Hopefully today will be the last time I ever have to look at this timeline. Because I'm the one who read the I/A report, I'm the one who has to present it anew to any persons who are getting involved in the case whether they be reporters, investigators.... whatever.
I honestly don't want Mark or Nate to ever have to read the I/A report if they don't have to but! if I keep having to go over it, I'm afraid one of them will have to take over. And, it's just painful.
I just want to hand it to somebody and say "go at it" but they need to have the passion for 9-1-1 reform that we have.
Every time I present it to new persons I go over it to make sure it's all there and I have my facts straight.
I went over it again today. Sigh! Hence this post.
The other day I talked about feeling ill whenever I see a CCSO car. I assume it's because I associate them with this crap.
I don't feel sick when I see NPPD cars! I get a good feeling when I see them. I want to wave and yell thank you to them!
In any case, I won't post the timeline here. This timeline I'm talking about is much more detailed and more explicit than the timeline I posted a couple of weeks ago. I really don't want anyone else to ever have to read it unless it's going to help Nathan's case and it's going to help fix the problems.
I would like Governor Crist to read it sometime. So........ if anyone out there has any connections and can guarantee that he'll see it and that it'll get past his Lt Gov Kottcamp (apparently a childhood buddy of Bill Cameron's), I'd appreciate the help.
He should know what's going on down here.
here's the full time line I posted before:
http://toosad4words.blogspot.com/2009/01/denise-amber-lee-timeline-of-january-17.html
Showing posts with label 911 cover up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 911 cover up. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Nathan on Clout 941 with Ron Filipkowski
He does so well! I'm so proud of him.
I knew Rick had been told the day of the viewing but I didn't realize Rick found out about the mishandled call while shopping for a suit at the mall. He was probably shopping for a suit for Denise's funeral! That's just awful.
I can't find words to express the disgust I feel for the CCSO higher ups (John Davenport and Bill Cameron!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbgRXFcaQVE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2Si1yMyRKY
I knew Rick had been told the day of the viewing but I didn't realize Rick found out about the mishandled call while shopping for a suit at the mall. He was probably shopping for a suit for Denise's funeral! That's just awful.
I can't find words to express the disgust I feel for the CCSO higher ups (John Davenport and Bill Cameron!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbgRXFcaQVE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2Si1yMyRKY
Denise Amber Lee/Top Ten Reasons I believe there was a cover up
I've said them before and I'll keep saying them. Why? Because I hope someone will take an interest and expose the problems in the CCSO. Sorry for the clutter but sometimes we have to do what we have to do. Those of you who have been following this story understand the repetition. I apologize to others but I feel compelled to get the truth out.
Top ten reasons there was a cover-up:
1 They didn't notify the North Port Police Department immediately after they mishandled Ms Kowalski's phone call. Why not? Even though, they KNEW she was the last person to see Denise alive and would've been the prosecution's best witness. They insinuate they didn't know the call referred to Denise, but according to the I/A report, they knew that night. They never followed up with Jane Kowalski on her phone call. Why not? She is heard clearly requesting them to follow up with her on her concerns when you listen to the call.
2 They only reprimand the dispatchers. IMO the dispatchers are scapegoats. Yes, they screwed up royally but the call taker, Millie Stepp, screwed up more. So, did the supervisor Laurie Piatt who testified she "didn't know what was going on" because she "was too busy patching radios." Also, their Teletype machine wasn't monitored and they could lose it, if it's found they did not use it appropriately.
3 They had Capt Donna Roguska lead the Internal Affairs investigation. She was Director of Communications that night and in charge. Capt Roguska had just been promoted to Internal Affairs but was filling in for Sherman Robinson who was on vacation and supervised the 9-1-1 center that night. What does that smack of?
4 They didn't interview Bill Cameron who was the Chief of Communications. He was the top TOP dog that night calling all the shots. Why wasn't he interviewed? Is it because it was an election year and he was running for sheriff?
5 They refused to answer any questions after the Internal Affairs Investigation Report came out. Why not? The I/A report only raises more questions and answered very few.
6 Their treatment of Ms Kowalski in blaming her for giving them "erroneous" information about the color of the car and the age of the victim. That's truly appalling. Here a citizen does the right thing, but because it was going to expose major mistakes in the 9-1-1 center they chose to not even call her back. And they blame her!
7 They laid blame on Nextel being the problem and went to great lengths to explain how they were going to go about discontinuing the use of Nextel when the only person who had a Nextel phone in the 9-1-1 center that night was Laurie Piatt, the supervisor patching radios. At least according to those who were interviewed. Who knows what Roguska and Cameron were using? They conveniently weren't interviewed.
8 The list of questions that went unasked in the investigation. For example "who was the 'he' in authority that Millie Stepp was asking direction from while on the phone with Ms Kowalski?" and "who was hollering at Millie when she was on the phone with Ms Kowalski?" These were clearly people in authority. Those people were never interviewed and it was never asked who they are. Also "why didn't Millie (the call taker) confirm with the dispatchers that they received her information and that it was sent out?" And "why weren't the 3 BOLOs sent across on the Teletype from North Port responded to?" And "why were the CCSO deputies in the field not looking for a green Camaro until after 6:45PM when the CCSO first received information over the Teletype about a green Camaro as early as 4:59PM?" And "during the shift change what information did the on duty supervisor give to the on-coming supervisor?" And "why wasn't the on coming squad of call takers and dispatchers made aware of the green Camaro and the 3 BOLOs?" The pass on log which they all initialed when they came in at 6:45PM doesn't mention anything about the green Camaro or the white pudgy guy. Why not? "Why were the CCSO deputies in the field so frustrated about not having any leads when there were clearly leads coming over the Teletype?" How could the supervisor, Laurie Piatt get away with a response of "I didn't know what was going on, I was patching radios, I mean, I knew Millie had a call but I really didn't know anything about it". She was the supervisor for goodness sakes. Where's the follow up of "why not? And why didn't you make it your business to find out why one of your call takers was standing up screaming across the room and find out why people were hollering at her?" I could go on but I'll stop for a while. Most likely I'll blog about it in a few days. If I do I'll warn you ahead of time that it's a rant on cover-up.
9 They won't open themselves up to an external investigation which you'd think they would. I mean, if there are no issues as they say and their dispatchers are excellent, you'd think an external investigation would exonerate them. They continue to hide behind Nathan's lawsuit when no lawsuit has been filed!
10 Biggest reason! the North Port Police Department had to "request" information on Ms Kowalski's call on Saturday, the same day we found Denise's body, when most 9-1-1 centers would've contacted them the night of the call (Thursday). The CCSO clearly knew according to their own I/A report the call referred to Denise as early as Thursday evening. Why? Why did the NPPD have to "request" information? Ms Kowalski was the last person to see Denise alive. She was a critical witness and we would NEVER have known about her or her call if she hadn't persistantly called the NPPD. The CCSO's treatment of her is an indictment itself.
I'd add 11 but it is all only hearsay and I have no proof. But it seems there's been other cover-ups involving the same cast of characters. You'd hope Denise's case was isolated but it's not.
Jane was an eyewitness to Denise's kidnapping. She called 9-1-1 and reached the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office 9-1-1 center. She kept them on the line 9 minutes. Denise's kidnapping took place in Sarasota County and Sarasota County with the North Port Police Department had jurisdiction over the case. They all neighbor each other. Jane called 9-1-1 and reached the CCSO. She thought she was talking to the North Port 9-1-1 center. There's no way to tell who you are reaching when calling the 9-1-1 center because they answer the call "9-1-1, where is your emergency?" Anyhow, Jane wasn't aware of what she was witnessing and only realized it the next morning when she watched the news and saw Denise's story. She then immediately called the NPPD and told them she was the eyewitness they talked to the night before and she wanted to help. THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHO SHE WAS. Was that their fault (the NPPD's)? NO! The CCSO (namely Bill Cameron, now Sheriff, then Communications Chief) NEVER TOLD THE NORTH PORT DETECTIVES HANDLING DENISE'S CASE ABOUT THE CALL. WE WERE STILL LOOKING FOR HER!!!!!! Why? Because the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office grossly mishandled not only the call and didn't dispatch a car but neglected their Teletype and ignored crucial BOLO's (Be On the Look Outs) containing information on the suspect and his car. They certainly and for sure didn't want anyone to know.
Top ten reasons there was a cover-up:
1 They didn't notify the North Port Police Department immediately after they mishandled Ms Kowalski's phone call. Why not? Even though, they KNEW she was the last person to see Denise alive and would've been the prosecution's best witness. They insinuate they didn't know the call referred to Denise, but according to the I/A report, they knew that night. They never followed up with Jane Kowalski on her phone call. Why not? She is heard clearly requesting them to follow up with her on her concerns when you listen to the call.
2 They only reprimand the dispatchers. IMO the dispatchers are scapegoats. Yes, they screwed up royally but the call taker, Millie Stepp, screwed up more. So, did the supervisor Laurie Piatt who testified she "didn't know what was going on" because she "was too busy patching radios." Also, their Teletype machine wasn't monitored and they could lose it, if it's found they did not use it appropriately.
3 They had Capt Donna Roguska lead the Internal Affairs investigation. She was Director of Communications that night and in charge. Capt Roguska had just been promoted to Internal Affairs but was filling in for Sherman Robinson who was on vacation and supervised the 9-1-1 center that night. What does that smack of?
4 They didn't interview Bill Cameron who was the Chief of Communications. He was the top TOP dog that night calling all the shots. Why wasn't he interviewed? Is it because it was an election year and he was running for sheriff?
5 They refused to answer any questions after the Internal Affairs Investigation Report came out. Why not? The I/A report only raises more questions and answered very few.
6 Their treatment of Ms Kowalski in blaming her for giving them "erroneous" information about the color of the car and the age of the victim. That's truly appalling. Here a citizen does the right thing, but because it was going to expose major mistakes in the 9-1-1 center they chose to not even call her back. And they blame her!
7 They laid blame on Nextel being the problem and went to great lengths to explain how they were going to go about discontinuing the use of Nextel when the only person who had a Nextel phone in the 9-1-1 center that night was Laurie Piatt, the supervisor patching radios. At least according to those who were interviewed. Who knows what Roguska and Cameron were using? They conveniently weren't interviewed.
8 The list of questions that went unasked in the investigation. For example "who was the 'he' in authority that Millie Stepp was asking direction from while on the phone with Ms Kowalski?" and "who was hollering at Millie when she was on the phone with Ms Kowalski?" These were clearly people in authority. Those people were never interviewed and it was never asked who they are. Also "why didn't Millie (the call taker) confirm with the dispatchers that they received her information and that it was sent out?" And "why weren't the 3 BOLOs sent across on the Teletype from North Port responded to?" And "why were the CCSO deputies in the field not looking for a green Camaro until after 6:45PM when the CCSO first received information over the Teletype about a green Camaro as early as 4:59PM?" And "during the shift change what information did the on duty supervisor give to the on-coming supervisor?" And "why wasn't the on coming squad of call takers and dispatchers made aware of the green Camaro and the 3 BOLOs?" The pass on log which they all initialed when they came in at 6:45PM doesn't mention anything about the green Camaro or the white pudgy guy. Why not? "Why were the CCSO deputies in the field so frustrated about not having any leads when there were clearly leads coming over the Teletype?" How could the supervisor, Laurie Piatt get away with a response of "I didn't know what was going on, I was patching radios, I mean, I knew Millie had a call but I really didn't know anything about it". She was the supervisor for goodness sakes. Where's the follow up of "why not? And why didn't you make it your business to find out why one of your call takers was standing up screaming across the room and find out why people were hollering at her?" I could go on but I'll stop for a while. Most likely I'll blog about it in a few days. If I do I'll warn you ahead of time that it's a rant on cover-up.
9 They won't open themselves up to an external investigation which you'd think they would. I mean, if there are no issues as they say and their dispatchers are excellent, you'd think an external investigation would exonerate them. They continue to hide behind Nathan's lawsuit when no lawsuit has been filed!
10 Biggest reason! the North Port Police Department had to "request" information on Ms Kowalski's call on Saturday, the same day we found Denise's body, when most 9-1-1 centers would've contacted them the night of the call (Thursday). The CCSO clearly knew according to their own I/A report the call referred to Denise as early as Thursday evening. Why? Why did the NPPD have to "request" information? Ms Kowalski was the last person to see Denise alive. She was a critical witness and we would NEVER have known about her or her call if she hadn't persistantly called the NPPD. The CCSO's treatment of her is an indictment itself.
I'd add 11 but it is all only hearsay and I have no proof. But it seems there's been other cover-ups involving the same cast of characters. You'd hope Denise's case was isolated but it's not.
Jane was an eyewitness to Denise's kidnapping. She called 9-1-1 and reached the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office 9-1-1 center. She kept them on the line 9 minutes. Denise's kidnapping took place in Sarasota County and Sarasota County with the North Port Police Department had jurisdiction over the case. They all neighbor each other. Jane called 9-1-1 and reached the CCSO. She thought she was talking to the North Port 9-1-1 center. There's no way to tell who you are reaching when calling the 9-1-1 center because they answer the call "9-1-1, where is your emergency?" Anyhow, Jane wasn't aware of what she was witnessing and only realized it the next morning when she watched the news and saw Denise's story. She then immediately called the NPPD and told them she was the eyewitness they talked to the night before and she wanted to help. THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHO SHE WAS. Was that their fault (the NPPD's)? NO! The CCSO (namely Bill Cameron, now Sheriff, then Communications Chief) NEVER TOLD THE NORTH PORT DETECTIVES HANDLING DENISE'S CASE ABOUT THE CALL. WE WERE STILL LOOKING FOR HER!!!!!! Why? Because the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office grossly mishandled not only the call and didn't dispatch a car but neglected their Teletype and ignored crucial BOLO's (Be On the Look Outs) containing information on the suspect and his car. They certainly and for sure didn't want anyone to know.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The Charlotte County Sheriff's Office and me
I hate to blog about this but I'm hoping it will help me with something that's going on with me personally. I'm having issues.
Every time I see a Charlotte County Sheriff's Department car, I get very odd, bad feelings.
Now. I don't have problems with the men and women who work for the CCSO. I admire them. I commend them and I thank them for all they do and all they've done. These men and women searched a long side Nathan for Denise. They've been nothing but kind. Yes, I do have issues with the new sheriff, Bill Cameron. I doubt I'll ever trust him. And, yes, I have issues with the old sheriff, John Davenport. I admit it. I want to barf when I hear their names. This may be very unreasonable. I don't know. I doubt it. I think anyone who was treated the way we've been treated and lied to would feel this way especially when it concerns the loss of a loved one. I have great issues with the squad on duty in the 9-1-1 center that night. They know they made grave mistakes. One woman in particular... Well, I'm too much of a lady (or at least I try to be) to go there. I think that woman should be arrested. Maybe when she goes before God with it, she'll start feeling some remorse instead of chuckling about her training. If she were to read this, I doubt she'd recognize herself.
In any case. These are my problems. I'm dealing with them the best way I know how.
I'll be driving along, minding my own business, thinking about what I need at the store or whatever and then I'll spot a CCSO car. I just get panicky. I just turn to jelly. It all floods back. Denise, what she suffered, Michael King, the 9-1-1 failures, the actions of the new sheriff during the election, John Davenport and his arrogance, Denise again and how she suffered, the shot in the head, how it could've been prevented. The thoughts just come flooding and racing in! I can't stop them. Sometimes, I've had to literally pull over and get myself under control. I've gotten better now. I can continue driving and I battle all those thoughts and fight them. I literally have to fight them and continue on. But I no longer have to pull over.
Now, I have nothing against these guys in the field! I think they're wonderful. They've treated me wonderfully.
It's that ill feeling I want to get rid of when I see a CCSO car, or when I'm at a 4 way stop and a CCSO car pulls up.
Why am I writing this here? Well.... for a couple of reasons.
1.) Maybe other people who are experiencing homicide grief experience similar stuff and this will help them in know they are not alone.
2.) It's cathartic. I'm hoping by getting it all out, the next time I see a CCSO car I won't be sickened. I think it's wrong to be sickened by CCSO cars. They were out there doing their best searching that night. It wasn't their fault they weren't getting the BOLOs from dispatch.
God bless the CCSO and the men and women who put their lives on the line. This blog wasn't about you so much as it was about some of the things I experience. I share it for others.
added edit: I honestly believe, that if John Davenport and Bill Cameron had treated us differently in the beginning of this tragedy and if they had come clean with the mistakes and made an effort to help our family "move on", and if they hadn't manipulated the facts I wouldn't have these issues. Instead of feeling sickened when seeing a CCSO car, I'd feel comforted and safe.
Again, God bless those people who put their lives on the line for us each and everyday. I just wish when I saw them my mind wouldn't be flooded with ugly memories.
Every time I see a Charlotte County Sheriff's Department car, I get very odd, bad feelings.
Now. I don't have problems with the men and women who work for the CCSO. I admire them. I commend them and I thank them for all they do and all they've done. These men and women searched a long side Nathan for Denise. They've been nothing but kind. Yes, I do have issues with the new sheriff, Bill Cameron. I doubt I'll ever trust him. And, yes, I have issues with the old sheriff, John Davenport. I admit it. I want to barf when I hear their names. This may be very unreasonable. I don't know. I doubt it. I think anyone who was treated the way we've been treated and lied to would feel this way especially when it concerns the loss of a loved one. I have great issues with the squad on duty in the 9-1-1 center that night. They know they made grave mistakes. One woman in particular... Well, I'm too much of a lady (or at least I try to be) to go there. I think that woman should be arrested. Maybe when she goes before God with it, she'll start feeling some remorse instead of chuckling about her training. If she were to read this, I doubt she'd recognize herself.
In any case. These are my problems. I'm dealing with them the best way I know how.
I'll be driving along, minding my own business, thinking about what I need at the store or whatever and then I'll spot a CCSO car. I just get panicky. I just turn to jelly. It all floods back. Denise, what she suffered, Michael King, the 9-1-1 failures, the actions of the new sheriff during the election, John Davenport and his arrogance, Denise again and how she suffered, the shot in the head, how it could've been prevented. The thoughts just come flooding and racing in! I can't stop them. Sometimes, I've had to literally pull over and get myself under control. I've gotten better now. I can continue driving and I battle all those thoughts and fight them. I literally have to fight them and continue on. But I no longer have to pull over.
