St Petersburg Times

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article1079516.ece

A Times Editorial
Keep recordings of 911 calls public
In Print: Monday, March 15, 2010


Florida's accidental House speaker, Larry Cretul, has not left much of an imprint since taking over last year in the wake of the Ray Sansom scandal. Now the Ocala Republican is manipulating the legislative process on behalf of a powerful constituent — at the expense of sound public policy. Cretul is fast-tracking a bill that would exempt recordings of 911 calls from public records laws, which would make it more difficult to hold law enforcement agencies accountable for the way they respond to emergencies. It is an effort driven more by emotion than clear-headed reason, and lawmakers who embrace open government should reject this effort to keep these recordings secret.

Proposed House Government Affairs Policy Committee Bill 10-03a would allow only public safety officials — and no one else — access to 911 recordings, including recordings made before the bill became law. The measure might as well be called the Relieve Police Officers, Firefighters and 911 Operators From Accountability Act. Exposing the failures of ill-trained, bungling or malicious police, fire and emergency personnel would become infinitely harder.

The bill would silence the voices of victims like Denise Amber Lee, whose horrific abduction in Sarasota County at the hands of a murderer was captured in a series of 911 calls that revealed a dispatcher's mistakes that likely cost Lee her life. Lee's husband, Nathan, courageously opposes the bill and notes that "911 issues need more transparency and not less if we are ever to learn from past mistakes."

Cretul's sudden interest in secrecy stems from the drug overdose death last year of the 16-year-old son of the president of the Florida Farm Bureau, a powerful advocacy group of growers and ranchers headquartered in Cretul's district. The father, John Hoblick, told Cretul his family was traumatized when local television stations played the 911 recording of his older son's call after he found his younger brother unresponsive. No one enjoys hearing tapes of their relatives' anguished calls for help in a crisis. But as Nathan Lee notes, there is a greater public issue at stake.

For example, after recordings from Lee's murder became public, the Legislature passed the Denise Amber Lee act two years ago, establishing voluntary statewide certification for emergency dispatchers. If lawmakers embrace this latest bill, citizens would only be allowed written transcripts of 911 calls. Those transcripts would be available 60 days later, with the individual seeking the record paying for the transcription.

A belated, written transcription is not enough. Transcripts can be ambiguous, and they lack tone and context. As Lee's father, Mark Lee, said about recordings: "It's like a song. . . . Hearing a song is a lot more powerful than reading the lyrics." He also opposes Cretul's bill.

Cretul stacked the House committee last week to make sure the bill passed, 8-5. But two-thirds of both the House and Senate are required to approve a public record exemption, and the speaker is still trying to recruit an influential Senate sponsor. It is never easy for many lawmakers to stand up to a House speaker who has control over the fate of their own bills and budget issues — particularly when initial public sentiment may be on his side. But emotional responses to specific incidents often make bad law. Making recordings of 911 tapes secret would cloud Florida's legacy of government-in-the-sunshine and make it more difficult to hold emergency personnel accountable for their actions in the minutes when residents need them most.



[Last modified: Mar 15, 2010 08:33 AM]

Today's Herald Tribune Editorial

When 911 goes right

Tampa episode offers a model for other departments to emulate

Published: Friday, January 8, 2010 at 1:00 a.m. Last Modified: Thursday, January 7, 2010 at 6:48 p.m.

Sometimes, 911 call-takers fail to live up to the public's high expectations. But sometimes they exceed them, in extraordinary fashion.

A Tampa 911 case this week fell into the latter category, exemplifying all that can go right when technology and operators work well together.

As described in the St. Petersburg Times and other Tampa Bay area news sources, the case involved an attempted rape in progress.

Ve'Etta Bess took the 911 call, secretly dialed by the victim, and heard only silence and screams. Yet, with a combination of skill, intuition and grace-under-pressure teamwork, she and her colleagues tracked and confirmed the location of the crime, dispatching police in time to stop the assault.

That is the kind of performance that people expect from the emergency communications system, yet 911 calls don't always have such a happy ending.

Dispatching errors, operator mistakes and address confusion, for example, were seen in North Port, Charlotte County and Sarasota in the past two years. Other communities and states have had problems as well.

Such cases -- most infamously the failure to relay emergency calls that might have caught a kidnapper before he killed Denise Lee of North Port -- have sparked a strong push for 911 reforms in Florida. Local legislators have proposed bills that would improve oversight of the emergency-call system and work to make it more seamless.

Lawmakers weighing these reforms may learn something from the Tampa case.

A few points stand out:

Bess, the Tampa 911 call-taker, has more than three years' experience.

The Tampa department trains call-takers extensively, using close observation, and hands-on and role-playing strategies. Diana Hall, training coordinator for the Tampa department, said 600 hours of training and classes are required.

The crew had recently taken a refresher course on how to find callers through cell-tower location -- a skill that proved crucial in this case.

The Tampa episode embodies the often stressful conditions involved in 911 work.

At one point, when the attacker discovered the cell phone on the floor, Bess had the presence of mind to stay silent so the man would think the 911 call -- the numbers visible on the phone screen -- had not gone through.

All the while, she was multitasking to identify the location, signal her co-workers and alert police.

With a little less skill, luck and technology, the call could have gone disastrously wrong -- but it went right. All communities should learn from this example.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100108/OPINION/1081011/2198/OPINION?Title=When-911-goes-right