or on drugs.

I always imagined people sitting at HIS funeral saying "it had to be drugs. There's gotta be some information we don't have. This stuff just doesn't happen without there being other factors we don't know about."

The moral of the story is this: People are really quick to judge people and make excuses for why it was their own fault bad things happened to them. Usually, they do it to give themselves a false sense of security - "it couldn't happen to me like it happened to them, because I don't make prank 9/11 calls. So, they'll take it seriously when I call."

You never know, Denny. You could be the next to require but not receive proper care from 9/11, and people could be sitting at your funeral going "there must be more to the story. Denny is probably a drug dealer and 9/11 probably got sick of answering so many calls from disgruntled neighbors."

And the beauty of it is, like this kid's mom, you won't be there to defend yourself.

[Uncle Mxy]

Here's links to the audio for the two tapes:

http://media.freep.com/audio/2006/04/emergency1.wav
http://media.freep.com/audio/2006/04/emergency2.wav

Note that the boy's audio is faint, but that could be a function of how they recorded it, since it doesn't sound as if the 911 folks had difficulty hearing. They're probably better at handling muddled voices than most, though.

Did the 911 call handler in the first call actually dispatch the cops over after she said she would?

[Fool]

The first one is incredibly quick and got absolutely no information from the boy. The second one seems instantly combative once she hears that its a little boy on the phone. If I was 5 and the 911 lady said she was sending the cops to get me in trouble I probably would have hung up the phone, ran into my room, and cried till someone found me.

I understand Denny's hesitancy to prosecute people working for public services. But these two women have a serious job and did it in a manner that's not only wrong, but is so egregiously in error that they relied on a 5 year old to call a second time to try and fix the mistake made the first time (not sending someone to check it out or getting any kind of information about what's going on) and they still got that shit wrong enough to leave a woman dead (911 keeps records of houses that call them, you telling me the second lady couldn't find out that the kid had called 30 minutes ago and thought "gee I guess I should at the least send the cops over to get the kid to stop pranking"?).