Now, I have nothing against these guys in the field! I think they're wonderful. They've treated me wonderfully.
It's that ill feeling I want to get rid of when I see a CCSO car, or when I'm at a 4 way stop and a CCSO car pulls up.
Why am I writing this here? Well.... for a couple of reasons.
1.) Maybe other people who are experiencing homicide grief experience similar stuff and this will help them in know they are not alone.
2.) It's cathartic. I'm hoping by getting it all out, the next time I see a CCSO car I won't be sickened. I think it's wrong to be sickened by CCSO cars. They were out there doing their best searching that night. It wasn't their fault they weren't getting the BOLOs from dispatch.
God bless the CCSO and the men and women who put their lives on the line. This blog wasn't about you so much as it was about some of the things I experience. I share it for others.
added edit: I honestly believe, that if John Davenport and Bill Cameron had treated us differently in the beginning of this tragedy and if they had come clean with the mistakes and made an effort to help our family "move on", and if they hadn't manipulated the facts I wouldn't have these issues. Instead of feeling sickened when seeing a CCSO car, I'd feel comforted and safe.
Again, God bless those people who put their lives on the line for us each and everyday. I just wish when I saw them my mind wouldn't be flooded with ugly memories.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Herald Tribune 9-1-1 stories
There were several 9-1-1 stories written by Zac Anderson which were published this past Saturday, Sunday and today (Monday).
I think I have them all. See these links:
Critical flaws in Florida's 911 system
911's experience gap
The legacy of Denise Amber Lee
Standards and accreditation at 911 call centers
911 rules are a hard sell
FWIW, I cannot give much incite as to other counties 9-1-1 centers. I have to trust what Mr Anderson has written. I have met Mr Anderson a couple of times and his diligence truly impressed my husband and me. And, believe me, we've met many reporters.
This is a little off topic but I have to say the majority of the reporters I've met, let's say 80%, I have genuinely gotten to like. I think most of them do care and look at us as more than just a story. There is that other 20% that I think are snakes. There's that 80/20 rule. I imagine this to be the case in most industries. You've got nice people, and then you have the "pleasant" but not really so nice people.
I'll lump Zac in with the 80%. He's got to be one of the smartest and most driven reporters I've met. I was truly impressed. And, for him it most definitely was about his story. But, he still was able to express compassion for us as a family. He gave our thoughts and feelings respect.
Also, FWIW, we're not media "whores". Someone said something not so nice to me the other day and I just want to set the record straight. We don't like the spotlight. We have been thrust into a situation that's not comfortable for us. Putting your pain on display the way Nathan has, isn't easy. But he does it. Rick (Goff) does it. I do it. Why? Well, I know why I do it. I do it for Nathan. I'd do anything for Nathan if it was the right thing for him. Same for Brian. But I can only guess as to why Nathan and Rick do it. I guess it's because they (me too) desperately NEVER want to see this happen to another family. Denise fought so hard. To fight the way she did and then to die in vain? It's still seems so surreal to me. We know there will always be mistakes. We know that to err is human. And, we truly can forgive human error. But, we have a very difficult time forgiving people that don't recognize the problems (or worse do recognize the problems) and don't fix them at the expense of loss of life. It just seems unconscionable.
I don't think Mr Anderson was trying to throw anyone under the bus as was said in many comments to his articles. Publishing people's names for mistakes they made in the past, made me a bit uncomfortable but maybe he needed to do that for credibility.
I'm just grateful he wrote the articles. For a while I felt as if I was going crazy because it seemed as if no-one was listening. I feel saddened that Denise's case isn't isolated. It would be so much easier to accept and understand if it was.
When it happened, I had an inkling of "this must happen more than we suspect. We never would have known about it if Ms Kowalski hadn't been so persistant in being heard." I imagined it happening in big cities and small towns. I thought that right away. Imagine the cover ups. I think they're scattered through the country.
The CCSO has absolutely no transparency at all.
So, I'm truly am glad he wrote the articles. He did his research.
I do hope that, if anything, it brings about awareness. And that when future legislation is presented, that maybe this will help sway people's votes into making positive changes in the 9-1-1 industry.
And, FWIW, then I'll stop running on, out of the 4 9-1-1 calls Sarasota County received the night we lost Denise, ALL were handled perfectly. Kudos from us to them.
God bless all call takers and dispatchers, everywhere, with guidance and strength.
Anyone have any ideas of how we can Governor Crist's attention? He's the only person who can insist on an external investigation into what happened in the CCSO 9-1-1 center that night.
You'd think he'd be interested in this! So far, he's ignored our attempts at communication with him.
I'm thinking of starting a petition and going door to door. The only problem with that is, I'd have to tell Denise's story over and over again. How painful would that be? And even if the angels in blue were to do it, it would still be painful for them as well. They never met Denise but they've grown to love her.
I hate the idea of email. Because, it's cold and I don't know if email petitions are taken as seriously as hand signed petitions. Maybe at future events we should have a petition clip board and carry it wherever we go.
I'm just starting to think (not aloud) but as I type. Same thing.
Oh! several people have asked about the picture at the top right of the blog. Ben, Tammy's (http://www.amomandherblog.com/) husband took it. Mark was very upset over the gray hair. So, I'll be doing something about that tomorrow. Still, I think it's a great pic because it expresses exactly how I was feeling.
Much love and peace to all. And thank you, Zac Anderson, for bringing light to this issue.
I think I have them all. See these links:
Critical flaws in Florida's 911 system
911's experience gap
The legacy of Denise Amber Lee
Standards and accreditation at 911 call centers
911 rules are a hard sell
FWIW, I cannot give much incite as to other counties 9-1-1 centers. I have to trust what Mr Anderson has written. I have met Mr Anderson a couple of times and his diligence truly impressed my husband and me. And, believe me, we've met many reporters.
This is a little off topic but I have to say the majority of the reporters I've met, let's say 80%, I have genuinely gotten to like. I think most of them do care and look at us as more than just a story. There is that other 20% that I think are snakes. There's that 80/20 rule. I imagine this to be the case in most industries. You've got nice people, and then you have the "pleasant" but not really so nice people.
I'll lump Zac in with the 80%. He's got to be one of the smartest and most driven reporters I've met. I was truly impressed. And, for him it most definitely was about his story. But, he still was able to express compassion for us as a family. He gave our thoughts and feelings respect.
Also, FWIW, we're not media "whores". Someone said something not so nice to me the other day and I just want to set the record straight. We don't like the spotlight. We have been thrust into a situation that's not comfortable for us. Putting your pain on display the way Nathan has, isn't easy. But he does it. Rick (Goff) does it. I do it. Why? Well, I know why I do it. I do it for Nathan. I'd do anything for Nathan if it was the right thing for him. Same for Brian. But I can only guess as to why Nathan and Rick do it. I guess it's because they (me too) desperately NEVER want to see this happen to another family. Denise fought so hard. To fight the way she did and then to die in vain? It's still seems so surreal to me. We know there will always be mistakes. We know that to err is human. And, we truly can forgive human error. But, we have a very difficult time forgiving people that don't recognize the problems (or worse do recognize the problems) and don't fix them at the expense of loss of life. It just seems unconscionable.
I don't think Mr Anderson was trying to throw anyone under the bus as was said in many comments to his articles. Publishing people's names for mistakes they made in the past, made me a bit uncomfortable but maybe he needed to do that for credibility.
I'm just grateful he wrote the articles. For a while I felt as if I was going crazy because it seemed as if no-one was listening. I feel saddened that Denise's case isn't isolated. It would be so much easier to accept and understand if it was.
When it happened, I had an inkling of "this must happen more than we suspect. We never would have known about it if Ms Kowalski hadn't been so persistant in being heard." I imagined it happening in big cities and small towns. I thought that right away. Imagine the cover ups. I think they're scattered through the country.
The CCSO has absolutely no transparency at all.
So, I'm truly am glad he wrote the articles. He did his research.
I do hope that, if anything, it brings about awareness. And that when future legislation is presented, that maybe this will help sway people's votes into making positive changes in the 9-1-1 industry.
And, FWIW, then I'll stop running on, out of the 4 9-1-1 calls Sarasota County received the night we lost Denise, ALL were handled perfectly. Kudos from us to them.
God bless all call takers and dispatchers, everywhere, with guidance and strength.
Anyone have any ideas of how we can Governor Crist's attention? He's the only person who can insist on an external investigation into what happened in the CCSO 9-1-1 center that night.
You'd think he'd be interested in this! So far, he's ignored our attempts at communication with him.
I'm thinking of starting a petition and going door to door. The only problem with that is, I'd have to tell Denise's story over and over again. How painful would that be? And even if the angels in blue were to do it, it would still be painful for them as well. They never met Denise but they've grown to love her.
I hate the idea of email. Because, it's cold and I don't know if email petitions are taken as seriously as hand signed petitions. Maybe at future events we should have a petition clip board and carry it wherever we go.
I'm just starting to think (not aloud) but as I type. Same thing.
Oh! several people have asked about the picture at the top right of the blog. Ben, Tammy's (http://www.amomandherblog.com/) husband took it. Mark was very upset over the gray hair. So, I'll be doing something about that tomorrow. Still, I think it's a great pic because it expresses exactly how I was feeling.
Much love and peace to all. And thank you, Zac Anderson, for bringing light to this issue.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Rant to Dispatch Monthly
sorry to clutter my blog with this but my comment was too long so I have to use a link to say all I want to say
In response to:
Editorial By all accounts, a single dispatcher did not take sufficient actions on a 911 call, and Amber Lee died. As is common after tragic events, the public became outraged, and there energy focused on the only place they could targert--dispatchers in general. Lee's husband and father turned their attention to the issue of dispatcher training requirements, and learned that APCO had already been pushing legislation to standardize training. But that bill was not only unfunded, it was "unrequired." The bill that was eventually passed failed to require any agency to do anything, let alone give them money to do it. So one year after the incident, the involved dispatcher was disciplined, and the residents of Florida are back to exactly the same point they were a year ago. And what point is that? No matter how much training you require or funding that you provide, the actions of a single person can have huge consequences, both good and bad. If dispatchers aren't performing their jobs, people can be put in jeopardy. Mistakes, oversights, inattention and downright maliciousness can all have an effect on the public safety. But it's still a single mistake made by a single person. It's not an indictment of the entire system, which I should point out is operating every day with remarkably good results. So, while the friends and family of Amber Lee are justly right to be concerned, they should devote their energy to the right cause. In this case, it was one person who didn't perform, not the entire dispatching community. Read about Lee's memorial activities here.
First, in regards to Denise's case no-one is blaming a "single dispatcher". There were many mistakes made that night.
The biggest mistake being made by a "call-taker" who has been on the job for 15 years and who refuses to use the CAD system appropriately. So, before you start ranting over this I suggest you learn a little more about it. Anyhow, this call taker has been reprimanded at least twice that we know of before for not entering things immediately into the CAD. She prefers to write things down and then likes to enter them into the CAD system. Even though she's been "trained" otherwise. The 9-1-1 call in question was received at 6:30 PM by the call taker. The call lasted 9 (nine) minutes. When listening to the 9-1-1 tape you can hear the call taker is rattled. She puts the caller on mute and is asking for direction because she's rattled. During those 9 minutes she tells the caller to "bear with me, ma'am, everyone is hollering at me".... The caller is giving her cross streets of where she is seeing Denise (who she thinks is a child because Denise was petite). Anyhow, the call-taker instead of entering information into the CAD (deputies in the field are waiting for this) she writes it all down on a piece of paper and yells it across the room. According to the investigation she says she yells it to Dispatcher A. But Dispatcher A and B testify she yells it to Dispatcher B. Are you getting the picture? The supervisor testifies she "doesn't know what's going on because she was busy patching radios" and so the call is never dispatched and at 6:42 the information is finally entered into the CAD. That's 12 minutes from the origination of the call. I, personally, think those 12 minutes were a bit "crucial" to my daughter-in-law. Do I sound angry. Well, I am.
They never dispatched a car.
During the investigation into this call the call-taker when asked about her training. Chuckled.
Yes, she chuckled. She said she's been there 15 years!
That's bothersome to us.
Add to that the 9-1-1 center sent their Teletype operator home early and the Teletype IMO went unmonitored for over 3 hours. Why do I believe that? Because 3 (three) BOLOs were ignored. IGNORED. These BOlOs gave a description of the subject and his car. This is bad. Really bad. The Teletype went unmonitored because the CCSO sent the operator home early so they wouldn't have to pay overtime. Now this isn't unusual and so when they do this they have the dispatchers monitor the Teletype. Well, they say they did. But....... I don't know. Those BOLO's were IGNORED. Sadly and unfortunately for Denise that was a pretty crucial time.
Add to that the 9-1-1 center, then NEVER notified the agency who had jurisdiction about the call! GEE! I wonder why? Especially when they knew the call was from THE LAST PERSON TO SEE DENISE ALIVE! The detectives covering Denise's case had to "request" information on the call after receiving 4 calls from the caller. She thought she was getting one agency when her call went to another! Gee! Is there a problem there?
No, this 9-1-1 center didn't put the bullet in Denise's head. But it didn't do a whole lot to help her either.
So, I proved your point the best training and the best technology in the world is useless if it isn't used. And it wasn't used here.
So standards and certification? Yeah, it's our opinion their needed otherwise you'll continue to have call-takers like ours.
BTW she never followed up to see what happened. She never followed through to see if her communication was recieved. She went home. She "just left".
And according to the report has no remorse and doesn't see that she did anything wrong.
Would you want her working for you?
If you have any questions about this you can either request a copy of the IA investigation from Charlotte County Sheriff's Office # 08-01-003 initiated 01-20/2008
or you can email me at noahsgrandma@gmail.com
Trust me. It's all in the report.
Peggy Lee (Denise Amber Lee's mother-in-law who read the IA 3 times to figure it all out).
So, there were several errors that night. If you need more, just let me know.
Sorry for the rant but.... you kinda asked for it.
In response to:
Editorial By all accounts, a single dispatcher did not take sufficient actions on a 911 call, and Amber Lee died. As is common after tragic events, the public became outraged, and there energy focused on the only place they could targert--dispatchers in general. Lee's husband and father turned their attention to the issue of dispatcher training requirements, and learned that APCO had already been pushing legislation to standardize training. But that bill was not only unfunded, it was "unrequired." The bill that was eventually passed failed to require any agency to do anything, let alone give them money to do it. So one year after the incident, the involved dispatcher was disciplined, and the residents of Florida are back to exactly the same point they were a year ago. And what point is that? No matter how much training you require or funding that you provide, the actions of a single person can have huge consequences, both good and bad. If dispatchers aren't performing their jobs, people can be put in jeopardy. Mistakes, oversights, inattention and downright maliciousness can all have an effect on the public safety. But it's still a single mistake made by a single person. It's not an indictment of the entire system, which I should point out is operating every day with remarkably good results. So, while the friends and family of Amber Lee are justly right to be concerned, they should devote their energy to the right cause. In this case, it was one person who didn't perform, not the entire dispatching community. Read about Lee's memorial activities here.
http://www.911dispatch.com/db/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2272&Itemid=1#comments
First, in regards to Denise's case no-one is blaming a "single dispatcher". There were many mistakes made that night.
The biggest mistake being made by a "call-taker" who has been on the job for 15 years and who refuses to use the CAD system appropriately. So, before you start ranting over this I suggest you learn a little more about it. Anyhow, this call taker has been reprimanded at least twice that we know of before for not entering things immediately into the CAD. She prefers to write things down and then likes to enter them into the CAD system. Even though she's been "trained" otherwise. The 9-1-1 call in question was received at 6:30 PM by the call taker. The call lasted 9 (nine) minutes. When listening to the 9-1-1 tape you can hear the call taker is rattled. She puts the caller on mute and is asking for direction because she's rattled. During those 9 minutes she tells the caller to "bear with me, ma'am, everyone is hollering at me".... The caller is giving her cross streets of where she is seeing Denise (who she thinks is a child because Denise was petite). Anyhow, the call-taker instead of entering information into the CAD (deputies in the field are waiting for this) she writes it all down on a piece of paper and yells it across the room. According to the investigation she says she yells it to Dispatcher A. But Dispatcher A and B testify she yells it to Dispatcher B. Are you getting the picture? The supervisor testifies she "doesn't know what's going on because she was busy patching radios" and so the call is never dispatched and at 6:42 the information is finally entered into the CAD. That's 12 minutes from the origination of the call. I, personally, think those 12 minutes were a bit "crucial" to my daughter-in-law. Do I sound angry. Well, I am.
They never dispatched a car.
During the investigation into this call the call-taker when asked about her training. Chuckled.
Yes, she chuckled. She said she's been there 15 years!
That's bothersome to us.
Add to that the 9-1-1 center sent their Teletype operator home early and the Teletype IMO went unmonitored for over 3 hours. Why do I believe that? Because 3 (three) BOLOs were ignored. IGNORED. These BOlOs gave a description of the subject and his car. This is bad. Really bad. The Teletype went unmonitored because the CCSO sent the operator home early so they wouldn't have to pay overtime. Now this isn't unusual and so when they do this they have the dispatchers monitor the Teletype. Well, they say they did. But....... I don't know. Those BOLO's were IGNORED. Sadly and unfortunately for Denise that was a pretty crucial time.
Add to that the 9-1-1 center, then NEVER notified the agency who had jurisdiction about the call! GEE! I wonder why? Especially when they knew the call was from THE LAST PERSON TO SEE DENISE ALIVE! The detectives covering Denise's case had to "request" information on the call after receiving 4 calls from the caller. She thought she was getting one agency when her call went to another! Gee! Is there a problem there?
No, this 9-1-1 center didn't put the bullet in Denise's head. But it didn't do a whole lot to help her either.
So, I proved your point the best training and the best technology in the world is useless if it isn't used. And it wasn't used here.
So standards and certification? Yeah, it's our opinion their needed otherwise you'll continue to have call-takers like ours.
BTW she never followed up to see what happened. She never followed through to see if her communication was recieved. She went home. She "just left".
And according to the report has no remorse and doesn't see that she did anything wrong.
Would you want her working for you?
