What started out as a freak mistake in April is becoming more and more a common occurrence in Madison. On Monday, Dane County's 911 center mishandled another call - resulting in the beating and death of a man in Lake Edge Park.
Still under heavy scrutiny in the wake of the Brittany Zimmermann murder in April, a 911 operator reportedly failed to dispatch police to a disturbance call in which more than one caller reported hearing violent"" noise and screaming near the park. Although only one noise disturbance can be dropped from the queue line of officer dispatches, when two or more phone calls are made regarding one instance, police must be dispatched. Considering only six percent of noise disturbances are dropped per year, the 911 center clearly violated protocol.
In a study mandated by the County Board following the 911 center's mistakes handling the call in the Brittany Zimmermann murder, the Matrix Consulting Group found the center to be understaffed, needing more than the five positions, which Kathleen Falk requested in the 2009 budget. The report said eight more staff members were an immediate priority.
What is the fallout from an understaffed 911 center? More overtime hours and more calls to handle for an already high-pressure job translates to a staff that may not be apt to follow procedural protocols in every situation. The majority of the time, this problem is a non-issue. Twice in the last year, however, these mishandled calls have cost lives.
Although both the state and national economic situations are struggling, the 911 center has become an open wound Dane County can no longer allow to fester. Kathleen Falk has gone on record to say that the Dane County 911 center is adequately staffed, yet she now claims that such violations of protocol are ""unacceptable."" The problem may be simple human error, but keeping staff overworked in a difficult profession serves only to exacerbate a growing problem.
Falk has to bite the bullet and admit she was wrong, take the advice of the Matrix Consulting Group and push to allocate more funds for the center. The Dane County 911 center cannot survive another public relations nightmare such as this one, and next time Falk will not be able to simply scold the problem away.
