Scapegoating or no, it doesn't end here

I'm a little late to the game here, but I can honestly blame the holidays for the delay. What can I say? Blogging should always fall by the wayside when family is in town.

Anyway, an article in the Wisconsin State Journal (and probably several other news outlets) details the recent suspension of former 911 operator Rita Gahagan in response to how she mishandled the call from slain UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann back in April.

While I agree that some form of disciplinary action against Gahagan, who claims she couldn't hear the sounds of a woman screaming and an ensuing struggle (as recently declassified police reports state), and then failed to follow up on the call, is necessary - I don't feel comfortable saying that all blame lies on her shoulders alone.

Gahagan did, after all, request a transfer prior to the incident (why was that, anyway?), and otherwise seems to have had a stellar performance history at the center. Did she mess up on that particular call? It would absolutely appear to be so. But were there (and are there still) system wide problems within the 911 call center? That would also appear to be the case. And we cannot allow officials to sweep all of this under the rug with a simple 3-day suspension of a rank-and-file operator who has long since been demoted to a different department.

Much remains unanswered: Why did the public get several different (and often contradictory) stories from various officials immediately following the murder? Why did some of them then appear to attempt a cover-up of the facts? Why were the police reports "accidentally" unsealed recently? Why didn't Falk and others more quickly and effectively follow up on suggestions made by a consulting company years ago to update the 911 center's equipment and procedures?

We need to keep asking these questions, and demanding answers, until we get to the point where a tragic incident like the one involving Brittany Zimmermann simply cannot happen.

We're still waiting

This just gets worse and worse, doesn't it? I don't even know what to say:

The notorious 911 call from Brittany Zimmermann's cell phone the day she died carried the sounds of a woman's screams and a struggle, according to long-sealed search warrants obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal.

The warrants were only unsealed because of time - officials had asked judges to continue resealing them, but the most recent expiration date was allowed to pass unchallenged. Maybe that was the easiest way for them to release this information. Passively.

Whatever the case, we can all now see one of the likely main reasons why officials didn't want this stuff out in public: it makes them look really, really bad.

Still, many questions remain unanswered. Why, if there was audible screaming and struggling on the call, did the trained dispatcher claim not to hear anything (as according to her and to former 911 director Joe Norwick)? And why didn't she follow up on the call, as procedure dictated? 48 minutes then passed between the call being made and police being dispatched to the apartment, presumably only because Zimmermann's fiance had by that point also made a 911 call.

I recognize that it's unlikely much could have been done to actually save Brittany's life. But it is very much worth our while to question what might have been done differently so that her killer could have been caught and brought to justice long ago. There's always a better chance of that if police are dispatched immediately. But they weren't, and the perpetrator remains at large.

And the 911 center? Still having issues, even after all of this. Although they were much quicker to release information on what went wrong afterward, their handling of the calls leading up to the beating death of a man in Lake View Park in November was also very poor. Negligent, even.

Yet Kathleen Falk still insists that "problems at the 911 Center have been overblown. The facility, she maintains, has been well managed and adequately staffed."

I don't place all of the blame for these problems on Falk's management, or on any one person for that matter. But her continued dismissals of, in my mind, perfectly valid concerns over 911 center performance do nothing to bolster her position. They make her seem out of touch and unconcerned with the very real problems faced by the center and the community it serves. It certainly won't solve everything, but having an executive willing to really confront these issues head-on would definitely be helpful.

Upgrading 911 center software and equipment is important, but so is making sure there are adequate staffing levels (and training) so that no one is forced into heavy overtime. Hiring an experienced, accountable center director would be a good start, too.

All of this is not to say that I'm endorsing Nancy Mistele's run for Falk's office. Frankly, she strikes me as an even worse choice for the job. But that won't keep me from calling for accountability from Falk and everyone else involved.

Not required to rescue

This is interesting:

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Dane County and a former 911 dispatcher by the parents of homicide victim Brittany Zimmermann should be dismissed because the county has no constitutional obligation to protect individuals from the acts of others, a response to the lawsuit states.