If you have any questions about this you can either request a copy of the IA investigation from Charlotte County Sheriff's Office # 08-01-003 initiated 01-20/2008
or you can email me at noahsgrandma@gmail.com
Trust me. It's all in the report.
Peggy Lee (Denise Amber Lee's mother-in-law who read the IA 3 times to figure it all out).
So, there were several errors that night. If you need more, just let me know.
Sorry for the rant but.... you kinda asked for it.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Oh My! 9-1-1 and the State of Florida
Critical flaws in Florida's 911 system
By Zac Anderson
Published: Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 1:00 a.m. Last Modified: Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 2:59 p.m.
First of three parts
Moving ceremony for Denise Lee
Harold Muxlow 911 call Audio
Sabrina Muxlow 911 call Audio
Jane Kowalski 911 call Audio
Dispatchers get 911 call from Denise Amber Lee Audio
Lee's father speaks in Tallahassee Audio
One year after Denise Lee's murder Video
911 caller tells police about hearing Denise Amber Lee's screams Video
Every year, Florida 911 workers make hundreds of critical errors that endanger lives and leave people waiting for help, a Herald-Tribune investigation has found.
Records show that Florida’s 911 call takers and dispatchers — the vital link between emergency responders and distressed callers — send help to the wrong address or neglect to send any help at all.
They fall asleep on the job and abandon their posts to run errands. They argue with heart attack victims and hang up on hysterical callers.
In the most egregious cases, 911 workers listen to callers’ pleas for help and simply decide not to send a police officer or ambulance.
Despite chronic errors and even deaths, state officials and many local agencies have done little to stop the mistakes.
Florida’s 911 centers have no uniform standards and little oversight. Unlike at least 32 other states, Florida does not mandate training or certification for dispatchers. In some cases, the Herald-Tribune found, dispatchers have been allowed to start processing calls just two days after being hired.
And the mistakes are piling up.
The newspaper spent six months gathering and analyzing five years’ worth of discipline reports and complaints against 911 centers across the state. The paper reviewed more than 1,000 cases from more than half of Florida’s 67 counties. It also interviewed more than 50 current and former 911 workers, supervisors, policymakers and victims of 911 mishaps.
Although the vast majority of calls are handled correctly, the newspaper found that mistakes occur every day and that government officials have neglected the 911 system, allowing it to lag years behind police, firefighters and paramedics in training and other standards.
Among the findings:
--Each year in Florida, hundreds of 911 dispatchers violate protocols designed to ensure swift and accurate emergency response, complaint documents show. More than a third of those mistakes delay the arrival of police, fire or medical responders, threatening lives.
--Hundreds more 911 employees demonstrate gross unprofessionalism with actions that include sleeping on the job, not showing up for work, leaving stations unattended or turning off emergency alert tones so that they will not be disturbed.
--Dozens of errors put emergency responders in jeopardy when dispatchers failed to fully describe a dangerous situation or update criminal databases. A Gainesville police officer faced a suspected killer during a traffic stop on Sept. 14, 2006, but did not know because of a dispatcher’s error, records show.
--Heavy turnover and training standards that vary widely from one community to the next virtually ensure mistakes will be made by overworked, ill-prepared phone and radio operators. Even so, top law enforcement officials lobby against more training because of concerns about money.
--Most 911 centers have adopted standards that draw on accepted industry practices. But no minimum standards are required by Florida law. In addition, Florida officials do not require 911 centers to track mistakes or determine if errors were fatal.
--Even when mistakes are discovered, 911 administrators often dole out light punishment, allowing operators to rack up multiple mistakes without serious consequences. A Bradenton dispatcher was reprimanded for 9 offenses during her first 11 months on the job. Three times she sent rescue workers to the wrong address on “serious calls,” and once she failed to alert police about a missing 4-year-old.
Julie Righter, a national expert on 911 standards who runs a center in Nebraska, said 911 workers have an extremely tough job and handle most calls without incident.
They perform thankless work for little pay, yet are a key cog in a system that saves lives. But Righter also said that the competence of a 911 operator should not be a factor in whether someone lives or dies. And many 911 centers have a long way to go before the proper standards are in place to ensure there is little chance “you’ll have an error when someone’s life is on the line,” she said.
Raising standards has been difficult. The two main voices of law enforcement in Florida — the Florida Police Chief’s Association and the Florida Sheriff’s Association — have opposed increased requirements because of the expense.
In the absence of statewide standards, the 911 system has continued to tolerate mistake after mistake.
Widespread problems
Every so often, a tragic error by a 911 dispatcher captures headlines because someone dies.
A year ago today, a mishandled call to Charlotte County’s 911 center robbed law enforcement officers of a critical opportunity to save 21-year-old Denise Lee.
A concerned driver heard someone screaming in the back of a Camaro on U.S. 41 and called 911. The caller was so concerned she stayed on the phone for nine minutes, following the car to give street-by-street locations.
Although 911 workers suspected that the passenger might be Lee, dispatchers failed to send help.
Several deputies were just minutes away.
The young North Port mother was found two days later, buried in a shallow grave with a single gunshot wound.
Blame was passed around. The radio operators blamed the 911 call taker for shouting across the room instead of calmly sending a computer message. The Sheriff’s Office defended the call taker and disciplined the radio dispatchers for not taking action.
It was a communication breakdown that shook the community’s faith in the 911 system.
A year before Lee’s death, another death was attributed to inaction by 911 employees, this time in Pasco County. For seven minutes, 911 supervisor David Cook refused to offer lifesaving advice to a caller whose girlfriend was choking and near death. The supervisor did not want to get on the phone with a “hysterical caller,” according to reports in the St. Petersburg Times. Co-workers later reported that when Cook learned the woman had died, he joked, “She must have bitten off more than she can chew.”
More recently, inaction by dispatchers was partly blamed for the death of a Plantation woman who dialed 911 while driving to the police station.
For three minutes she begged for help as a man with a gun chased her down the street. She described where she was and told the 911 operator she was driving to the police station. But when she arrived, no officers had been sent to protect her.
The man shot Olidia Kerr Day to death, then killed himself.
Many of the officials who run the state’s 250-plus 911 centers argue that these sensational episodes are the result of isolated and rare human errors.
But the Herald-Tribune found hundreds of mishandled calls that might have contributed to someone’s death if not for one thing — luck.
--In Escambia County, a new 911 call taker sent ambulances to the wrong address three times in a four-month span. She delayed help for an unconscious person, car accident victims and a person having a seizure. In the car accident case, the caller gave the location as North Z Street and repeated “Z, like zebra,” records show. The dispatcher entered North C Street.
--At least twice in the past five years in Pinellas County, ambulance drivers arrived on the scene to find their patients holding a gun. The 911 workers failed to warn the paramedics, according to a complaint log.
--In Sarasota County, a woman called 911 from the Chili’s restaurant in Venice to report an unconscious person and clearly stated the address. The dispatcher sent paramedics to a Chili’s in Sarasota.
--In Hardee County, a 911 worker walked out of the call center, leaving it empty with no one to answer the phone for eight minutes while she looked for a co-worker. Another worker failed to report an escaped prisoner who had jumped out of a window at a nearby county courthouse. Five days later, the same woman sent paramedics to the wrong address for a heart attack, delaying help by 27 minutes, records show.
The Herald-Tribune found more than 600 similar mistakes statewide in the past five years. The actual number is likely measured in thousands. The Herald-Tribune was only able to review complaints and discipline reports from about 40 of the state’s more than 250 centers that directly or indirectly handle 911 calls.
Several dozen agencies contacted by the newspaper did not comply with Florida public records law, failing to respond to written and e-mailed public records requests. Other centers reported no problems or just a handful, even though 911 experts say errors occur in most centers practically every day.
Why mistakes happen
There is a reason so many 911 workers — nearly 75 percent for some agencies — leave within the first year.
They are asked to field life-or-death calls under extreme stress for less than $30,000 a year.
In a matter of seconds, they must ask the right questions to understand an emergency, assign a priority to the call and pass on the correct information to responders.
The large number of non-emergencies, nearly half of all calls for some agencies, can create a “boy who cried wolf” phenomenon, in which workers take real emergencies less seriously because they have dealt with so many minor issues.
Add it all up and the potential for errors — misunderstanding an address, pushing the wrong key on a computer keyboard, getting distracted — is high.
That is why the best dispatch centers establish excruciatingly detailed protocols for answering 911 calls and require months of intense training. They make sure seemingly small errors do not go unmentioned and hold people to high standards.
But in Florida, the 911 agencies have been left largely on their own, with no statewide requirements for training, staffing or quality control, little oversight and paltry state funding.
As a result, training and monitoring vary widely.
In Bradenton, new 911 dispatchers have 14 weeks to master everything and begin working on their own. They learn on the job with no classroom training. In Broward County, new hires spend 12 weeks confined to a classroom and the training program lasts a full year.
The lack of standards is a problem nationwide, said Nancy Pollock, a 911 consultant who ran centers in Minnesota.
“Unfortunately the only way this is going to change is if the highest government in an area takes ownership of this, and in most cases that’s the state,” she said.
In the absence of a state standard, several national accreditation programs lay out best practices.
Yet because the state does not push accreditation, only 15 of Florida’s 911 centers, among them Sarasota County’s, have qualified.
Ignoring the problem
Many of the county governments, sheriff’s offices and municipalities that oversee 911 centers do little to track life-threatening mistakes.
The state of New York requires every 911 center to track complaints.
But only a few of the Florida centers contacted by the Herald-Tribune could provide copies of a complaint log, or a list of every disciplinary action taken against 911 employees. For many, the only way to review 911 errors is to pull dozens of individual personnel files, and sift through thousands of pages looking for discipline reports.
Even that will not catch all of the mistakes because documents describing errors are not always retained.
As a result, many 911 centers operate with no way of knowing how many errors are made, who is making them and how to reduce errors.
In Escambia County, 911 manager Bob Boschen said he began keeping a complaint log after the Herald-Tribune contacted him to request complaint documents last year.
Boschen said he realized that tracking problems is part of providing “the best customer service.” His goal now is to have less than two valid complaints a month.
Some Florida 911 agencies, including Escambia, systematically seek out mistakes in regular audits of every dispatcher.
In Sarasota County, dispatch managers randomly review 10 law enforcement calls each week and 3 percent of medical calls each month to make sure employees verified addresses, classified emergencies properly and asked the right questions.
The checks expose where employees need training and discourage complacency, said Sarasota sheriff’s Capt. Jeff Bell, who runs the 911 center.
“It’s a little scary because you’re really opening yourself for criticism,” said Pollock, the consultant. “But a smart manager views complaints as a good thing. If you have something wrong you want to know about it before something really tragic happens.”
Yet while some agencies have documented more than 100 problems in their 911 centers over the past five years through complaint tracking, the Herald-Tribune found four agencies that recorded no problems at all. Others had very few.
The Bradenton Police Department — an agency with 15 dispatchers — had 20 discipline cases, while Charlotte County, with more than twice as many dispatchers, had just 10.
A former Charlotte County 911 worker told the Herald Tribune that she witnessed problems in the center that went undocumented.
Amy Corbett, who worked in Charlotte County’s 911 center for four months in 2006 and left for personal reasons, said most of the people in the 911 center were competent professionals, but she remembered an incident where a call taker was sleeping on the job and the other workers just laughed and threw candy at her.
“I didn’t see them handle mistakes that happened,” Corbett said. “Some were swept under the carpet, or you’d just have a supervisor talk to you, but it was never anything that was formal.”
Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Sherman Robinson said his office has no record that Corbett reported the problems she saw in the 911 center. Robinson said that if a problem was brought to their attention they would have taken action.
Charlotte does not keep a complaint log. Officials say their informal system works because they get few complaints, and discipline is adequate.
“I can’t tell you the last time I got a complaint,” Robinson said. “I think we hold people to a pretty good standard.
”
Few consequences
Beyond training and monitoring, some experts say dispatch mistakes in Florida have been increased by lax punishment when errors are discovered.
In some cases, even when a mistake ends in tragedy, the punishment is light.
The two dispatchers who did not send deputies to investigate the 911 call shortly before Lee’s death were each suspended but stayed on the job. It was the first time in five years that Charlotte County had suspended a dispatcher, a common punishment elsewhere. Then-Sheriff John Davenport said they were good employees who just slipped up.
The Herald-Tribune’s investigation found that punishment levels vary widely from one place to the next.
In Alachua County, where the 911 center has been held up as a model of excellence, employees are twice as likely to be suspended as 911 workers statewide, the Herald-Tribune’s analysis shows.
But in many 911 centers, managers tolerate repeated mistakes.One Manatee County dispatcher delayed emergency workers six times during her first year on the job, including not sending an ambulance to a motorcycle accident. She was suspended for one day.
Other Manatee dispatchers have similar track records. One was late for work fives times in a year and received a day’s suspension. Another was disciplined five times in a year — for insubordination, attendance problems and an ambulance delay — without receiving more than a letter of counseling.
In April 2008, 17-year-old Braden River High School senior Bre Doran’s boyfriend flipped his truck near State Road 64 in Manatee County. Doran passed out when her head shattered the windshield. When she woke up, Doran could not move her neck.
“It hurt so bad,” she said.
A passing driver called 911.
At the Manatee County 911 center, Mary Ellen Holloway took the call. She made a computer mistake and the information was never forwarded to a radio dispatcher responsible for sending an ambulance.
Doran waited 91 minutes before the error was discovered and an ambulance arrived.
It was not Holloway’s first mistake.
Four months earlier, in December 2007, Holloway committed the same computer error and failed to send help to a woman complaining of abdominal pain.
The error that left Doran stranded was Holloway’s fourth discipline episode in seven months. She received a warning and remedial training.
Holloway said the experience with Doran’s truck rollover shook her. She has not had an error since.
“The county takes very seriously issues like that, and I know for myself it was scary for me,” Holloway said.
Bill Hutchison, Manatee County’s public safety director, said he believes the agency has a balanced approach to discipline. The best thing for the public is often to retrain employees, not fire them, he said.
The Herald-Tribune analysis found that punishments statewide rarely end a dispatcher’s career. Only 2 percent of the complaints ended in termination and only 18 percent involved a demotion, loss of job or a suspension.
Most people escape with a warning, even after repeat mistakes involving high priority calls: those involving medical emergencies or imminent threat.
The Herald-Tribune found more than 25 people who kept their job even after being disciplined four times and nearly 200 employees who were disciplined at least twice.
Escambia County 911 dispatcher John “Jason” Dunn had 10 discipline episodes between 2004 and 2007, the most for his agency.
Dunn had five documented ambulance delays in three years, including one episode where he came into work groggy after staying up for 24 hours and sent paramedics to the wrong nursing home for a patient with “chest pains and in severe respiratory distress.”
In an interview last week, Dunn noted that he has not had an error in more than a year.
“Five delays, that sounds like a lot, right?” he said. “I know it seems bad, but you have to consider the total volume of calls, the hundreds of thousands of calls I handled perfectly. It’s tough because every call is important. It’s a job where you want 100 percent accuracy, but that’s impossible.”
Staff writer Chris Davis contributed to this report.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090117/ARTICLE/901170311
By Zac Anderson
Published: Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 1:00 a.m. Last Modified: Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 2:59 p.m.
First of three parts
Moving ceremony for Denise Lee
Harold Muxlow 911 call Audio
Sabrina Muxlow 911 call Audio
Jane Kowalski 911 call Audio
Dispatchers get 911 call from Denise Amber Lee Audio
Lee's father speaks in Tallahassee Audio
One year after Denise Lee's murder Video
911 caller tells police about hearing Denise Amber Lee's screams Video
Every year, Florida 911 workers make hundreds of critical errors that endanger lives and leave people waiting for help, a Herald-Tribune investigation has found.
Records show that Florida’s 911 call takers and dispatchers — the vital link between emergency responders and distressed callers — send help to the wrong address or neglect to send any help at all.
They fall asleep on the job and abandon their posts to run errands. They argue with heart attack victims and hang up on hysterical callers.
In the most egregious cases, 911 workers listen to callers’ pleas for help and simply decide not to send a police officer or ambulance.
Despite chronic errors and even deaths, state officials and many local agencies have done little to stop the mistakes.
Florida’s 911 centers have no uniform standards and little oversight. Unlike at least 32 other states, Florida does not mandate training or certification for dispatchers. In some cases, the Herald-Tribune found, dispatchers have been allowed to start processing calls just two days after being hired.
And the mistakes are piling up.
The newspaper spent six months gathering and analyzing five years’ worth of discipline reports and complaints against 911 centers across the state. The paper reviewed more than 1,000 cases from more than half of Florida’s 67 counties. It also interviewed more than 50 current and former 911 workers, supervisors, policymakers and victims of 911 mishaps.
Although the vast majority of calls are handled correctly, the newspaper found that mistakes occur every day and that government officials have neglected the 911 system, allowing it to lag years behind police, firefighters and paramedics in training and other standards.
Among the findings:
--Each year in Florida, hundreds of 911 dispatchers violate protocols designed to ensure swift and accurate emergency response, complaint documents show. More than a third of those mistakes delay the arrival of police, fire or medical responders, threatening lives.
--Hundreds more 911 employees demonstrate gross unprofessionalism with actions that include sleeping on the job, not showing up for work, leaving stations unattended or turning off emergency alert tones so that they will not be disturbed.
--Dozens of errors put emergency responders in jeopardy when dispatchers failed to fully describe a dangerous situation or update criminal databases. A Gainesville police officer faced a suspected killer during a traffic stop on Sept. 14, 2006, but did not know because of a dispatcher’s error, records show.
--Heavy turnover and training standards that vary widely from one community to the next virtually ensure mistakes will be made by overworked, ill-prepared phone and radio operators. Even so, top law enforcement officials lobby against more training because of concerns about money.
--Most 911 centers have adopted standards that draw on accepted industry practices. But no minimum standards are required by Florida law. In addition, Florida officials do not require 911 centers to track mistakes or determine if errors were fatal.
--Even when mistakes are discovered, 911 administrators often dole out light punishment, allowing operators to rack up multiple mistakes without serious consequences. A Bradenton dispatcher was reprimanded for 9 offenses during her first 11 months on the job. Three times she sent rescue workers to the wrong address on “serious calls,” and once she failed to alert police about a missing 4-year-old.
