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April 26, 2000 A cause for alarm in Middleton By ROB MARINO TRANSCRIPT STAFFWhat if you called 911 for help and no one answered? That's what happened to Middleton Police Officer Steven Skory, who had a scary experience while trying to get through to the town's emergency dispatch center on April 2. Alone in a police cruiser around 3 a.m., Skory pulled a car over to the side of South Main Street after it zoomed past him at about 75 miles-per-hour. As Skory walked up from behind the car, illuminating the front seat with his flashlight, he saw a woman in her 20s, losing blood and tissue from a stab wound to her midsection.
Every second counted as Skory called the town's emergency dispatch center for an ambulance. But upon calling the center, Skory got nothing but static - not even a busy signal. "Ninety-four to forty-nine," Skory called in his first attempt, without any response. Skory called in a second time. "Ninety-four to forty-nine." Still no answer. "Ninety-four to forty-nine," Skory called on his radio during his third attempt, with the dispatcher still not responding. Skory then called another officer. "If you can hear me, can you call the Fire Department? They're (the dispatcher center) not answering." Skory called the center again as his frustration started to mount. "Ninety-four to forty-nine." After a failed fourth attempt to get through to the dispatcher, Skory radioed his fellow officer again. "Can you read me on my radio?" Skory asked his fellow officer. "Loud and clear," the officer responded. "Forty-nine, I need an ambulance now," Skory said, his voice rising as he finally gets through, on his fifth attempt, to the dispatcher. "Where are you?" asks the Fire Department dispatcher. "In front of Richardson's?" "Affirmative," Skory said. "On the way." Still later, the dispatcher called back to ask about the nature of the call. "It looks like we have a stab wound," Skory said. "It's an evisceration."
It's a scary situation, but as some residents in Middleton know, the April 2 incident isn't the first time something like that has happened. On March 15, at around 2 a.m., Dottie Demmons dialed 911 after she heard an alarm go off at Bouchard's Getty, next door to her home. Demmons offered a good description of the vehicle she had just seen leaving the scene. After some back and forth with the dispatcher at the other end of the line, however, Demmons realized she was talking to a dispatcher over in Hamilton.
When Demmons' call to Middleton went unanswered after five rings, the call was switched over to Hamilton, but the dispatcher was unaware the call was coming from a couple of towns away. It was also the Hamilton dispatcher's first day on the job. Middleton police, however, were already on their way to the scene because a police officer who lives nearby notified on-duty patrol officers through a portable police radio about the alarm.
During a third incident, on Jan. 10, nicotine thieves got away with more than $5,000 worth of cigarettes from the Richdale store on South Main Street, after the firefighter-dispatch operator snoozed through an alarm call from the store's alarm company. The alarm company had apparently called back 15 minutes later from the time of its initial call around 3 a.m., but the dispatcher still did not answer the company's call for help.
The Fire Department dispatch center picks up the police and emergency dispatch phones on the weekends and during the week after 5 p.m., when the police station closes, said Fire Chief Henry Michalski. Three people were on the duty during the Richdale store incident, including two upstairs and one in the watch room. Since the call from the alarm company only rang in the watch room, the firefighter-dispatcher who fell asleep behind the phone was the only individual reprimanded for failing to notify on-duty police officers in their cruisers. The dispatcher lost a night's pay and was suspended for the next two night shifts, and a letter of reprimand was placed in his personnel file, Michalski said, adding he followed the appropriate policy set up when the Fire Department took over the emergency center a couple of years ago. Also as a result of the Jan. 10 incident, the fire chief issued an order that no one was allowed to sleep in the watch room - an order that apparently went ignored on April 2.
Officials want to improve dispatch system
For years, fire and town officials debated which department should be responsible for taking over the emergency E-911 system. At a Town Meeting several years ago, voters decided to give dispatch center responsibilities to the police department, under the management of trained dispatchers. A Special Town Meeting three months later, however, rescinded the vote as a result of a petition pushed largely by fire department officials. An issue of cost was the driving force behind the petition, Town Manager Ira Singer said. In the end, the responsibilities ofmanaging emergency-911 dispatch went back to the fire department, and fire department dispatchers successfully negotiated for additional pay. But town officials say its time to stop squabbling about who runs the center and make sure that emergency calls are getting answered. "What we need to do is make the system work," said Police Chief Paul Armitage. "We need to improve the system - not point fingers at each other."
Singer said the Board of Selectmen is endorsing a plan to have the police and fire departments work together towards an emergency improvement plan. Officials said they would like to see the dispatch center equipped with full-time dispatchers. Now dispatchers are part-timers who already have full-time jobs. Creating a 24-hour dispatch center would require at least an additional $150,000 annually, Singer added. Although not denying problems with the town's emergency response system, Armitage said that, since the sleeping dispatcher left the Fire Department, the unusual situations causing much of the problem have stopped.
Both Michalski and Armitage described the dispatcher as an "excellent paramedic," a former candidate for a police officer job and a CPR instructor. "He's actually been a leader in encouraging some of the other members of the call force to sign up for more courses," Singer said.
Armitage suggested the dispatcher's sleeping was unintentional and said the dispatcher is now seeking medical advice to determine if his snoozing on duty is a result of a medical condition. Armitage said that the day after the Richdale burglary, the dispatcher told him that he did not remember even taking the calls from the alarm company.
"I don't doubt that the man fell asleep," Armitage said. "But it's not like he put on his jammies and slippers first." Singer called the attempted break-in at the Getty station a "non-incident" because the bump to Hamilton was part of the proper procedure. After five rings, the call gets transferred to Hamilton as back-up and not to a town closer because Hamilton is on the same radio frequency as Middleton. Audio tape provided by the fire chief indicates seven calls coming into the dispatch center at the same time, all reporting the alarm at the Getty station. As the dispatcher answers the calls one after the other, the phone can be heard ringing in the background. "That's a normal call to the system," Singer said, adding he is working with the police union to discuss improvements. "That's not unusual at all." "When you get busy, you get busy," Michalski said.
As part of a policy instituted several years ago, Armitage said, officers do not call in their whereabouts to dispatch when they stop a car. The protocol is to radio a fellow officer, Armitage said, admitting that the system is not all it could be. "It's not an ideal situation," he said. "But we will look into it. It's something that will be addressed."
"The two chiefs are going to get together to discuss dispatch protocol and come up with ways of improving it," Singer said. "Henry and I have been working together all of our lives," Armitage said. "We don't want to see firemen and policemen fighting about this. We need to come up with an equitable and safe solution." Meanwhile, officials don't want residents worrying about getting through to dispatch. They say, unfortunate circumstances stemming from a sleepy dispatcher are a thing of the past. "It's a past issue because, in theory, it should never happen again," Armitage said. "It's (handling calls) is something that the dispatchers have been doing reasonably well over the years. The function hasn't changed, but the responsibility has."