...

According to the brief for the dismissal motion, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has said the U.S. Constitution "does not require municipalities to rescue persons in distress." Further, the court said negligence or gross negligence "cannot be the basis for a constitutional violation."

I'm about as far as you can get from being a Constitutional scholar, but my gut is telling me two things here: 1) that the county may be right in that the Constitution does not require governments to provide competent rescue services to its citizens, but that 2) regardless of what has been established by the court, this is a shitty, shitty thing for the county (or any government) to say.

Perhaps the federal lawsuit wasn't the correct course of action for the parents to take in this case, but I think it's pretty clear that serious mistakes were made by both the 911 center and the county officials who dealt with the press and the aftermath. And though nothing can change what happened or make Brittany Zimmermann's parents feel much better, it does seem like some sort of lawsuit is in order here.

It should be a bit of a wake-up call for all of us, though, to read that Dane County doesn't believe it has any real obligation to provide emergency services to its citizens. And if it does deign to provide them, it needn't do so "competently." There is something very wrong with that mentality. If citizens weren't contributing anything to the government--no taxes, no votes, etc.--then this might make more sense. As it stands, though, it's far from comforting to know that the county has so little regard for our safety.


h/t: mal contends at Uppity Wisconsin

UPDATE: On a related note, this potentially intriguing bit of news just popped up on TCT regarding a possible connection between a man recently arrested on kidnapping and sexual assault charges, and the murder of Brittany Zimmermann.

Good bad news

Although legally still attached to the "alleged" preface, it looks like Madison police have Joel Marino's murderer in custody. And thank goodness for that. I extend my heartfelt compliments to the MPD for sticking with the case and tracking down the responsible party. Hopefully now the Marino family can begin the healing process more in earnest. Of course, who knows if there will ever be a clear motive. As it's shaping up, this sounds like it might just be a tragic case of someone going wrong in the head and taking it out on a random stranger. Still, all the "whys" in the world won't make Joel Marino's death any easier for anyone to take. It's terrible, plain and simple.

While I want to congratulate the MPD on a case (apparently) well solved, I also want to make a point of stating that it's important to keep up pressure on the department over how they've handled the recent spate of murders. I don't advocate witch hunts, but there's a difference between that and simply demanding accountability. We still have almost zero information regarding Kelly Nolan's death, and the bumbled handling of Brittany Zimmermann's case was and is inexcusable. A full accounting must be made so that everyone involved can improve and deal with this sort of thing more effectively and sensitively in the future.

Still, it's a relief to finally have some...I won't say "good" news, but progress for sure.

GPS, 9-1-1, and you

Kids, don't prank call 9-1-1. Seriously. We have enough trouble making sure the people who really need emergency services get them, and the dispatchers are already working hard enough that extra calls really are harmful to the community.

That said, this recent Dane County press release certainly grabbed my attention:

At approximately 2:30 am, Dane County Sheriff's Deputies were dispatched to an area east of 2349 Williams Point Drive, in the Town of Pleasant Springs, for a 9-1-1 hang up call from an unsubscribed cellular telephone. Unsubscribed cellular telephones can still dial 9-1-1, but can not be called back. Because the location of the 9-1-1 hang up could not be pinpointed, an extensive search of the area was conducted by deputies, with the assistance of the Stoughton Police Department.

With the help of the 9-1-1 Center providing latitude and longitude coordinates, the on-scene Sheriff's Office Sergeant was able to input the coordinates into the GPS program on his squad computer and narrow the search to 300 feet. Deputies were then able to locate two prank callers who were staying in the group campground at Lake Kegonsa State Park. A chaperone with the group discovered the students misusing the cellular telephone and placed a call to the 9-1-1 Center as the deputies were arriving in the campground.

The two pranksters, ages 12 and 13, were part of a group of Madison School District students participating in a camping trip at the park. Charges of False Reports to the 911 System were referred on the two juveniles, who were then released to the chaperone. The two also admitted to making an earlier prank call at 7:25 pm, on Tuesday, June 3, 2008. Deputies, who do not have the GPS capabilities in their individual squads, were dispatched to this earlier call, but were unable to locate the caller, or anyone in need of assistance.