Julie Righter, a national expert on 911 standards who runs a center in Nebraska, said 911 workers have an extremely tough job and handle most calls without incident.
They perform thankless work for little pay, yet are a key cog in a system that saves lives. But Righter also said that the competence of a 911 operator should not be a factor in whether someone lives or dies. And many 911 centers have a long way to go before the proper standards are in place to ensure there is little chance “you’ll have an error when someone’s life is on the line,” she said.
Raising standards has been difficult. The two main voices of law enforcement in Florida — the Florida Police Chief’s Association and the Florida Sheriff’s Association — have opposed increased requirements because of the expense.
In the absence of statewide standards, the 911 system has continued to tolerate mistake after mistake.
Widespread problems
Every so often, a tragic error by a 911 dispatcher captures headlines because someone dies.
A year ago today, a mishandled call to Charlotte County’s 911 center robbed law enforcement officers of a critical opportunity to save 21-year-old Denise Lee.
A concerned driver heard someone screaming in the back of a Camaro on U.S. 41 and called 911. The caller was so concerned she stayed on the phone for nine minutes, following the car to give street-by-street locations.
Although 911 workers suspected that the passenger might be Lee, dispatchers failed to send help.
Several deputies were just minutes away.
The young North Port mother was found two days later, buried in a shallow grave with a single gunshot wound.
Blame was passed around. The radio operators blamed the 911 call taker for shouting across the room instead of calmly sending a computer message. The Sheriff’s Office defended the call taker and disciplined the radio dispatchers for not taking action.
It was a communication breakdown that shook the community’s faith in the 911 system.
A year before Lee’s death, another death was attributed to inaction by 911 employees, this time in Pasco County. For seven minutes, 911 supervisor David Cook refused to offer lifesaving advice to a caller whose girlfriend was choking and near death. The supervisor did not want to get on the phone with a “hysterical caller,” according to reports in the St. Petersburg Times. Co-workers later reported that when Cook learned the woman had died, he joked, “She must have bitten off more than she can chew.”
More recently, inaction by dispatchers was partly blamed for the death of a Plantation woman who dialed 911 while driving to the police station.
For three minutes she begged for help as a man with a gun chased her down the street. She described where she was and told the 911 operator she was driving to the police station. But when she arrived, no officers had been sent to protect her.
The man shot Olidia Kerr Day to death, then killed himself.
Many of the officials who run the state’s 250-plus 911 centers argue that these sensational episodes are the result of isolated and rare human errors.
But the Herald-Tribune found hundreds of mishandled calls that might have contributed to someone’s death if not for one thing — luck.
--In Escambia County, a new 911 call taker sent ambulances to the wrong address three times in a four-month span. She delayed help for an unconscious person, car accident victims and a person having a seizure. In the car accident case, the caller gave the location as North Z Street and repeated “Z, like zebra,” records show. The dispatcher entered North C Street.
--At least twice in the past five years in Pinellas County, ambulance drivers arrived on the scene to find their patients holding a gun. The 911 workers failed to warn the paramedics, according to a complaint log.
--In Sarasota County, a woman called 911 from the Chili’s restaurant in Venice to report an unconscious person and clearly stated the address. The dispatcher sent paramedics to a Chili’s in Sarasota.
--In Hardee County, a 911 worker walked out of the call center, leaving it empty with no one to answer the phone for eight minutes while she looked for a co-worker. Another worker failed to report an escaped prisoner who had jumped out of a window at a nearby county courthouse. Five days later, the same woman sent paramedics to the wrong address for a heart attack, delaying help by 27 minutes, records show.
The Herald-Tribune found more than 600 similar mistakes statewide in the past five years. The actual number is likely measured in thousands. The Herald-Tribune was only able to review complaints and discipline reports from about 40 of the state’s more than 250 centers that directly or indirectly handle 911 calls.
Several dozen agencies contacted by the newspaper did not comply with Florida public records law, failing to respond to written and e-mailed public records requests. Other centers reported no problems or just a handful, even though 911 experts say errors occur in most centers practically every day.
Why mistakes happen
There is a reason so many 911 workers — nearly 75 percent for some agencies — leave within the first year.
They are asked to field life-or-death calls under extreme stress for less than $30,000 a year.
In a matter of seconds, they must ask the right questions to understand an emergency, assign a priority to the call and pass on the correct information to responders.
The large number of non-emergencies, nearly half of all calls for some agencies, can create a “boy who cried wolf” phenomenon, in which workers take real emergencies less seriously because they have dealt with so many minor issues.
Add it all up and the potential for errors — misunderstanding an address, pushing the wrong key on a computer keyboard, getting distracted — is high.
That is why the best dispatch centers establish excruciatingly detailed protocols for answering 911 calls and require months of intense training. They make sure seemingly small errors do not go unmentioned and hold people to high standards.
But in Florida, the 911 agencies have been left largely on their own, with no statewide requirements for training, staffing or quality control, little oversight and paltry state funding.
As a result, training and monitoring vary widely.
In Bradenton, new 911 dispatchers have 14 weeks to master everything and begin working on their own. They learn on the job with no classroom training. In Broward County, new hires spend 12 weeks confined to a classroom and the training program lasts a full year.
The lack of standards is a problem nationwide, said Nancy Pollock, a 911 consultant who ran centers in Minnesota.
“Unfortunately the only way this is going to change is if the highest government in an area takes ownership of this, and in most cases that’s the state,” she said.
In the absence of a state standard, several national accreditation programs lay out best practices.
Yet because the state does not push accreditation, only 15 of Florida’s 911 centers, among them Sarasota County’s, have qualified.
Ignoring the problem
Many of the county governments, sheriff’s offices and municipalities that oversee 911 centers do little to track life-threatening mistakes.
The state of New York requires every 911 center to track complaints.
But only a few of the Florida centers contacted by the Herald-Tribune could provide copies of a complaint log, or a list of every disciplinary action taken against 911 employees. For many, the only way to review 911 errors is to pull dozens of individual personnel files, and sift through thousands of pages looking for discipline reports.
Even that will not catch all of the mistakes because documents describing errors are not always retained.
As a result, many 911 centers operate with no way of knowing how many errors are made, who is making them and how to reduce errors.
In Escambia County, 911 manager Bob Boschen said he began keeping a complaint log after the Herald-Tribune contacted him to request complaint documents last year.
Boschen said he realized that tracking problems is part of providing “the best customer service.” His goal now is to have less than two valid complaints a month.
Some Florida 911 agencies, including Escambia, systematically seek out mistakes in regular audits of every dispatcher.
In Sarasota County, dispatch managers randomly review 10 law enforcement calls each week and 3 percent of medical calls each month to make sure employees verified addresses, classified emergencies properly and asked the right questions.
The checks expose where employees need training and discourage complacency, said Sarasota sheriff’s Capt. Jeff Bell, who runs the 911 center.
“It’s a little scary because you’re really opening yourself for criticism,” said Pollock, the consultant. “But a smart manager views complaints as a good thing. If you have something wrong you want to know about it before something really tragic happens.”
Yet while some agencies have documented more than 100 problems in their 911 centers over the past five years through complaint tracking, the Herald-Tribune found four agencies that recorded no problems at all. Others had very few.
The Bradenton Police Department — an agency with 15 dispatchers — had 20 discipline cases, while Charlotte County, with more than twice as many dispatchers, had just 10.
A former Charlotte County 911 worker told the Herald Tribune that she witnessed problems in the center that went undocumented.
Amy Corbett, who worked in Charlotte County’s 911 center for four months in 2006 and left for personal reasons, said most of the people in the 911 center were competent professionals, but she remembered an incident where a call taker was sleeping on the job and the other workers just laughed and threw candy at her.
“I didn’t see them handle mistakes that happened,” Corbett said. “Some were swept under the carpet, or you’d just have a supervisor talk to you, but it was never anything that was formal.”
Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Sherman Robinson said his office has no record that Corbett reported the problems she saw in the 911 center. Robinson said that if a problem was brought to their attention they would have taken action.
Charlotte does not keep a complaint log. Officials say their informal system works because they get few complaints, and discipline is adequate.
“I can’t tell you the last time I got a complaint,” Robinson said. “I think we hold people to a pretty good standard.
”
Few consequences
Beyond training and monitoring, some experts say dispatch mistakes in Florida have been increased by lax punishment when errors are discovered.
In some cases, even when a mistake ends in tragedy, the punishment is light.
The two dispatchers who did not send deputies to investigate the 911 call shortly before Lee’s death were each suspended but stayed on the job. It was the first time in five years that Charlotte County had suspended a dispatcher, a common punishment elsewhere. Then-Sheriff John Davenport said they were good employees who just slipped up.
The Herald-Tribune’s investigation found that punishment levels vary widely from one place to the next.
In Alachua County, where the 911 center has been held up as a model of excellence, employees are twice as likely to be suspended as 911 workers statewide, the Herald-Tribune’s analysis shows.
But in many 911 centers, managers tolerate repeated mistakes.One Manatee County dispatcher delayed emergency workers six times during her first year on the job, including not sending an ambulance to a motorcycle accident. She was suspended for one day.
Other Manatee dispatchers have similar track records. One was late for work fives times in a year and received a day’s suspension. Another was disciplined five times in a year — for insubordination, attendance problems and an ambulance delay — without receiving more than a letter of counseling.
In April 2008, 17-year-old Braden River High School senior Bre Doran’s boyfriend flipped his truck near State Road 64 in Manatee County. Doran passed out when her head shattered the windshield. When she woke up, Doran could not move her neck.
“It hurt so bad,” she said.
A passing driver called 911.
At the Manatee County 911 center, Mary Ellen Holloway took the call. She made a computer mistake and the information was never forwarded to a radio dispatcher responsible for sending an ambulance.
Doran waited 91 minutes before the error was discovered and an ambulance arrived.
It was not Holloway’s first mistake.
Four months earlier, in December 2007, Holloway committed the same computer error and failed to send help to a woman complaining of abdominal pain.
The error that left Doran stranded was Holloway’s fourth discipline episode in seven months. She received a warning and remedial training.
Holloway said the experience with Doran’s truck rollover shook her. She has not had an error since.
“The county takes very seriously issues like that, and I know for myself it was scary for me,” Holloway said.
Bill Hutchison, Manatee County’s public safety director, said he believes the agency has a balanced approach to discipline. The best thing for the public is often to retrain employees, not fire them, he said.
The Herald-Tribune analysis found that punishments statewide rarely end a dispatcher’s career. Only 2 percent of the complaints ended in termination and only 18 percent involved a demotion, loss of job or a suspension.
Most people escape with a warning, even after repeat mistakes involving high priority calls: those involving medical emergencies or imminent threat.
The Herald-Tribune found more than 25 people who kept their job even after being disciplined four times and nearly 200 employees who were disciplined at least twice.
Escambia County 911 dispatcher John “Jason” Dunn had 10 discipline episodes between 2004 and 2007, the most for his agency.
Dunn had five documented ambulance delays in three years, including one episode where he came into work groggy after staying up for 24 hours and sent paramedics to the wrong nursing home for a patient with “chest pains and in severe respiratory distress.”
In an interview last week, Dunn noted that he has not had an error in more than a year.
“Five delays, that sounds like a lot, right?” he said. “I know it seems bad, but you have to consider the total volume of calls, the hundreds of thousands of calls I handled perfectly. It’s tough because every call is important. It’s a job where you want 100 percent accuracy, but that’s impossible.”
Staff writer Chris Davis contributed to this report.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090117/ARTICLE/901170311
Thursday, January 15, 2009
OUCH! Man was I p!ssed. I still am.
Looking back on some things that I wrote early on after we lost Denise, I came across this. I was pretty upset. And this was before I read the Internal Affairs report!!! Imagine why I'm upset now. In John Davenport's letter he was correct in saying that the CCSO as a whole has respected and cared for our family. Most of them searched beside Nathan and Rick. They have been wonderful. But he has been an asshole the entire time. He has been arrogant, manipulative, disdainful, and deceptive. You'd think reading the letter that he raised the money in the community. Oddly! I didn't see him at one event. And he held back crucial, vital information from us. This many months later he still makes my skin crawl. I wish I could sue him personally. Him and Bill Cameron for the additional pain and suffering he has caused Nate and my family.
I wrote this in May 2008 when the pain was even rawer than it is now.
"Four month mark
I'm feeling better. Why?
3 things
Saw psychologist last week (2 hour emotionally draining session)
Decided to write this
I've had some rest from work and babies
probably combination of all three.
I've been really concentrating on myself the past 3-4 days. Sunday (Mother's Day) was very bad. I was extremely depressed and missing the boys and my family. I couldn't stop feeling sorry for myself. Brian was up in Tampa without a car. Nathan went to church with his grandmother, then to lunch with the Goffs, visited Denise's gravesite and then went to North Carolina with Noah to see the Lowery's. I saw him for about 2 minutes. Noah didn't even get out of the car. I don't think it was an intentional slight. I don't Nathan even realized how much I was hurting. I really try not to let him know. Maybe that's wrong. I don't know. But doesn't he have enough on his plate without worrying about mom? Sigh. I'm crying again just thinking about it. So, Mark and I stayed at home and I cooked dinner the way I do every night.
We've been struggling financially and really don't have the money to go out. Mark offered and felt helpless but there wasn't much he could do. It was a sh!tty day no matter what.
Wednesday night was Nathan's 24th birthday and we tried to celebrate that. Nathan didn't really want to, and I couldn't blame him but Mark's mother has out-of-town guests visiting and it was the only real opportunity they would get to see Nate and theboys before he went to NC. So, we invited them out for hamburgers and hotdogs. Very simple fair. We also invited Steve (Mark's brother) and his wife, Deborah, their kids, James and Marivee who just had Isabel 4 weeks ago. What a beautiful baby. Anyhow, I was a mess! I was fine all day but when they got to our house I just couldn't force a smile. I just couldn't. I was tearry eyed and just had no interest in any of it (other than the baby, of course). Everyone was marvelous. They tried so hard and I just didn't want anything to do with any of them. How rotten is that? I love these people. They've been wonderfully supportive and generous. And, I just couldn't rise up to the occasion.
Nathan was on the phone the entire time. Sheriff Davenport (who I liken the the Sheriff of Nottingham) had written a letter to the editor that was quite upsetting.
http://www.sun-herald.com/Newsstory.cfm?pubdate=050708&story=op9.htm&folder=NewsArchive2
05/07/08
Davenport defends sheriff's office
Editor:
I would like to respond to a recent letter to the editor where a citizen stated that the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office has been insensitive to the Lee and Goff families. This is the second time I have heard comments as to how insensitive the members of the Sheriff's Office have been to these families. This same sentiment was indicated on the courthouse steps when Nathan Lee and his attorney announced their intent to sue the sheriff's office, and I take great exception to these comments.
From the beginning of this terrible tragedy members of the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office went out of their way to help the Goff and Lee families. Not only did they volunteer their time to search for Denise Lee, but they kept the family informed daily as the investigation progressed and offered any assistance they could to help both families.
To show you just how "insensitive" the sheriff's office has been, the day before Nathan Lee made the comment on the courthouse steps, Mr. Lee was given a check by the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office in the amount of $104,000 that the sheriff's office had collected from the community and from its own members to help this family.
I understand that both the Lee and Goff families are grieving over their terrible loss, but to try and portray the members of the sheriff's office as callous and insensitive to anyone in this situation, particularly one of our own,is a slap in the face of every man and woman of the sheriff's office that have given their time and money to try and help both families.
John Davenport
Port Charlotte
What an asshole! Of course, he didn't know it was Nate's first birthday without Denise, but even so. What an asshole! While he's playing politics, we're suffering. He's been an ass from the beginning.
This is how much I've changed. In the beginning, I felt very sorry for the sheriff's office. I even sent them a thank you note to alleviate some of the pain they might be suffering because of their screw ups. But as time has wore on, I can't stand this guy. He seems to enjoy twisting the knife. I want so bad to write a letter to the editor myself.
It would say:
To: Sheriff Davenport (I couldn't bring myself to write "Dear")
Do you enjoy twisting the knife into our grief and causing more pain and suffering? Are your politics so important to you that you feel you're not being insensitive? While you're playing politics my family is fighting for survival. As to your 911 dispatchers, we're not blaming them totally for the incompetence displayed. We're blaming all the people involved in that call. Including you. There were procedurals breakdowns. It wasn't just human error. It wasn't just simply not dispatching a car. There was no follow-up. Why didn't the supervisors follow-up on that call to find out what had happened. Most people would've asked 15 minutes after the call (having assumed a car was dispatched) "what happened? Did they find her? Did they see the car?" and someone would've replied "oops! I didn't think I could send a car" and the supervisor should've replied "oh, god! Send a car right a way!"
But, no, the ball was dropped. And then your department didn't even let the North Port police department know about it.
Way back in the beginning of all this, I actually pitied your office. I felt sad for your dispatchers. So, I wrote a thank you note hoping to help alleviate any guilt on their parts. I still pity your office. I feel pity for people that have to work for you. And I blame you. I blame you for not owning up to a tragic mistake and not wanting to fix it. I blame you for continuing writing about this to the newspapers and twisting the knife. Nathan went out of his way to commend your officers in the field that day during his press conference.
You're an asshole.
Peggy Lee
Of course, I'd never send it. Of course, I have to keep my dignity at all times."
OUCH!!!!!
added edit: I found this written on the same day
Dignity
How important is dignity? My mom tried to instill in us always to maintain our dignity.
I now understand what she was talking about. Someone made this comment to me the other day "why don't you just get mad?" "why don't you scream?" "you're always trying to act like a lady!" "why?"
I thought about that for a couple of days. And you know why? Because if I lose my dignity, I'll lose control myself. That frightens me. I'm afraid of losing control of myself. I'm afraid of what will come out of my mouth. I have so much ugliness inside me right now and so many ugly angry thoughts, I'm very afraid. So, I do let loose at home when I'm alone. I do cry and I do scream. But, in public, no. I might hurt someone. Either verbally or even gasp physically, I might hurt someone. I might hurt one of these well meaning, very caring stupid people who say stupid things. And I don't want to cause any more hurt. damn. There's enough pain in my life.
And I want so bad to write that letter to the editor about Davenport. But, no, I won't. I'm afraid of what will happen. I could make things worse for Nathan. And I never never never ever want to do that. His heart's broken enough.
