As Anne Linehan noted earlier, Chief Hurtt gave himself a nice pat on the back at a press conference earlier today. He was congratulating himself because the manpower supplied by temporary overtime expenditures seems to have dampened the city’s recent surge in violent crime.
Maybe he should hold a press conference tomorrow to address this KTRK-13 reporting:
A family’s home was under assault. And while their frantic calls for help were answered, that help didn’t arrive for hours. And now, our questions are sparking an official investigation.
We wanted to find out why it took so long for police to arrive when a man was trying to beat his way through their front door. All the while, the victims were making repeated calls for help. We found out there’s no good answer.
The Houston Police Department says its officers did exactly what they’re supposed to do, but 911 calls go to dispatchers first. That is where officials believe the calls may have been mishandled.
Incessant pounding and ringing at the front door; the terrifying noise kept Britney Keyworth, her grandmother, and aunt on edge for hours. It came from an angry strange man who wanted inside.
“We were scared,” said Britney. “We were afraid he was going to get in, but they never showed.”
The police showed up, but not until at least an hour after the family began calling 911.
[snip]
Five frantic calls were handled by dispatchers at the Houston Emergency Center, known as HEC. Dispatchers gave the calls a medium priority level designation, called code three. The Houston Police Department believes the calls needed more immediate attention.
“It was obviously a situation that required someone to, a police officer, to respond as quickly as possible,” said Lt. Robert Manzo with the Houston Police Department. “Unfortunately, the Houston communications employee who took this call assigned it priority three.”
Since Eyewitness News started asking questions, HEC administrators are re-evaluating the case.
“We have initiated an investigation because we feel there were some discrepancies that we have encountered, but right now we’re in the initial steps of the investigation,” said Joe Laud with the Houston Emergency Center.
Well, it’s good they’re in the initial steps of the investigation they initiated after some bad press. Maybe they’ll get back to us in three months to let us know what went wrong.
Or perhaps Mayor White could put aside his precious downtown wifi internet bubble for just a little while, and Chief Hurtt could put aside his precious Fear Reduction Initiative, and the two of them could focus some attention on why we continue to have problems with the HEC, and HPD continues to have problems with response times.
Houblog has more.
UPDATE (03-16-2006): KHOU-11 also ran a story on HEC/HPD response times last night. Here’s an excerpt:
The 11 News Defenders have exposed possible trouble with emergency calls for help, discovering thousands of 911 callers might not be getting an answer.
When you need the help of 911, you need it right now, not later.
But that’s what we found, tens of thousands of cases in which emergency operators didn’t answer when they were supposed to.
What’s more, the city isn’t doing much about it.
[snip]
11 News Defenders: “So in other words, year after year goes by, and tens of thousands of calls are over 20 seconds to answer, and nobody knows anything about them?”
[HEC Director David] Cutler: “Correct.”
11 News Defenders: “And life goes on?”
Cutler: “Yes.”
And when we asked the city for the information? We were shocked by this: An estimate of charges for $458,000.
The city’s legal department said it would take 158 months — 13 years –because the city claims the only way to do it is to print out a million records page by page.
Houblog also has more on this astounding story.
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