So, the 9-1-1 Center was able to provide latitude and longitude, and the Sergeant was able to punch them into his on -oard computer's GPS system to pinpoint the location of the call to within 300 feet?

Interesting.

It's also worth noting that, apparently, deputies don't have GPS capabilities in their squad cars, only, if I'm reading this right, the Sergeant. Might this be something that could be easily corrected? As far as I'm aware, all squad cars are equipped with a police-specific laptop. I'm sure getting GPS installed wouldn't be a huge hassle, and even if it was, wouldn't it be worth it?

I'm also curious as to exactly how long this ability to track coordinates between the 9-1-1 Center and police has existed. Might that not have been useful in the case of the Brittany Zimmermann call? While we're at it, I'm still waiting to find out how police were able to use a cell phone to locate the body of Kelly Nolan.

Unfortunately, even after everything that's happened, nobody's talking.

Meanwhile, the Dane County Board's Executive Committee just approved the second audit in five years of the 9-1-1 Center. This despite the fact that recommendations from the last audit have not been fully implemented, and a $450,000 data collection system installed two years ago to monitor how well the center is functioning is only just now being used.

How any of this makes sense is beyond me.


(photo from PNLH)

Go California! and county accountability meetings

Two things:

First, I am extremely heartened by the California Supreme Court's decision that gay and lesbian couples have the constitutional right to marry in that state. This is great news, though it does make me somewhat sad when I remember that Wisconsin is, so far, not so forward-thinking. Well, I'll be in San Francisco next week, so I'll at least get to celebrate and spread the love for a little while. Then it's back to work at home.

----

Secondly, the Dane County Board of Supervisors has announced a community meeting to help address the publics' concerns over the 911 center and how it handled the Brittany Zimmermann call. The meeting is scheduled for Monday, May 19th at 6:00PM in the lower level of the Fitchburg Community Center at 5510 Lacy Road. As I mentioned above, I'll be in SF and unable to attend this (about which I am pretty bummed), but I'm hoping that lots of other folks turn out and demand some answers. And then let me know how it went, yeah?

"Dane County 911 Center director Joe Norwick, Dane County executive Kathleen Falk, Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney and Madison Police Chief Noble Wray have been invited to speak at the hearing. Board members said they want to give Dane County residents an opportunity to get direct answers to questions." That would be nice.

The media actually follows up

Good on them:

WISC-TV, Wisconsin State Journal, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee filed the suit to ensure local officials comply with several open records requests regarding the Dane County 911 Center and the ongoing controversy after a dispatcher was accused of mishandling a call from the cell phone of 21-year-old Brittany Zimmermann, who was killed in early April.

The suit was filed against the Dane County Public Safety Communications Center and its director, Joe Norwick; Dane County and County Executive spokesman Joshua Wescott; the Madison Police Department and Capt. Carl Gloede of the department's Records and Technology section; and the city of Madison and Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's spokesman George Twigg.

The suit urges a judge to compel local officials to comply with the requests for information regarding the 911 center as well as the ongoing investigation into Zimmermann's death.

Reporters for the outlets have requested to inspect and copy the audio files of any 911 calls from Zimmermann's home, an un-redacted report of the 911 center's investigation into the alleged Zimmermann call and all documents related to the Zimmermann call and the investigation into the incident produced from the Public Safety Communications Center, Madison police and the mayor's office.

I'll be curious to see the judge's ruling on this, especially since it would be easy for the city to claim that several of the requested items are critical to the investigation, and therefore cannot be fully released. In this case, though, I think it would be in the best interest of the city to release as much of this as possible, if for no other reason than to re-instill some sense of trust in them by the community.

Improvements in 911 equipment, but what about cell phones?