I wrote this in May 2008 when the pain was even rawer than it is now.
"Four month mark
I'm feeling better. Why?
3 things
Saw psychologist last week (2 hour emotionally draining session)
Decided to write this
I've had some rest from work and babies
probably combination of all three.
I've been really concentrating on myself the past 3-4 days. Sunday (Mother's Day) was very bad. I was extremely depressed and missing the boys and my family. I couldn't stop feeling sorry for myself. Brian was up in Tampa without a car. Nathan went to church with his grandmother, then to lunch with the Goffs, visited Denise's gravesite and then went to North Carolina with Noah to see the Lowery's. I saw him for about 2 minutes. Noah didn't even get out of the car. I don't think it was an intentional slight. I don't Nathan even realized how much I was hurting. I really try not to let him know. Maybe that's wrong. I don't know. But doesn't he have enough on his plate without worrying about mom? Sigh. I'm crying again just thinking about it. So, Mark and I stayed at home and I cooked dinner the way I do every night.
We've been struggling financially and really don't have the money to go out. Mark offered and felt helpless but there wasn't much he could do. It was a sh!tty day no matter what.
Wednesday night was Nathan's 24th birthday and we tried to celebrate that. Nathan didn't really want to, and I couldn't blame him but Mark's mother has out-of-town guests visiting and it was the only real opportunity they would get to see Nate and theboys before he went to NC. So, we invited them out for hamburgers and hotdogs. Very simple fair. We also invited Steve (Mark's brother) and his wife, Deborah, their kids, James and Marivee who just had Isabel 4 weeks ago. What a beautiful baby. Anyhow, I was a mess! I was fine all day but when they got to our house I just couldn't force a smile. I just couldn't. I was tearry eyed and just had no interest in any of it (other than the baby, of course). Everyone was marvelous. They tried so hard and I just didn't want anything to do with any of them. How rotten is that? I love these people. They've been wonderfully supportive and generous. And, I just couldn't rise up to the occasion.
Nathan was on the phone the entire time. Sheriff Davenport (who I liken the the Sheriff of Nottingham) had written a letter to the editor that was quite upsetting.
http://www.sun-herald.com/Newsstory.cfm?pubdate=050708&story=op9.htm&folder=NewsArchive2
05/07/08
Davenport defends sheriff's office
Editor:
I would like to respond to a recent letter to the editor where a citizen stated that the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office has been insensitive to the Lee and Goff families. This is the second time I have heard comments as to how insensitive the members of the Sheriff's Office have been to these families. This same sentiment was indicated on the courthouse steps when Nathan Lee and his attorney announced their intent to sue the sheriff's office, and I take great exception to these comments.
From the beginning of this terrible tragedy members of the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office went out of their way to help the Goff and Lee families. Not only did they volunteer their time to search for Denise Lee, but they kept the family informed daily as the investigation progressed and offered any assistance they could to help both families.
To show you just how "insensitive" the sheriff's office has been, the day before Nathan Lee made the comment on the courthouse steps, Mr. Lee was given a check by the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office in the amount of $104,000 that the sheriff's office had collected from the community and from its own members to help this family.
I understand that both the Lee and Goff families are grieving over their terrible loss, but to try and portray the members of the sheriff's office as callous and insensitive to anyone in this situation, particularly one of our own,is a slap in the face of every man and woman of the sheriff's office that have given their time and money to try and help both families.
John Davenport
Port Charlotte
What an asshole! Of course, he didn't know it was Nate's first birthday without Denise, but even so. What an asshole! While he's playing politics, we're suffering. He's been an ass from the beginning.
This is how much I've changed. In the beginning, I felt very sorry for the sheriff's office. I even sent them a thank you note to alleviate some of the pain they might be suffering because of their screw ups. But as time has wore on, I can't stand this guy. He seems to enjoy twisting the knife. I want so bad to write a letter to the editor myself.
It would say:
To: Sheriff Davenport (I couldn't bring myself to write "Dear")
Do you enjoy twisting the knife into our grief and causing more pain and suffering? Are your politics so important to you that you feel you're not being insensitive? While you're playing politics my family is fighting for survival. As to your 911 dispatchers, we're not blaming them totally for the incompetence displayed. We're blaming all the people involved in that call. Including you. There were procedurals breakdowns. It wasn't just human error. It wasn't just simply not dispatching a car. There was no follow-up. Why didn't the supervisors follow-up on that call to find out what had happened. Most people would've asked 15 minutes after the call (having assumed a car was dispatched) "what happened? Did they find her? Did they see the car?" and someone would've replied "oops! I didn't think I could send a car" and the supervisor should've replied "oh, god! Send a car right a way!"
But, no, the ball was dropped. And then your department didn't even let the North Port police department know about it.
Way back in the beginning of all this, I actually pitied your office. I felt sad for your dispatchers. So, I wrote a thank you note hoping to help alleviate any guilt on their parts. I still pity your office. I feel pity for people that have to work for you. And I blame you. I blame you for not owning up to a tragic mistake and not wanting to fix it. I blame you for continuing writing about this to the newspapers and twisting the knife. Nathan went out of his way to commend your officers in the field that day during his press conference.
You're an asshole.
Peggy Lee
Of course, I'd never send it. Of course, I have to keep my dignity at all times."
OUCH!!!!!
added edit: I found this written on the same day
Dignity
How important is dignity? My mom tried to instill in us always to maintain our dignity.
I now understand what she was talking about. Someone made this comment to me the other day "why don't you just get mad?" "why don't you scream?" "you're always trying to act like a lady!" "why?"
I thought about that for a couple of days. And you know why? Because if I lose my dignity, I'll lose control myself. That frightens me. I'm afraid of losing control of myself. I'm afraid of what will come out of my mouth. I have so much ugliness inside me right now and so many ugly angry thoughts, I'm very afraid. So, I do let loose at home when I'm alone. I do cry and I do scream. But, in public, no. I might hurt someone. Either verbally or even gasp physically, I might hurt someone. I might hurt one of these well meaning, very caring stupid people who say stupid things. And I don't want to cause any more hurt. damn. There's enough pain in my life.
And I want so bad to write that letter to the editor about Davenport. But, no, I won't. I'm afraid of what will happen. I could make things worse for Nathan. And I never never never ever want to do that. His heart's broken enough.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Denise Amber Lee A Timeline of January 17, 2008
For those who have already read this, please, forgive my repeating the story. I've written several time lines for several different people. I can't remember who knows what. And, so, I'm writing as much as I can down here. So, that it's clear and if anyone wants to dispute any of it, they can. What I'm about to write is part what we experienced and part of what I got out of the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office Internal Affairs report. No part of my timeline has come from the newspapers because as we learned from them erroneously printing about Denise being at the post office, newspapers can be wrong. I'll try to be as objective as possible and not let anger seep through.
Here goes:
The last time Nathan talked to Denise was just shortly after 11AM. His last words to her were "I love you".
Nate was working for the Florida Power and Light Company as a meter reader. His days started early by leaving the house so early it was still dark out. Denise and the boys would still be sleeping. Noah had just turned two years old. Adam was 6 months old and still being breast fed.
They had been over Mark's and my house the evening before. We had dinner together. After dinner Mark and Nate worked at the dining room table going over Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover" book. They were working on a budget. Nathan had been working evenings as well as for FPL. He worked at Winn Dixie stocking shelves whenever he could. He played trumpet in the evenings for the Venice Symphony when they had concerts. He played every Christmas at our church. During the summer he would umpire Little League games for $50 a game. So, Denise didn't get out much. She stayed home with the boys.
Because she was quiet and shy or maybe just because she loved Nathan so much, she rarely went out without him. That and the two babies were and still are a handful for one person to lug around. She wrote a beautiful passage on her myspace the previous August about going to the mall and trying to purchase sunglasses. You'll have to check out her and Nate's family myspace page. www.myspace.com/leefamilyndn It's speaks of what kind of a mother she was. Her babies always came first.
Here's the story I'm talking about quoted from myspace:
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
The joy of having two boys...
Today I thought it might be fun to take the boys to the mall... by myself. It started off really well. Noah and I ate lunch in the food court while Adam slept. I let Noah go on one of those rides that cost 75 cents. Then we went to Old Navy. Noah started getting a little hyper and wouldn't stay with me so I had to hold him and push the stroller at the same time. At the check out both of them started crying. Adam was hungry so we went back out to the car where I fed Adam ('cause he's breastfeeding) and Noah played in the car rolling the window down. Finally we went back in the mall and I let Noah play in the play area so I could get a chance to just sit. Noah was knocked down twice by older boys running around wild. Of course then Adam needed changing and I couldn't take my eyes off of Noah or else he'd run out of the play area. So I put them both on the changing table and changed both their diapers. Fun fun. Then we went to JCPenny. I was trying on sunglasses when Noah tried to run away. So I had to carry Noah while trying on sunglasses and then Nathan called. Both of the boys start crying once again so I put Noah down and picked up Adam. Noah thought it would be funny to try to run away again. So i caught him while holding Adam and put Noah in the stroller. An old man commented that I must have my hands full and said he checked in the bottom basket of the stroller to make sure I didn't have a third one in there. LOL, can you imagin if I had three? So I finally bought my sunglasses and we went home. Something so simple as going to the mall to buy new sunglasses is a thousand times harder when you have two boys under two. But it was still fun. Anytime I get to leave the house is a treat for me.
We also have a few new pics of the boys. I made a new album of Noah and Adam and there's a couple new ones in Adam's album. Check 'em out.
Denise
As far as I know she didn't leave the house that day. Nate says she gave Noah a haircut out on the lanai. And when he got home around 3:30PM her clothes were laid out as if she was getting ready to take a shower. She had probably just laid the babies down for naps. When Nate arrived home he found both babies in the same crib. That was odd. Noah's voice was hoarse. All Denise's belongings were still there, cellphone, purse, keys etc... But no Denise. The windows were shut but not latched. Nathan and she had spoken earlier about opening the windows to save on air conditioning bills. January in Florida is one of the best times weather wise in Florida. And living so close to the coast we have some wonderful breezes. So, the windows being closed without the air on was also odd. It was stuffy. Searching frantically for Denise, Nathan called Sue (Denise's mom) first to see if she knew anything. Of course, she didn't and he immediately called 9-1-1 to report Denise missing. Then he called Rick and Rick went into action.
Normally in a missing adult case, they wait to start searching. There's usually a credible explanation as to why the person is not there or the person has left willingly. Rick and Nate both stressed, of course, that this wasn't the case. That there was just no way Denise would leave her kids. So, I believe, in deference to Rick, the North Port Police Department took this more seriously than they probably would normally have. (that's just opinion on my part). Rick works for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office and has for the past 25 years. It had to be terribly frustrating for him to watch the neighboring agency handle the case. But Nate and Denise lived in North Port which is in Sarasota County. So North Port had jurisdiction.
I have already written in an earlier blog how Mark called me and my mad rush to get out to the house. I was at work and my phone was turned off so I was missing calls. Finally Mark called on the store phone. Sue had already picked up the babies. So, I stayed with Nate. You could see Rick's frustration with the NPPD. You could see NPPD 's frustration with Rick. In a word? It was heartbreaking. Nathan was a suspect. A helicopter was overhead. It was getting dark. The thoughts that run through your head. We all knew (our family knew) that there was no way Denise would leave willingly. It was just impossible. Doubts enter but they are quickly brushed aside. Because we knew her. And, she worshiped the ground Nathan walked on and those babies were her life. Nathan I believe, wanted me to leave to help Sue with the boys but I wouldn't. I kept my distance and didn't want to be in the way. But, I so wanted to be there for my baby. I can't describe the pain and agony on Nathan's face. On Rick's face. It's damn difficult watching your son's world fall apart.
Sometime around 4:20PM (I'm estimating times because I don't have the report in front of me. If I'm way off, I'll correct later but I've got this stuff pretty well memorized. I live it over and over again) NPPD requested a K-9 from the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office. This is the first time the CCSO 9-1-1 center became aware that Rick Goff's daughter is missing and that the children may have been involved.
At 3:30PM the CCSO had sent it's Teletype operator home early as to save paying overtime. At 4:59PM the first BOLO (Be On the Look Out) is broadcast over the Teletype from North Port mentioning a green Camaro, a description of the suspect and Denise. They give her name, age, haircolor etc... The next door neighbor had seen a green Camaro cruising up and down their road and then parked in Nathan and Denise's driveway.
Now since the Teletype operator went home the dispatchers were to monitor the Teletype every 5 or 10 minutes. Sadly, this BOLO was ignored.
At 5:38PM the CCSO says they issued their own BOLO but oddly, it's not in the CAD system which would have notified the deputies in the field immediately on their computers. The CCSO deputies were all over the place along the Sarasota County/Charlotte County border. But they don't know what they are looking for and they are frustrated they don't have any leads. Again, they never saw this BOLO and testified to that. Also, this BOLO isn't listed on a pass on log the call takers and dispatchers read when coming on duty. It lists what's going on, BOLOs etc... after reading it the on coming squad initials it. I have a copy of it. There is no BOLO listed as being sent out at 5:38PM by CCSO. (Oddly the summary of the I/A report says it was sent out at 5:31PM just one of many discrepancies in the summary). So, what do we have here? Deputies unaware and the dispatchers being unaware that Denise could be in a green Camaro. 2 other BOLOs sent across the Teletype are also ignored from North Port. One at 5:58PM and one at 6:46PM. So, IMO, there's no way that Teletype was being monitored. Now is this the dispatchers fault? I don't know who's fault it is. But obviously the time between 3:30PM and 6:45PM were critical for Denise.
Interestingly a call taker (Millie Stepp) testified she knew about the green Camaro but only because she heard about it over a Sarasota County radio. The supervisor of the 9-1-1 had been busy patching radios through to North Port. This takes close to an hour to do.
Okay, so deputies from the CCSO and Rick out at the house aren't aware of the green Camaro lead (maybe Rick is but he's assuming the Teletype is being monitored and the information is getting out). He's pacing and begging for information.
Then Sabrina Muxlow's 9-1-1 call comes into Sarasota County and she describes what her father told her. This is around 6:00Pm. She says her dad saw her cousin with a girl tied up in the backseat of the car and that the girl screamed "call the cops!" You'd think this guy would call the cops but no...... It's his cousin. And instead he lends him a flashlight, a gascan and a shovel. And 20 minutes later instead of calling the cops, he calls his daughter.
hmmm... deep breath here.
Then something truly miraculous happens. At 6:14PM the Sarasota County 9-1-1 center received a call from Denise herself. She has somehow managed to get the suspects cell phone and call 9-1-1. Sweet brave smart girl. She dupes him into thinking she's talking to him all the while giving information to the call taker. She indeed confirms that she's been taken against her will and that she's in a green Camaro. Her call lasts 7 minutes. Until it's abruptly ended with Michael King looking for his phone.
Now things at the house are starting to happen. Rick and CCSO Sgt Floyd Davis listen to Denise's frantic call. Rick confirms it's indeed her. My heart breaks for him thinking of his having to listen to it. But he heard her fighting and he must have been damn proud of her. Her call ends around 6:22PM and Floyd Davis calls the CCSO dispatch and requests a BOLO to be sent out immediately to look for a green Camaro. Finally, at 6:36PM the CCSO dispatch issues it's first documented BOLO telling their deputies (who have been waiting for this) to look for a green Camaro. All along for the past hour and a half they could've been looking for it but didn't know to.
At 6:30PM Jane Kowalski is watching Denise's hand pound the back window of the dark Camaro and hears her screaming bloody murder. She calls 9-1-1 but because she's crossed the county line she reaches the CCSO 9-1-1 center. It is the only 9-1-1 call in reference to Denise that the CCSO 9-1-1 center receives. The call lasts 9 minutes but no car is ever dispatched to the location Jane has described. Jane waits to hear from the CCSO but never does.
The 9-1-1 supervisor testifies "she didn't really know what was going on".
We at the house, are unaware of this call. Jane not only sees Denise's hand and makes eye contact with Michael King, she gives the CCSO call taker cross streets. On the 9-1-1 tape you hear the call taker is rattled, not in control, asking for direction from a supervisor and completely at sea as to what to do. Instead of entering information in the CAD immediately the way she was trained to do, so the deputies can see the information in their cars on their computers, she writes it down on a piece of paper and yells it across the room.
At the same time, Sgt Davis is on the phone with one of the dispatchers requesting the BOLO I mentioned earlier. The dispatcher tells him a little about the call Millie is in the process of taking. She asks Sgt Davis if the Camaro is blue. Sgt Davis says no, he believes it's green but tells her to call the NPPD to confirm. She never does. I don't know why not. It was not asked in the report. She also fails to mention to Sgt Davis that there's another person in the car in re to the phone call Millie's taking. He testifies "if she had, things would have turned out way different".
Also, at the same time the new shift comes on duty. They all initial a pass on log listing the incidents that are occuring or have occured. Updating them as to what is going on. Sadly, none of the 3 BOLOs North Port issued over the Teletype are listed. Neither is the supposed BOLO the CCSO sent out at 5:38PM. They testify that all they knew going in was that Rick Goff's daughter was taken, that maybe children were involved and that K-9 was requested. It was never asked in the report what the on coming supervisor knew or was told considering the other supervisor "didn't know what was going on" because she says "she was patching radios".
I can't tell you what is going on with Denise at this time. I don't honestly know. I assume she's on her way to her final destination. She had been torn away from her children, taken to the suspect's home, brutally raped and terrorized but still kept enough presence of mind to snatch his phone, call 9-1-1 and in a last ditch effort, take off her precious heart ring Nathan had given to her so that he could later identify it. She saved her kids and handed the prosecution their case on a silver platter.
What a hero.
Another BOLO is issued by North Port over the Teletype sometime around 7. From Denise's 9-1-1 call to Sarasota County they glean information on Michael King, where he lives, etc.... That information along with the tag number is in the this BOLO.
Oddly, the CCSO doesn't respond to this BOLO until 8:15PM when they finally issue their own BOLO. The first mention in the CAD system about looking for a Camaro is at 7:02PM and it says gray. I figure Denise is gone by then.
At 9:15PM or therabouts, a CCSO patrol car spots the Camaro and it's Eddie Pope, with the FHP, that stops it and arrests King. There is no Denise.