The Capital Times is reporting that County Board Supervisor Brett Hulsey claims that the Dane County 911 Center "has added one communicator and one communications supervisor, so the center is now fully staffed with 12 people. More equipment is planned as part of a $30 million investment the county is making in the public safety communications system."

That's good news.

What Hulsey doesn't indicate is whether or not these additions and improvements yet meet the guidelines set forth in the '04 report of the center by an outside consultant. Perhaps even more importantly, the public still hasn't gotten a straight, honest answer when it comes to the center's ability to track cell phone calls.

Apparently, the federal mandate is that they should be able to "find a caller's location within an area 200 feet by 100 feet from the actual location." What we've heard from various Dane County officials, however, varies wildly enough that anyone paying attention would be disinclined to ever again use a cell phone for emergency purposes.

This is all made even more interesting by the recent attention being paid to privacy issues with regards to cell phones. Service providers are required to provide real-time tracking data to any Public Safety Answering Point (or PSAP) within 6 months of the request being made. This same information has often been sought by federal authorities wishing to get the real-time location of alleged drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminals, sometimes without demonstrating probable cause. That's a whole other issue, and one worthy of much scrutiny and skepticism, but it also brings up some issues relevant to the Zimmermann case. If such pinpointing technology exists and its use is federally mandated in the case of emergency services, why isn't it being used to guarantee follow-up calls and police dispatching to the origin of the call (as is currently the case with calls made from landlines)?

An entity called "Dane County Public Safety Communications" is officially registered with the federal government as one such PSAP. That would suggest their compliance with federal E911 regulations, and the ability to pinpoint the location of a cell phone (as was done in the Kelly Nolan case, with a cell phone that wasn't even making a call, which also has not yet been explained).

So what's the truth? Do we have the ability to locate cell phones in a reasonably accurate fashion, but just fucked up in this case? Or are we lying about our emergency service's capabilities, something that might well put us in violation of federal regulations? Neither option is particularly appealing, and I'd love for both to be wrong. But until we're given a straight answer, there's only speculation and a creeping feeling that we're not being as well-taken care of as we ought to be.

Good intentions don't always equal effectiveness

Every new day seems to bring further news of deeper problems and outrages regarding the Brittany Zimmermann case and the overall ability of emergency and police services to do their jobs well. With all of the conflicting stories, it's hard not to be confused about what you can believe. These are the people that are supposed to be watching our backs, and while I don't doubt their sincerity, all the good intentions in the world aren't always going to be enough to get the job done right. There needs to be appropriate experience, accountability and a certain degree of openness, too.

And yet, and yet....

Yesterday, Joel Marino's grandmother broke her police-requested silence in telling Isthmus that she had been on the phone with him at the time the break-in occurred.

[Marino's grandmother] says she told Detective Matt Misener about this.

“I said, I heard the killer you know. And he said, yes, I know. But he said you can’t tell anyone about this. So for all this time, I’ve not said anything.”

She says she’s talking now because, “I think we’ve given the police every opportunity to do some things that we felt were necessary.”

A witness who claims to have twice seen Marino's killer says that both times he reported it the police failed to act.

Another witness saw someone the night before Zimmermann's murder who closely resembled police sketches of the suspect in the Marino case. He snapped a few pictures of the man and hand delivered them to the police, only to have them pretty much ignored and brushed off. The witness also gave copies of the photos to Marino's parents, who were so struck by the resemblance that they called Misener and asked him about them. He "admitted that he hadn't seen the photos."

It took the recent publication of an Isthmus article breaking the news about the Zimmermann 911 call to prompt any action and/or follow-up by the center and officials, but not before several misleading (whether deliberate or not) and contradictory explanations were given.

And now, more stonewalling. Plus, word that Joe Norwick, director of the Dane County 911 Center, had no direct experience managing such a call center prior to being hired:

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk hired Joe Norwick as 911 center director last year at a $100,000 annual salary even though he did not have the experience in "public safety communications management" the job description specified.

"He did not have five years of management experience in a 911 center," acknowledged Topf Wells, Falk's chief of staff. But county officials said Wednesday they gave Norwick, a longtime sheriff's deputy and former chief deputy, credit for his five years as chairman of the 911 oversight board, which generally meets once a month.

The article goes on to note that one of Norwick's top references for the job, Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney, was "also a member of the hiring subcommittee that picked and ranked the four finalists — ranking Norwick No. 1." Mahoney, however, "didn't see a conflict of interest."

While Norwick's supporters tout his law enforcement experience as good enough reason for him to hold the position, Norwick continually seems to shoot himself in the foot with incidents like this:

Last week, in a news conference about the mishandling of the 911 call, Norwick wouldn't answer a technological question about whether the center had features that would remind dispatchers to call back when they are disconnected from a caller.

"Please excuse me," Norwick told reporters. "My background is not sitting in a communications chair. My background is with the Sheriff's Office and law enforcement. If there's some question that are technical questions about the operations, I'll have to get back to you on that."

Shouldn't the director of the 911 center have at least a passing familiarity with the technical aspects of their systems? While I can understand why questions about the exact content of the Zimmermann call may not be answerable, I see no reason why this question couldn't be answered other than lack of knowledge. That's just unacceptable.

There are technically 5 unsolved homicides from the last year in Madison. The Zimmermann and Marino cases are eerily similar, with both likely having been stabbings and both occurring in a similar location. Killed in late June of 2007, Kelly Nolan's case also remains unsolved, with few details about the case having ever been released. The August '07 murder of George Thomas at the Kings Inn (a motel on the Beltline) also remains unsolved, as does a homicide that took place on Cypress Way in November.

While part of me wants to rant and rage against the machine, I do also understand that certain sensitive information must remain undisclosed for the sake of the investigation. I know that such crimes are not always terribly easy to solve. I know that police have a lot on their plates.

I know all of this, and still what has happened recently looks more and more like stonewalling, incompetence and mismanagement with each passing day and each new breaking story.

It's one thing for a person or organization to want to prove that they have the wherewithal to successfully tackle these problems. It's an entirely different matter when those people or organizations get in over their heads and still refuse to ask for help or admit mistakes.

Politics and personal pride need to go right out the window when it comes to the safety and well-being of your fellow citizens. No more hiring unqualified people to important positions simply because you're good buddies (gee, this sounds familiar). No more stonewalling the community when it comes to crucial details that might help improve their personal safety (another recent case of this came up recently in Fennimore, and is pretty blatantly shitty).

Hire more dispatchers for the 911 center, implement more thorough and up-to-date training with clarified procedures, seriously consider bringing on a new director (sorry Norwick, but you've had your chance and pretty spectacularly failed), and maybe bring in outside units to help assist the MPD in solving these cases.

And for crying out loud, LISTEN to people when they tell you they've seen someone matching the description of the killer. I can't even begin to wrap my head around how that all worked out.

Serious changes need to be made, and they need to be made yesterday. The MPD and emergency services want us to place our trust in them? Then they need to continue to earn it.

A Strange Case: the Zimmermann 911 call and the stories told afterwards

I'm cross-posting this from dane101.com.

No one seems to be able to get their stories straight. Just over a month after UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann was murdered in her Doty St. apartment and a week after the initial revelation about her 911 call was published in an Isthmus article by Jason Shepard, no one seems willing or able to set the record straight.

Read the entire article here.

Feel free to tell me if I got it all wrong, all right, or missed anything. I'm only interested in helping us all to better understand the situation.

UPDATE: Cripes, this just keeps getting worse: "Did Madison cops miss chance to catch Joel Marino killer?" In other news, my respect for Jason Shepard grows daily.

The Zimmermann case debacle

I'm currently working on an article for dane101.com about the Dane County 911 Dispatch Center's botched response to the Zimmermann call. One thing I've noticed since this story broke are the many comments from readers who've had pretty sketchy encounters with 911 operators. It started to seem like a pattern, and that, of course, has me concerned. So I'm seeking such accounts from various people, and so far the picture that's forming is not one of systemic failure on the part of the 911 Center, but certainly enough of a problem to warrant serious concern and reform. I hope to have the full report up by later this evening, so check back at dane101 for that later.