I don't know what time the search was called off that night. I had Noah spending the night. And kept him the next day while hundreds of people met to search for Denise. Many from FPL are turned away. Mark described to me walking hand in hand with others and being given little red flags to place where they may spot a clue. The searchers search at the end of Salford Blvd because that's where Michael King suggests they look. They still know nothing of Kowalski's call to the CCSO 9-1-1 center telling them he was last seen with Denise in the car turning east on Toledo Blade. They are at the same time searching a small area on Toledo Blade not far from where they arrested King. The CCSO's silence in this matter is unconscionable in my opinion.
I imagine if they would have known about Kowalski's call maybe the bigger search effort would have been along Toledo Blade and not Salford. I imagine her not having to spend an extra day and a half in that shallow grave, naked and exposed to the Florida elements longer than she had to. Or us suffering that day and half agonizing over what happened to her for longer than we had to. The only thing that could possibly account for this silence is cover up. And if it wasn't cover up, it was gross negligence.
There was negligence in how they handled the BOLO's and the Teletype as well. Maybe the thought of possibly losing their Teletype machine for not monitoring it appropriately and being caught silenced them. I don't know. But they knew.
When they called off the search early Saturday afternoon we assumed they had found her but we still don't know where or how or in what condition. There is still a glimmer of hope she's still alive. Shattered but alive. But, no, we're officially informed it was her around 4PM.
deep breath here
She was shot in the head.
I really can't go on. There were several other tragic errors the CCSO made that night. The piece of paper the call taker had written on had been handed to one of the dispatchers who didn't believe her radio was working. But according to the CAD it is the entire time and she's on it. Millie testifies she yelled the info to Dispatcher A but Dispatcher A and Dispatcher B testify she yelled it to Dispatcher B. The supervisor testifies she didn't know what was going on. It was very shoddy work indeed.
We don't find out about Kowalski's call until the day of the viewing. That would be the following Tuesday. We're numb already and for me it didn't sink in right away. The only reason we ever found out about her call was because she persisted in calling the North Port Police wanting to help. They didn't know who she was. Finally they figured it out on Saturday the day Denise was found and had to "request" information from the CCSO. The CCSO wasn't going to give it to them.
Jane Kowalski's interview with the North Port Police Department. They are still not sure who she is.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090117/VIDEO01/901160374&profile=2414&template=video
We find out more from the I/A report but it takes reading it 3 times to figure it out. It's that convoluted and there are so many errors in the summary.
Then we find out that the woman leading the investigation was actually working as Director of Communications. She had been promoted to Internal Affairs just before but because Sherman Robinson was on vacation, she filled in for him.
We also find out that the CCSO treated Jane Kowalski with derision and disdain. They blamed her for giving them erroneous information. She said blue Camaro and said it was a child. They never even followed her up with a phone call.
Sweet sweet Denise. I'm trying my hardest baby to get the bigger, more important story out. I'm sure people are sick of reading about it, but I don't know what else to do. Somehow we must make people aware of what's going on at the CCSO. I just don't know how else to do it.
I really need to write next about all the good things that followed. All the people who came out in droves for your funeral. All the fundraisers. All the hugs and prayers. The on-line community (a piano forum) that raised $16K for the boys education. How everyone's hearts broke and are still breaking everytime your story is played on DateLine or PrimeTime. Of how our families have bonded and we're doing out bests for Nate, Noah and Adam. There have been thousands more angels than villains in this piece. You have your own tree now. And your own classroom! You may get a playground. So many people now look at you as a hero. I'll always remember you put those babies first. In the Catholic church I believe you would be considered a martyr and a saint. Your last thought of Nate and his ring. How your heart must have broke.
Here goes:
The last time Nathan talked to Denise was just shortly after 11AM. His last words to her were "I love you".
Nate was working for the Florida Power and Light Company as a meter reader. His days started early by leaving the house so early it was still dark out. Denise and the boys would still be sleeping. Noah had just turned two years old. Adam was 6 months old and still being breast fed.
They had been over Mark's and my house the evening before. We had dinner together. After dinner Mark and Nate worked at the dining room table going over Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover" book. They were working on a budget. Nathan had been working evenings as well as for FPL. He worked at Winn Dixie stocking shelves whenever he could. He played trumpet in the evenings for the Venice Symphony when they had concerts. He played every Christmas at our church. During the summer he would umpire Little League games for $50 a game. So, Denise didn't get out much. She stayed home with the boys.
Because she was quiet and shy or maybe just because she loved Nathan so much, she rarely went out without him. That and the two babies were and still are a handful for one person to lug around. She wrote a beautiful passage on her myspace the previous August about going to the mall and trying to purchase sunglasses. You'll have to check out her and Nate's family myspace page. www.myspace.com/leefamilyndn It's speaks of what kind of a mother she was. Her babies always came first.
Here's the story I'm talking about quoted from myspace:
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
The joy of having two boys...
Today I thought it might be fun to take the boys to the mall... by myself. It started off really well. Noah and I ate lunch in the food court while Adam slept. I let Noah go on one of those rides that cost 75 cents. Then we went to Old Navy. Noah started getting a little hyper and wouldn't stay with me so I had to hold him and push the stroller at the same time. At the check out both of them started crying. Adam was hungry so we went back out to the car where I fed Adam ('cause he's breastfeeding) and Noah played in the car rolling the window down. Finally we went back in the mall and I let Noah play in the play area so I could get a chance to just sit. Noah was knocked down twice by older boys running around wild. Of course then Adam needed changing and I couldn't take my eyes off of Noah or else he'd run out of the play area. So I put them both on the changing table and changed both their diapers. Fun fun. Then we went to JCPenny. I was trying on sunglasses when Noah tried to run away. So I had to carry Noah while trying on sunglasses and then Nathan called. Both of the boys start crying once again so I put Noah down and picked up Adam. Noah thought it would be funny to try to run away again. So i caught him while holding Adam and put Noah in the stroller. An old man commented that I must have my hands full and said he checked in the bottom basket of the stroller to make sure I didn't have a third one in there. LOL, can you imagin if I had three? So I finally bought my sunglasses and we went home. Something so simple as going to the mall to buy new sunglasses is a thousand times harder when you have two boys under two. But it was still fun. Anytime I get to leave the house is a treat for me.
We also have a few new pics of the boys. I made a new album of Noah and Adam and there's a couple new ones in Adam's album. Check 'em out.
Denise
As far as I know she didn't leave the house that day. Nate says she gave Noah a haircut out on the lanai. And when he got home around 3:30PM her clothes were laid out as if she was getting ready to take a shower. She had probably just laid the babies down for naps. When Nate arrived home he found both babies in the same crib. That was odd. Noah's voice was hoarse. All Denise's belongings were still there, cellphone, purse, keys etc... But no Denise. The windows were shut but not latched. Nathan and she had spoken earlier about opening the windows to save on air conditioning bills. January in Florida is one of the best times weather wise in Florida. And living so close to the coast we have some wonderful breezes. So, the windows being closed without the air on was also odd. It was stuffy. Searching frantically for Denise, Nathan called Sue (Denise's mom) first to see if she knew anything. Of course, she didn't and he immediately called 9-1-1 to report Denise missing. Then he called Rick and Rick went into action.
Normally in a missing adult case, they wait to start searching. There's usually a credible explanation as to why the person is not there or the person has left willingly. Rick and Nate both stressed, of course, that this wasn't the case. That there was just no way Denise would leave her kids. So, I believe, in deference to Rick, the North Port Police Department took this more seriously than they probably would normally have. (that's just opinion on my part). Rick works for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office and has for the past 25 years. It had to be terribly frustrating for him to watch the neighboring agency handle the case. But Nate and Denise lived in North Port which is in Sarasota County. So North Port had jurisdiction.
I have already written in an earlier blog how Mark called me and my mad rush to get out to the house. I was at work and my phone was turned off so I was missing calls. Finally Mark called on the store phone. Sue had already picked up the babies. So, I stayed with Nate. You could see Rick's frustration with the NPPD. You could see NPPD 's frustration with Rick. In a word? It was heartbreaking. Nathan was a suspect. A helicopter was overhead. It was getting dark. The thoughts that run through your head. We all knew (our family knew) that there was no way Denise would leave willingly. It was just impossible. Doubts enter but they are quickly brushed aside. Because we knew her. And, she worshiped the ground Nathan walked on and those babies were her life. Nathan I believe, wanted me to leave to help Sue with the boys but I wouldn't. I kept my distance and didn't want to be in the way. But, I so wanted to be there for my baby. I can't describe the pain and agony on Nathan's face. On Rick's face. It's damn difficult watching your son's world fall apart.
Sometime around 4:20PM (I'm estimating times because I don't have the report in front of me. If I'm way off, I'll correct later but I've got this stuff pretty well memorized. I live it over and over again) NPPD requested a K-9 from the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office. This is the first time the CCSO 9-1-1 center became aware that Rick Goff's daughter is missing and that the children may have been involved.
At 3:30PM the CCSO had sent it's Teletype operator home early as to save paying overtime. At 4:59PM the first BOLO (Be On the Look Out) is broadcast over the Teletype from North Port mentioning a green Camaro, a description of the suspect and Denise. They give her name, age, haircolor etc... The next door neighbor had seen a green Camaro cruising up and down their road and then parked in Nathan and Denise's driveway.
Now since the Teletype operator went home the dispatchers were to monitor the Teletype every 5 or 10 minutes. Sadly, this BOLO was ignored.
At 5:38PM the CCSO says they issued their own BOLO but oddly, it's not in the CAD system which would have notified the deputies in the field immediately on their computers. The CCSO deputies were all over the place along the Sarasota County/Charlotte County border. But they don't know what they are looking for and they are frustrated they don't have any leads. Again, they never saw this BOLO and testified to that. Also, this BOLO isn't listed on a pass on log the call takers and dispatchers read when coming on duty. It lists what's going on, BOLOs etc... after reading it the on coming squad initials it. I have a copy of it. There is no BOLO listed as being sent out at 5:38PM by CCSO. (Oddly the summary of the I/A report says it was sent out at 5:31PM just one of many discrepancies in the summary). So, what do we have here? Deputies unaware and the dispatchers being unaware that Denise could be in a green Camaro. 2 other BOLOs sent across the Teletype are also ignored from North Port. One at 5:58PM and one at 6:46PM. So, IMO, there's no way that Teletype was being monitored. Now is this the dispatchers fault? I don't know who's fault it is. But obviously the time between 3:30PM and 6:45PM were critical for Denise.
Interestingly a call taker (Millie Stepp) testified she knew about the green Camaro but only because she heard about it over a Sarasota County radio. The supervisor of the 9-1-1 had been busy patching radios through to North Port. This takes close to an hour to do.
Okay, so deputies from the CCSO and Rick out at the house aren't aware of the green Camaro lead (maybe Rick is but he's assuming the Teletype is being monitored and the information is getting out). He's pacing and begging for information.
Then Sabrina Muxlow's 9-1-1 call comes into Sarasota County and she describes what her father told her. This is around 6:00Pm. She says her dad saw her cousin with a girl tied up in the backseat of the car and that the girl screamed "call the cops!" You'd think this guy would call the cops but no...... It's his cousin. And instead he lends him a flashlight, a gascan and a shovel. And 20 minutes later instead of calling the cops, he calls his daughter.
hmmm... deep breath here.
Then something truly miraculous happens. At 6:14PM the Sarasota County 9-1-1 center received a call from Denise herself. She has somehow managed to get the suspects cell phone and call 9-1-1. Sweet brave smart girl. She dupes him into thinking she's talking to him all the while giving information to the call taker. She indeed confirms that she's been taken against her will and that she's in a green Camaro. Her call lasts 7 minutes. Until it's abruptly ended with Michael King looking for his phone.
Now things at the house are starting to happen. Rick and CCSO Sgt Floyd Davis listen to Denise's frantic call. Rick confirms it's indeed her. My heart breaks for him thinking of his having to listen to it. But he heard her fighting and he must have been damn proud of her. Her call ends around 6:22PM and Floyd Davis calls the CCSO dispatch and requests a BOLO to be sent out immediately to look for a green Camaro. Finally, at 6:36PM the CCSO dispatch issues it's first documented BOLO telling their deputies (who have been waiting for this) to look for a green Camaro. All along for the past hour and a half they could've been looking for it but didn't know to.
At 6:30PM Jane Kowalski is watching Denise's hand pound the back window of the dark Camaro and hears her screaming bloody murder. She calls 9-1-1 but because she's crossed the county line she reaches the CCSO 9-1-1 center. It is the only 9-1-1 call in reference to Denise that the CCSO 9-1-1 center receives. The call lasts 9 minutes but no car is ever dispatched to the location Jane has described. Jane waits to hear from the CCSO but never does.
The 9-1-1 supervisor testifies "she didn't really know what was going on".
We at the house, are unaware of this call. Jane not only sees Denise's hand and makes eye contact with Michael King, she gives the CCSO call taker cross streets. On the 9-1-1 tape you hear the call taker is rattled, not in control, asking for direction from a supervisor and completely at sea as to what to do. Instead of entering information in the CAD immediately the way she was trained to do, so the deputies can see the information in their cars on their computers, she writes it down on a piece of paper and yells it across the room.
At the same time, Sgt Davis is on the phone with one of the dispatchers requesting the BOLO I mentioned earlier. The dispatcher tells him a little about the call Millie is in the process of taking. She asks Sgt Davis if the Camaro is blue. Sgt Davis says no, he believes it's green but tells her to call the NPPD to confirm. She never does. I don't know why not. It was not asked in the report. She also fails to mention to Sgt Davis that there's another person in the car in re to the phone call Millie's taking. He testifies "if she had, things would have turned out way different".
Also, at the same time the new shift comes on duty. They all initial a pass on log listing the incidents that are occuring or have occured. Updating them as to what is going on. Sadly, none of the 3 BOLOs North Port issued over the Teletype are listed. Neither is the supposed BOLO the CCSO sent out at 5:38PM. They testify that all they knew going in was that Rick Goff's daughter was taken, that maybe children were involved and that K-9 was requested. It was never asked in the report what the on coming supervisor knew or was told considering the other supervisor "didn't know what was going on" because she says "she was patching radios".
I can't tell you what is going on with Denise at this time. I don't honestly know. I assume she's on her way to her final destination. She had been torn away from her children, taken to the suspect's home, brutally raped and terrorized but still kept enough presence of mind to snatch his phone, call 9-1-1 and in a last ditch effort, take off her precious heart ring Nathan had given to her so that he could later identify it. She saved her kids and handed the prosecution their case on a silver platter.
What a hero.
Another BOLO is issued by North Port over the Teletype sometime around 7. From Denise's 9-1-1 call to Sarasota County they glean information on Michael King, where he lives, etc.... That information along with the tag number is in the this BOLO.
Oddly, the CCSO doesn't respond to this BOLO until 8:15PM when they finally issue their own BOLO. The first mention in the CAD system about looking for a Camaro is at 7:02PM and it says gray. I figure Denise is gone by then.
At 9:15PM or therabouts, a CCSO patrol car spots the Camaro and it's Eddie Pope, with the FHP, that stops it and arrests King. There is no Denise.
I don't know what time the search was called off that night. I had Noah spending the night. And kept him the next day while hundreds of people met to search for Denise. Many from FPL are turned away. Mark described to me walking hand in hand with others and being given little red flags to place where they may spot a clue. The searchers search at the end of Salford Blvd because that's where Michael King suggests they look. They still know nothing of Kowalski's call to the CCSO 9-1-1 center telling them he was last seen with Denise in the car turning east on Toledo Blade. They are at the same time searching a small area on Toledo Blade not far from where they arrested King. The CCSO's silence in this matter is unconscionable in my opinion.
I imagine if they would have known about Kowalski's call maybe the bigger search effort would have been along Toledo Blade and not Salford. I imagine her not having to spend an extra day and a half in that shallow grave, naked and exposed to the Florida elements longer than she had to. Or us suffering that day and half agonizing over what happened to her for longer than we had to. The only thing that could possibly account for this silence is cover up. And if it wasn't cover up, it was gross negligence.
There was negligence in how they handled the BOLO's and the Teletype as well. Maybe the thought of possibly losing their Teletype machine for not monitoring it appropriately and being caught silenced them. I don't know. But they knew.
When they called off the search early Saturday afternoon we assumed they had found her but we still don't know where or how or in what condition. There is still a glimmer of hope she's still alive. Shattered but alive. But, no, we're officially informed it was her around 4PM.
deep breath here
She was shot in the head.
I really can't go on. There were several other tragic errors the CCSO made that night. The piece of paper the call taker had written on had been handed to one of the dispatchers who didn't believe her radio was working. But according to the CAD it is the entire time and she's on it. Millie testifies she yelled the info to Dispatcher A but Dispatcher A and Dispatcher B testify she yelled it to Dispatcher B. The supervisor testifies she didn't know what was going on. It was very shoddy work indeed.
We don't find out about Kowalski's call until the day of the viewing. That would be the following Tuesday. We're numb already and for me it didn't sink in right away. The only reason we ever found out about her call was because she persisted in calling the North Port Police wanting to help. They didn't know who she was. Finally they figured it out on Saturday the day Denise was found and had to "request" information from the CCSO. The CCSO wasn't going to give it to them.
Jane Kowalski's interview with the North Port Police Department. They are still not sure who she is.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090117/VIDEO01/901160374&profile=2414&template=video
We find out more from the I/A report but it takes reading it 3 times to figure it out. It's that convoluted and there are so many errors in the summary.
Then we find out that the woman leading the investigation was actually working as Director of Communications. She had been promoted to Internal Affairs just before but because Sherman Robinson was on vacation, she filled in for him.
We also find out that the CCSO treated Jane Kowalski with derision and disdain. They blamed her for giving them erroneous information. She said blue Camaro and said it was a child. They never even followed her up with a phone call.
Sweet sweet Denise. I'm trying my hardest baby to get the bigger, more important story out. I'm sure people are sick of reading about it, but I don't know what else to do. Somehow we must make people aware of what's going on at the CCSO. I just don't know how else to do it.
I really need to write next about all the good things that followed. All the people who came out in droves for your funeral. All the fundraisers. All the hugs and prayers. The on-line community (a piano forum) that raised $16K for the boys education. How everyone's hearts broke and are still breaking everytime your story is played on DateLine or PrimeTime. Of how our families have bonded and we're doing out bests for Nate, Noah and Adam. There have been thousands more angels than villains in this piece. You have your own tree now. And your own classroom! You may get a playground. So many people now look at you as a hero. I'll always remember you put those babies first. In the Catholic church I believe you would be considered a martyr and a saint. Your last thought of Nate and his ring. How your heart must have broke.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Looking forward and at cover up
Link to story:
http://www.sunnewspapers.net/articles/pnnews.aspx?NewsID=429491&a=newsarchive2/010709/ch4.htm&pnpg=1
my comments to follow
Published on: Wednesday, January 07, 2009
New sheriff in town
Cameron sworn in as county's top cop
PUNTA GORDA -- Bill Cameron took a deep breath, and peered at his fellow officers in the crowd.
His first words as Charlotte County sheriff began with a joke.
Cameron explained how he is one of the select few who have been appointed and elected sheriff.
But he wouldn't recommend the latter for anyone thinking about seeking office.
"Appointed is the way to go," he said, as the auditorium erupted in laughter.
All kidding aside, Cameron was serious when he told his colleagues to serve the community like it's family.
Cameron, 47, was sworn in Tuesday morning before a group of co-workers, family and friends at the Center for Performing Arts and Education in Punta Gorda.
The ceremony marked Cameron's second stint as sheriff, having served briefly several years ago.
Cameron replaces John Davenport, who retired earlier this week.
"I just hope I can live up to your expectations," Cameron said to the group.
Cameron's career began in 1982 with the Fort Myers Police Department. Five years later, he joined the Lee County Sheriff's Office, where he remained until 2003.
He was appointed interim Charlotte County sheriff by then-Gov. Jeb Bush, following the removal of Bill Clement.
Cameron became chief deputy when Davenport was elected a year later.
Since then, he believes the agency has made positive strides throughout the community.
Colleagues echoed his sentiment.
"It's been the best six years of my law enforcement career," said Maj. Dan Libby.
Following his badge-pinning, Cameron had every employee in the crowd reaffirm their oath of office.
He spoke briefly about the looming financial challenges, and the importance of making sound decisions.
"Do the right thing for the right reasons, and you'll never stumble," Cameron said.
E-mail: jwitz@sun-herald.com
By JASON WITZ
We don't talk to Rick about the CCSO simply because we don't want to cause him any more anxiety or pain then he already has. If he had any problem with our crusade to expose Davenport and Cameron for who they are I'm sure he'd tell us.
How to work with a man like Bill Cameron? I don't know.
I guess I'm sounding pretty darn angry. Well, I am. The man makes me want to puke every time I think of him. Why? Because he's a liar and a manipulator of the facts. He put politics and getting elected before the community. I don't care how much community service and good works you do. A liar is a liar. And he lied to get elected.
I've always been a registered Republican. I've always had faith in my party. But after this debacle, I no longer have faith in the Republican Party in Florida. They protected their own and closed ranks. I even heard that Worch endorsed Cameron and meets with him for lunch.
And Governor Charlie Crist has distanced himself as far a way from this story as he possibly could. He won't even look at it.
Now that all that anger is out let me explain why I think there was a cover-up or at least an attempt at cover-up. Again. (Sorry to those who have read this before. The reason I'm doing this is not because I'm obsessed. It's more because I figure the more I put it out there on the internet, the more it'll be seen and these people need to be exposed for what they did.)
Top ten reasons there was a cover-up:
1 They didn't notify the North Port Police Department immediately after the phone call. Why not?
2 They never followed up with Jane Kowalski on her phone call. Why not?
3 They had Capt Donna Roguska lead the Internal Affairs investigation. She was Director of Communications that night and in charge.
4 They didn't interview Bill Cameron the Chief of Communications. Why not?
5 They refused to answer any questions after the Internal Affairs Investigation Report came out. Why not?
6 Their treatment of Ms Kowalski in blaming her for giving them "erroneous" information about the color of the car and the age of the victim.
7 They laid blame on Nextel being the problem and went to great lengths about discontinuing the use of Nextel when the only person who had a Nextel phone in the 9-1-1 center that night was Laurie Piatt, the supervisor patching radios. At least according to those who were interviewed. Who knows what Roguska and Cameron were using. They conveniently weren't interviewed.
8 The list of questions that went unasked in the investigation. For example "who was the 'he' in authority that Millie Stepp was asking direction from while on the phone with Ms Kowalski?" and "who was hollering at Millie when she was on the phone with Ms Kowalski?" These were clearly people in authority. Those people were never interviewed and it was never asked who they are. Also "why didn't Millie (the call taker) confirm with the dispatchers that they received her information and that it was sent out?" And "why weren't the 3 BOLOs sent across on the Teletype from North Port responded to?" And "why were the CCSO deputies in the field not looking for a green Camaro until after 6:45PM when the CCSO first received information over the Teletype about a green Camaro as early as 4:59PM?" And "during the shift change what information did the on duty supervisor give to the on-coming supervisor?" And "why wasn't the on coming squad of call takers and dispatchers made aware of the green Camaro and the 3 BOLOs?" The pass on log which they all initialed when they came in at 6:45PM doesn't mention anything about the green Camaro or the white pudgy guy. Why not? "Why were the CCSO deputies in the field so frustrated about not having any leads when there were clearly leads coming over the Teletype?" How could the supervisor, Laurie Piatt get away with a response of "I didn't know what was going on, I was patching radios, I mean, I knew Millie had a call but I really didn't know anything about it". She was the supervisor for goodness sakes. Where's the follow up of "why not? And why didn't you make it your business to find out why one of your call takers was standing up screaming across the room and find out why people were hollering at her?" I could go on but I'll stop for a while. Most likely I'll blog about it in a few days. If I do I'll warn you ahead of time that it's a rant on cover-up.
9 They won't open themselves up to an external investigation which you'd think they would. I mean, if there are no issues as they say and their dispatchers are excellent, you'd think an external investigation would exonerate them.
10 Biggest reason! the North Port Police Department had to "request" information on Ms Kowalski's call on Saturday, the same day we found Denise's body. 3 days. When the CCSO clearly knew according to their own I/A report the call referred to Denise as early as Thursday evening. Why? Why did the NPPD have to "request" information. Ms Kowalski was the last person to see Denise alive. She was a critical witness and we would NEVER have known about her or her call if she hadn't persistantly called the NPPD. The CCSO's treatment of her is an indictment itself.
God bless you, Jane. If you ever read this, please, know you are a true hero in my eyes and I'm so sorry if you've suffered in anyway for doing the right thing.
So, how do we move forward and work with this guy to clean up the mess? I can't trust a word he says because he's actually lied about my family during probably the worst times of our lives. His treatment of Nathan...... It's appalling and sickening.
IMO, Cameron's more of a politician than a sheriff. And it was obvious in 2008 that he puts politics before public safety.
http://www.sunnewspapers.net/articles/pnnews.aspx?NewsID=429491&a=newsarchive2/010709/ch4.htm&pnpg=1
my comments to follow
Published on: Wednesday, January 07, 2009
New sheriff in town
Cameron sworn in as county's top cop
PUNTA GORDA -- Bill Cameron took a deep breath, and peered at his fellow officers in the crowd.
His first words as Charlotte County sheriff began with a joke.
Cameron explained how he is one of the select few who have been appointed and elected sheriff.
But he wouldn't recommend the latter for anyone thinking about seeking office.
"Appointed is the way to go," he said, as the auditorium erupted in laughter.
All kidding aside, Cameron was serious when he told his colleagues to serve the community like it's family.
Cameron, 47, was sworn in Tuesday morning before a group of co-workers, family and friends at the Center for Performing Arts and Education in Punta Gorda.
The ceremony marked Cameron's second stint as sheriff, having served briefly several years ago.
Cameron replaces John Davenport, who retired earlier this week.
"I just hope I can live up to your expectations," Cameron said to the group.
Cameron's career began in 1982 with the Fort Myers Police Department. Five years later, he joined the Lee County Sheriff's Office, where he remained until 2003.
He was appointed interim Charlotte County sheriff by then-Gov. Jeb Bush, following the removal of Bill Clement.
Cameron became chief deputy when Davenport was elected a year later.
Since then, he believes the agency has made positive strides throughout the community.
Colleagues echoed his sentiment.
"It's been the best six years of my law enforcement career," said Maj. Dan Libby.
Following his badge-pinning, Cameron had every employee in the crowd reaffirm their oath of office.
He spoke briefly about the looming financial challenges, and the importance of making sound decisions.
"Do the right thing for the right reasons, and you'll never stumble," Cameron said.
E-mail: jwitz@sun-herald.com
By JASON WITZ
I gotta tell you I've got mixed feelings about this article too. I almost despise Bill Cameron. Yet, I realize that we have to work with this man for the next four years. If we want to change our 9-1-1 center and make improvements, we're going to have to go through this guy.
Of course, that'll be difficult considering in his campaign he averred "our 9-1-1 center has no issues" and "we have excellent dispatchers". So how do you work with a man that only looks at the forest and not at the trees?
As you know I've already blogged about several of the issues our 9-1-1 center has. I won't go into them again here. Why continue rehashing them?
But, then I think "Peggy, you have to rehash them and continue to rehash them". Why? Because if we don't speak out about them, I'm afraid they'll continue to be swept under the rug. Why? Suppose in regards to Nathan's lawsuit against the CCSO, they decide to settle? One of the things the CCSO will most likely require is for us "to never talk about this story again" "no books" "no interviews" nothing, nada.
Also, I feel the need to expose Bill Cameron for the politician he is. So, that in the next election (four years from now) people will know what kind of person he really is. This past election he was protected by his buddy John Davenport and other high up Republicans. Also, he was protected by the newspapers IMO. Mark and I went to the Charlotte Sun weeks before the election and spelled out why we believed there was a cover-up. We spelled out many of the problems but they were never published. Most of the people who voted had no idea the Bill Cameron was Chief of Communications that night. Meaning, he was in charge! And he was responsible. He was the one directly responsible for not notifying the North Port Police Department about Ms Kowalski's call. He's the one that made all the important decisions that night. He was also at the time the Public Information Officer. What does that mean? That means he was responsible for what information was given out to the press and to our family. He was the one responsible for manipulating the facts.
He also lied about our family on the campaign trail. He insinuated to the newspapers that the Goffs and Lees don't get along. He insinuated that Rick Goff doesn't approve or appreciate our efforts in trying to correct the problems in the 9-1-1 center. I had a reporter ask me directly "Mrs. Lee, how well do you get along with the Goffs?" I was like "what?" the reporter replied "It's been implied by Bill Cameron that your families don't get along and never have". WHAT! Then Cameron is quoted in the newspaper saying "Rick was in my office the other day and he said he doesn't like his daughter's name being used in politics and that he's fine with the investigation and if Rick's fine with the investigation and has no questions, that's good enough for me!" Or something to that effect. If you need a direct quote, I'll get it for you. What a lie! An ALL OUT LIE! Rick obviously supports our efforts. He spoke in Tallahassee and on national television averring how "his department" screwed up. He has been at every Denise Amber Lee Foundation fundraiser.
Our families (the Lees and the Goffs) have bonded in a very special way. Rick has been like a father to Nate. We've joined together in doing all we can to help Nathan with the babies.We don't talk to Rick about the CCSO simply because we don't want to cause him any more anxiety or pain then he already has. If he had any problem with our crusade to expose Davenport and Cameron for who they are I'm sure he'd tell us.
How to work with a man like Bill Cameron? I don't know.
I guess I'm sounding pretty darn angry. Well, I am. The man makes me want to puke every time I think of him. Why? Because he's a liar and a manipulator of the facts. He put politics and getting elected before the community. I don't care how much community service and good works you do. A liar is a liar. And he lied to get elected.
I've always been a registered Republican. I've always had faith in my party. But after this debacle, I no longer have faith in the Republican Party in Florida. They protected their own and closed ranks. I even heard that Worch endorsed Cameron and meets with him for lunch.
And Governor Charlie Crist has distanced himself as far a way from this story as he possibly could. He won't even look at it.
Now that all that anger is out let me explain why I think there was a cover-up or at least an attempt at cover-up. Again. (Sorry to those who have read this before. The reason I'm doing this is not because I'm obsessed. It's more because I figure the more I put it out there on the internet, the more it'll be seen and these people need to be exposed for what they did.)
Top ten reasons there was a cover-up:
1 They didn't notify the North Port Police Department immediately after the phone call. Why not?
2 They never followed up with Jane Kowalski on her phone call. Why not?
3 They had Capt Donna Roguska lead the Internal Affairs investigation. She was Director of Communications that night and in charge.
4 They didn't interview Bill Cameron the Chief of Communications. Why not?
5 They refused to answer any questions after the Internal Affairs Investigation Report came out. Why not?
6 Their treatment of Ms Kowalski in blaming her for giving them "erroneous" information about the color of the car and the age of the victim.
7 They laid blame on Nextel being the problem and went to great lengths about discontinuing the use of Nextel when the only person who had a Nextel phone in the 9-1-1 center that night was Laurie Piatt, the supervisor patching radios. At least according to those who were interviewed. Who knows what Roguska and Cameron were using. They conveniently weren't interviewed.
8 The list of questions that went unasked in the investigation. For example "who was the 'he' in authority that Millie Stepp was asking direction from while on the phone with Ms Kowalski?" and "who was hollering at Millie when she was on the phone with Ms Kowalski?" These were clearly people in authority. Those people were never interviewed and it was never asked who they are. Also "why didn't Millie (the call taker) confirm with the dispatchers that they received her information and that it was sent out?" And "why weren't the 3 BOLOs sent across on the Teletype from North Port responded to?" And "why were the CCSO deputies in the field not looking for a green Camaro until after 6:45PM when the CCSO first received information over the Teletype about a green Camaro as early as 4:59PM?" And "during the shift change what information did the on duty supervisor give to the on-coming supervisor?" And "why wasn't the on coming squad of call takers and dispatchers made aware of the green Camaro and the 3 BOLOs?" The pass on log which they all initialed when they came in at 6:45PM doesn't mention anything about the green Camaro or the white pudgy guy. Why not? "Why were the CCSO deputies in the field so frustrated about not having any leads when there were clearly leads coming over the Teletype?" How could the supervisor, Laurie Piatt get away with a response of "I didn't know what was going on, I was patching radios, I mean, I knew Millie had a call but I really didn't know anything about it". She was the supervisor for goodness sakes. Where's the follow up of "why not? And why didn't you make it your business to find out why one of your call takers was standing up screaming across the room and find out why people were hollering at her?" I could go on but I'll stop for a while. Most likely I'll blog about it in a few days. If I do I'll warn you ahead of time that it's a rant on cover-up.
9 They won't open themselves up to an external investigation which you'd think they would. I mean, if there are no issues as they say and their dispatchers are excellent, you'd think an external investigation would exonerate them.
10 Biggest reason! the North Port Police Department had to "request" information on Ms Kowalski's call on Saturday, the same day we found Denise's body. 3 days. When the CCSO clearly knew according to their own I/A report the call referred to Denise as early as Thursday evening. Why? Why did the NPPD have to "request" information. Ms Kowalski was the last person to see Denise alive. She was a critical witness and we would NEVER have known about her or her call if she hadn't persistantly called the NPPD. The CCSO's treatment of her is an indictment itself.
God bless you, Jane. If you ever read this, please, know you are a true hero in my eyes and I'm so sorry if you've suffered in anyway for doing the right thing.
So, how do we move forward and work with this guy to clean up the mess? I can't trust a word he says because he's actually lied about my family during probably the worst times of our lives. His treatment of Nathan...... It's appalling and sickening.
IMO, Cameron's more of a politician than a sheriff. And it was obvious in 2008 that he puts politics before public safety.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Homicide Grief a year later
Last March while writing about homicide grief, my grief was still very raw. Now, a year later it's still raw. The biggest difference is I've seem to have come out of what I can only describe as a zombie phase. For many months after we lost Denise I was a zombie. I met people and attended fundraisers and was simply there. I didn't feel an active part of any of it. It was just all happening around me and I don't feel as if I contributed much other than my presence and of course, watching the babies.
I have hardened up some. I still cry quite often but not nearly as openly as I used to. I've become used to the newspaper articles and the news reels. Over this past New Years, one of the news reels proclaimed Denise's story to be "the saddest story of 2008" at least locally. And I didn't cry.
Well wait a minute. I take that back. I did cry. But I cried on the inside. I read somewhere someone describe homicide grief saying "it's as if you're bleeding on the inside" and that's so true. It's a perfect description.
I also read that you don't get over it, you simply adjust. Or maybe someone told me that. I can't remember. But that's basically true too.
Anyhow, I believe I've come out of that zombie phase. I feel that "fog" lifting. Maybe it's because the holidays are finally over. Maybe it's because it's been a year. I don't know.
But as far as the pain? It's still as raw as it was a year ago. I still feel as if "I'm bleeding on the inside". And maybe it's because I'm no longer in the zombie phase, I feel it all more keenly.
One of the best things about being out of the zombie phase is being able to recognize all the good people out there. So many people trying to help. So many who are willing to listen to me. Yes, there are those who are sick and tired of the story and wish the story would go away. The woman who said "well, at least now you know other people have problems too"....... Well, I know not to talk to her about it anymore. I don't think she intended to be mean, it just came out as being mean. Maybe I do talk about it too much. It certainly absorbs all my thoughts. The sad thing is, I wasn't even talking about Denise. I was talking about that poor unfortunate golf pro who's life ended so abruptly.
People say you are your thoughts. Hmmmm...... Well crap. No wonder I'm such a mess.
And it's not so much just this. It seems that every week something else happens. It's such a roller coaster. One day you feel maybe not elated but at least at peace and the next day you feel like someone stepped on you again.
So anyway I'm seeing things a bit more clearly now. And I believe that's a good thing.
So many people who experience tragedies like ours have turned their tragedies into positive changes and hopes for other victims in either preventing future tragedies or with helping the victims families.
On a local level, I look at people like the leader of our Parents of Murdered Children support group. And wow! How inspiring is she! To give of yourself month after month by being there for others. And believe me, no matter how tragic it all is, there is comfort in numbers. You don't wish tragedy on anyone and it saddens you to know there are others out there experiencing the raw pain you are but being able to have someone hug you that "truly understands" is the greatest gift. IMO. You have family and friends who love you more than anything, but you know they don't quite understand even though you know they want to. Anyhow, this support group she brought about in Charlotte County won't bring her son back. But in a way it does. In a spiritual sense it brings him back for her. She knows that if she wants to talk about him, cry about him or rage about what happened to him no one is going to minimalize her pain and say "get over it". So, anyway, she's doing something truly wonderful for other people. And I applaud her for it.
On a national level, of course, John Walsh has got to be one of the most inspiring individuals in the country if not the world. And still after 27 years he still cries over his little boy. And of course, there are so many others we all know about.
Look at Shawn Hornbeck's family. They never gave up hope and are now not only coping with mending their family, they too are reaching out to others offering support and comfort.
Turning tragedy and anger into positive hope for others.
Nathan, of course, has started the Denise Amber Lee Foundation which was inspired by the overwhelming support of our community. There was so much money raised for him and the babies. And he took a large chunk of it to start this foundation to bring about improvement in 9-1-1 centers. It was his way of giving back to a community that gave us so much. And he wants to reach out to other families who have experienced similar tragedies. What a dragon he's taking on. It hasn't been easy for Nathan to continually put his pain on display in the media. But he knows Denise's story and other stories need to be heard. Mark has been spending hours and hours researching 9-1-1 issues and is in contact with 9-1-1 industry people on a daily basis offering help where he can. Mark does the research and Nate goes on shows and speaks.
What I'm trying to figure out now that I'm out of my zombie phase, is where am I going and what am I going to do to help bring positive hope and light to others. I don't know.
I do know that I'm only a support player in this tragedy. It's Nathan and Denise's story and I just have a support role. And maybe that's what I need to continue doing. Just being here, supporting, loving, holding the family together, and watching the babies!
I did delve pretty heavily into the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office 9-1-1 debacle. I still believe it was a cover up or intended to be a cover up. Why else wouldn't they have contacted the NPPD about the call? I'll never give up in the battle of exposing what they tried to do. So, sadly, you'll continue to see blogs on that. As a matter of fact, I haven't blogged on it in a few days so you may see a blog on it shortly. I figure the more I post the story on the internet, the more people will find out about it. Maybe someone, somewhere in Florida politics will actually care and do something about it. Doubtful but I have to try.
So next blog "Why I think there was a cover-up in the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office".
Anyhow, thanks for listening again! Much peace and love to all.
I have hardened up some. I still cry quite often but not nearly as openly as I used to. I've become used to the newspaper articles and the news reels. Over this past New Years, one of the news reels proclaimed Denise's story to be "the saddest story of 2008" at least locally. And I didn't cry.
Well wait a minute. I take that back. I did cry. But I cried on the inside. I read somewhere someone describe homicide grief saying "it's as if you're bleeding on the inside" and that's so true. It's a perfect description.
I also read that you don't get over it, you simply adjust. Or maybe someone told me that. I can't remember. But that's basically true too.
Anyhow, I believe I've come out of that zombie phase. I feel that "fog" lifting. Maybe it's because the holidays are finally over. Maybe it's because it's been a year. I don't know.
But as far as the pain? It's still as raw as it was a year ago. I still feel as if "I'm bleeding on the inside". And maybe it's because I'm no longer in the zombie phase, I feel it all more keenly.
One of the best things about being out of the zombie phase is being able to recognize all the good people out there. So many people trying to help. So many who are willing to listen to me. Yes, there are those who are sick and tired of the story and wish the story would go away. The woman who said "well, at least now you know other people have problems too"....... Well, I know not to talk to her about it anymore. I don't think she intended to be mean, it just came out as being mean. Maybe I do talk about it too much. It certainly absorbs all my thoughts. The sad thing is, I wasn't even talking about Denise. I was talking about that poor unfortunate golf pro who's life ended so abruptly.
People say you are your thoughts. Hmmmm...... Well crap. No wonder I'm such a mess.
And it's not so much just this. It seems that every week something else happens. It's such a roller coaster. One day you feel maybe not elated but at least at peace and the next day you feel like someone stepped on you again.
So anyway I'm seeing things a bit more clearly now. And I believe that's a good thing.
So many people who experience tragedies like ours have turned their tragedies into positive changes and hopes for other victims in either preventing future tragedies or with helping the victims families.
On a local level, I look at people like the leader of our Parents of Murdered Children support group. And wow! How inspiring is she! To give of yourself month after month by being there for others. And believe me, no matter how tragic it all is, there is comfort in numbers. You don't wish tragedy on anyone and it saddens you to know there are others out there experiencing the raw pain you are but being able to have someone hug you that "truly understands" is the greatest gift. IMO. You have family and friends who love you more than anything, but you know they don't quite understand even though you know they want to. Anyhow, this support group she brought about in Charlotte County won't bring her son back. But in a way it does. In a spiritual sense it brings him back for her. She knows that if she wants to talk about him, cry about him or rage about what happened to him no one is going to minimalize her pain and say "get over it". So, anyway, she's doing something truly wonderful for other people. And I applaud her for it.
On a national level, of course, John Walsh has got to be one of the most inspiring individuals in the country if not the world. And still after 27 years he still cries over his little boy. And of course, there are so many others we all know about.
Look at Shawn Hornbeck's family. They never gave up hope and are now not only coping with mending their family, they too are reaching out to others offering support and comfort.
Turning tragedy and anger into positive hope for others.
Nathan, of course, has started the Denise Amber Lee Foundation which was inspired by the overwhelming support of our community. There was so much money raised for him and the babies. And he took a large chunk of it to start this foundation to bring about improvement in 9-1-1 centers. It was his way of giving back to a community that gave us so much. And he wants to reach out to other families who have experienced similar tragedies. What a dragon he's taking on. It hasn't been easy for Nathan to continually put his pain on display in the media. But he knows Denise's story and other stories need to be heard. Mark has been spending hours and hours researching 9-1-1 issues and is in contact with 9-1-1 industry people on a daily basis offering help where he can. Mark does the research and Nate goes on shows and speaks.
What I'm trying to figure out now that I'm out of my zombie phase, is where am I going and what am I going to do to help bring positive hope and light to others. I don't know.
I do know that I'm only a support player in this tragedy. It's Nathan and Denise's story and I just have a support role. And maybe that's what I need to continue doing. Just being here, supporting, loving, holding the family together, and watching the babies!
I did delve pretty heavily into the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office 9-1-1 debacle. I still believe it was a cover up or intended to be a cover up. Why else wouldn't they have contacted the NPPD about the call? I'll never give up in the battle of exposing what they tried to do. So, sadly, you'll continue to see blogs on that. As a matter of fact, I haven't blogged on it in a few days so you may see a blog on it shortly. I figure the more I post the story on the internet, the more people will find out about it. Maybe someone, somewhere in Florida politics will actually care and do something about it. Doubtful but I have to try.
So next blog "Why I think there was a cover-up in the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office".
Anyhow, thanks for listening again! Much peace and love to all.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
When bad things happen
Today there was an article in the Charlotte Sun discussing Sheriff John Davenport retiring after 31 years of service. See my thoughts at end of article.
http://www.sunnewspapers.net/articles/pnnews.aspx?NewsID=429345&a=newsarchive2/010409/ch2.htm&pnpg=0
Sheriff Davenport wraps up 31 year career
CHARLOTTE COUNTY -- John Davenport has never been one to seek attention.
He joined the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office 31 years ago as just another face in the crowd.
And that's how he wants to leave.
Davenport will retire from the agency this week without a party or the usual fanfare that follows a career law enforcement man.
"I have never felt very comfortable having the spotlight shined upon me, whether it be for good or bad," Davenport wrote in an e-mail to his staff last month. (He declined to be interviewed for this story.) "All I ever wanted was to do my job, do it well and leave it at that. I feel confident I have accomplished my goal."
Colleagues described Davenport as the quiet leader -- one who could restore calm from chaos.
"There was something very steady about John," said Sheriff-elect Bill Cameron, who will be sworn in Tuesday. "He's going to be missed."
Davenport, 56, was hired in 1978 as a jailer (which now would be a corrections officer).
Within a year, the New York native was promoted to jail commander, although it was anything but a desk job.
Every week, Davenport retrieved food supplies in town for the jail population, which rarely exceeded 20 bodies. In addition, he regularly drove inmates to court.
In 1989, Davenport became a district commander, where he remained four years before being put in charge of communications. His ascension through the ranks continued in 1995, when he was named chief deputy under then-sheriff Richard Worch.
In 2001, Davenport returned as jail commander. The move was temporary, as Cameron named Davenport second-in-command upon his appointment by former Gov. Jeb Bush two years later.
Davenport ran for sheriff in 2004, as Cameron agreed not to seek office as a condition of his appointment. Davenport won the general election with roughly 72 percent of the vote.
However, his rise to the top didn't change the way he approached the job, friends say.
A man of strict routine, Davenport began each morning inside a gym. Like clockwork, he would be seated at his desk at 6:30 a.m., answering e-mails and outlining his day with meticulous detail.
"John is probably the most disciplined person I've meet," said Maj. Dan Libby.
During his career, Davenport started the civilian police academy, the GED program at the jail, and DARE within the school district.
He spent many hours at the elementary schools reading to children. And he never missed a DARE graduation.
"He took a personal interest in the school system," said Dave Gayler, Charlotte County Public Schools superintendent.
That interest in others carried over to work, where Davenport was known to bring in deputies and, at times, inmates, unofficially, to ask about things and about how the agency could improve.
Off the clock, he mentored a girl through her entire school career as a volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters.
"He truly set the example for civic leadership," Libby said.
Despite these accomplishments, Davenport also will be remembered for the agency's internal investigation of a 911 call in the Denise Amber Lee murder case.
The 21-year-old North Port woman was kidnapped and murdered Jan. 17, 2008. Earlier that evening, Charlotte County dispatchers received a call from a witness who reported seeing what appeared to be a child slapping the back window of a Chevrolet Camaro stopped at a traffic light.
Two dispatchers were suspended and required to complete remedial training, but the measures haven't eased family concerns.
Davenport said he has moved on, and Cameron declined to comment.
In retirement, Davenport plans to remain in Charlotte County for another year before selling his house. The goal is to move to upstate New York, where he owns 27 acres.
Once there, he plans to remain anonymous.
"Hunting, the outdoors and solitude have always been my passion, and I now hope to live out that passion as a reward for 31 years of service," he said in the office memo.
E-mail: jwitz@sun-herald.com
By JASON WITZ
Staff Writer
I have very mixed feelings about the article. Apparently John Davenport has worked hard these past 31 years and much of his work is indeed commendable. I respect him for so many years of service.
I find it sad, however, that at the end of his career just when he was getting ready to retire that our 9-1-1 center not only failed Denise but it failed him, too. Those persons directly responsible for the mistakes in the 9-1-1 center that night let so many people down.
And, he, John Davenport "not wanting to ruin anyone elses lives" (his words not mine) didn't nearly reprimand certain people they way he should have. Some he chose not to reprimand at all. He then chose to try and sweep it under the rug so that his second in command, Bill Cameron, communication's chief that night could get elected. He issued a convoluted I/A report where so many questions weren't asked and then said we have no issues because the FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) oversaw the entire investigation. A complete all out lie. The FDLE sat in on very little of it and didn't ask a single question.
That's sad. After 31 years of service, most of it commendable, instead of retiring with the honor he should have, his career has been tainted by this travesty.
But, you know, it's his own doing. He chose to sweep it under the rug and deem it nothing more than a "missed opportunity". He chose to endorse Bill Cameron without addressing the issues that night.
If only he had come clean and explained what happened, how it happened, why it happened and how they were going to fix the problems, I wouldn't be writing this today.
I'm glad he can "move on". At least someone can. Bill Cameron is not going to be able to because we will not let this rest.
I'll never stop asking "why didn't your department let the NPPD know about Kowalski's call as soon as it happened?" "Why didn't your department follow up with Ms Kowalski?" "Why wasn't Cameron, Roguska and others interviewed in the Internal Affairs investigation?" "What else went wrong on your watch that we don't know about?" "Why wouldn't you help our family in getting past these issues and help us move on?"
So, move on, Sheriff Davenport. I'm glad someone can.
I commend you for your service to Charlotte County. I'm disappointed that you wouldn't fix or address the blatant problems in our 9-1-1 center this past year. And you had the audacity to run a campaign for a man (Bill Cameron) who publicly stated during his campaign "we have excellent dispatchers" and "our 9-1-1 center has no issues."
Sadly, it seems to me you are retiring more as a politician than as a public servant.
PS I speak for myself and as to my feelings and for no one else. But, I'm sure there are many who feel the same.
http://www.sunnewspapers.net/articles/pnnews.aspx?NewsID=429345&a=newsarchive2/010409/ch2.htm&pnpg=0
Sheriff Davenport wraps up 31 year career
CHARLOTTE COUNTY -- John Davenport has never been one to seek attention.
He joined the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office 31 years ago as just another face in the crowd.
And that's how he wants to leave.
Davenport will retire from the agency this week without a party or the usual fanfare that follows a career law enforcement man.
"I have never felt very comfortable having the spotlight shined upon me, whether it be for good or bad," Davenport wrote in an e-mail to his staff last month. (He declined to be interviewed for this story.) "All I ever wanted was to do my job, do it well and leave it at that. I feel confident I have accomplished my goal."
Colleagues described Davenport as the quiet leader -- one who could restore calm from chaos.
"There was something very steady about John," said Sheriff-elect Bill Cameron, who will be sworn in Tuesday. "He's going to be missed."
Davenport, 56, was hired in 1978 as a jailer (which now would be a corrections officer).
Within a year, the New York native was promoted to jail commander, although it was anything but a desk job.
Every week, Davenport retrieved food supplies in town for the jail population, which rarely exceeded 20 bodies. In addition, he regularly drove inmates to court.
In 1989, Davenport became a district commander, where he remained four years before being put in charge of communications. His ascension through the ranks continued in 1995, when he was named chief deputy under then-sheriff Richard Worch.
In 2001, Davenport returned as jail commander. The move was temporary, as Cameron named Davenport second-in-command upon his appointment by former Gov. Jeb Bush two years later.
Davenport ran for sheriff in 2004, as Cameron agreed not to seek office as a condition of his appointment. Davenport won the general election with roughly 72 percent of the vote.
However, his rise to the top didn't change the way he approached the job, friends say.
A man of strict routine, Davenport began each morning inside a gym. Like clockwork, he would be seated at his desk at 6:30 a.m., answering e-mails and outlining his day with meticulous detail.
"John is probably the most disciplined person I've meet," said Maj. Dan Libby.
During his career, Davenport started the civilian police academy, the GED program at the jail, and DARE within the school district.
He spent many hours at the elementary schools reading to children. And he never missed a DARE graduation.
"He took a personal interest in the school system," said Dave Gayler, Charlotte County Public Schools superintendent.
That interest in others carried over to work, where Davenport was known to bring in deputies and, at times, inmates, unofficially, to ask about things and about how the agency could improve.
Off the clock, he mentored a girl through her entire school career as a volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters.
"He truly set the example for civic leadership," Libby said.
Despite these accomplishments, Davenport also will be remembered for the agency's internal investigation of a 911 call in the Denise Amber Lee murder case.
The 21-year-old North Port woman was kidnapped and murdered Jan. 17, 2008. Earlier that evening, Charlotte County dispatchers received a call from a witness who reported seeing what appeared to be a child slapping the back window of a Chevrolet Camaro stopped at a traffic light.
Two dispatchers were suspended and required to complete remedial training, but the measures haven't eased family concerns.
Davenport said he has moved on, and Cameron declined to comment.
In retirement, Davenport plans to remain in Charlotte County for another year before selling his house. The goal is to move to upstate New York, where he owns 27 acres.
Once there, he plans to remain anonymous.
"Hunting, the outdoors and solitude have always been my passion, and I now hope to live out that passion as a reward for 31 years of service," he said in the office memo.
E-mail: jwitz@sun-herald.com
By JASON WITZ
Staff Writer
I have very mixed feelings about the article. Apparently John Davenport has worked hard these past 31 years and much of his work is indeed commendable. I respect him for so many years of service.
I find it sad, however, that at the end of his career just when he was getting ready to retire that our 9-1-1 center not only failed Denise but it failed him, too. Those persons directly responsible for the mistakes in the 9-1-1 center that night let so many people down.
And, he, John Davenport "not wanting to ruin anyone elses lives" (his words not mine) didn't nearly reprimand certain people they way he should have. Some he chose not to reprimand at all. He then chose to try and sweep it under the rug so that his second in command, Bill Cameron, communication's chief that night could get elected. He issued a convoluted I/A report where so many questions weren't asked and then said we have no issues because the FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) oversaw the entire investigation. A complete all out lie. The FDLE sat in on very little of it and didn't ask a single question.
That's sad. After 31 years of service, most of it commendable, instead of retiring with the honor he should have, his career has been tainted by this travesty.
But, you know, it's his own doing. He chose to sweep it under the rug and deem it nothing more than a "missed opportunity". He chose to endorse Bill Cameron without addressing the issues that night.
If only he had come clean and explained what happened, how it happened, why it happened and how they were going to fix the problems, I wouldn't be writing this today.
I'm glad he can "move on". At least someone can. Bill Cameron is not going to be able to because we will not let this rest.
I'll never stop asking "why didn't your department let the NPPD know about Kowalski's call as soon as it happened?" "Why didn't your department follow up with Ms Kowalski?" "Why wasn't Cameron, Roguska and others interviewed in the Internal Affairs investigation?" "What else went wrong on your watch that we don't know about?" "Why wouldn't you help our family in getting past these issues and help us move on?"
So, move on, Sheriff Davenport. I'm glad someone can.
I commend you for your service to Charlotte County. I'm disappointed that you wouldn't fix or address the blatant problems in our 9-1-1 center this past year. And you had the audacity to run a campaign for a man (Bill Cameron) who publicly stated during his campaign "we have excellent dispatchers" and "our 9-1-1 center has no issues."
Sadly, it seems to me you are retiring more as a politician than as a public servant.
PS I speak for myself and as to my feelings and for no one else. But, I'm sure there are many who feel the same.
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