In the meantime, everyone and their uncle has been weighing in on the case, especially since the recent statements and apology issued from Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk. Like most everyone else, I too am of the opinion that a full accounting needs to happen: release the contents of the call (if not the actual recording, then a descriptive transcript), do a full investigation of what went wrong that day, hold responsible the person or persons that messed up, and do a thorough retraining of dispatchers to make sure procedure is always followed so that this sort of thing never happens again.

Michael Leon over at Uppity Wisconsin expressed his frustration with Falk for a perceived lack of full disclosure, wondering if the public good is being shoved aside in the interest of political maneuvering. While I disagree with Leon that Falk's assertion that even if the dispatcher had followed procedure, Zimmermann likely wouldn't have been saved "amounts to a Bushian I-can’t-tell-you-anything-but-trust-me assurance," his call for greater transparency is one I can get behind.

It's likely Ms. Zimmermann wouldn't have been saved, especially considering the limitations that still exist in tracking down calls placed from cell phones, but it would have been far more likely that police might have found or had better leads on the killer had procedure been followed. We all feel outrage and sadness over the murder itself, but if there's anything to be angry with the dispatch center about, it's the hampering of the investigation and bringing to justice of the perpetrator.

If the public is to regain full confidence in the 911 Center again, a full accounting needs to happen. Transparency, apology, stricter standards. And please, get everyone on the same page regarding cell phones and our ability to track them. These things are the very least we can do for the community and, most of all, for the sake of Brittany Zimmermann and her family.

EDIT: Nathan Comp put together an interesting interview with Madison Police Chief Noble Wray over at The Daily Page.

Unacceptable

UPDATE (1:59PM):

Isthmus is reporting on a press release received from the Madison Police Department with some very interesting information, namely that "there is evidence contained in the call which should have resulted in a Madison Police officer being dispatched."

(older updates at bottom of post)

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There's a part of me that hopes this isn't true, that it's all just some weird misunderstanding or miscommunication, and not our city's 911 service fucking up so royally. From Isthmus:

Madison police believe Brittany Zimmermann called 911 before she was stabbed and beaten to death inside her Doty Street apartment, but the 911 Center failed to send help after erroneously concluding the call was a mistake.

...

The most significant is that the 911 Center received a call from Zimmermann before she was killed, did not dispatch police, and then did not immediately or accurately inform the Police Department about the call after cops found her body, law enforcement officials tell Isthmus.

Sources suggest the center may have made a call-back to a wrong number, where the person who answered assured that no crisis was occurring. One source says cops might have been better situated to make a quick arrest had mistakes not been made by the 911 Center.

Over the past two and a half weeks, the 911 Center has refused requests for basic information about the calls. This week, Joe Norwick, director of the Dane County 911 Center since July, declined further opportunities to comment after being provided with a written summary of parts of this story.

In an email, Norwick said he was basing his refusal on a request from the Madison Police Department to withhold all information "pertaining to this matter" because release would "seriously impair" the murder investigation.

Madison police officials vigorously dispute this. While declining to call the 911 Center's action a cover-up, they suggested that Norwick is improperly using the department as an excuse not to own up to his agency's mistakes.

There's been a lot of talk about who's to blame for the recent run of as-of-yet unsolved murders, with a lot of blame being placed on the area's homeless population. Frankly, a lot of it sounds like a lame excuse to bash the transient population as entirely made up of shiftless, violent crazy people, which we really ought to know better than. But beyond the debate about the homeless, and separate (if not more important) from the question of who committed these terrible crimes, there is also a debate about the effectiveness of our local police and emergency services.

I've bitched and moaned in private about why it might be taking so long for these cases to be investigated, why certain leads seem to have been nearly ignored, why the public has been privy to so little information about certain cases, etc. But in the end, it's mostly just speculation on my part. I don't know anything about the inner workings of these investigations, or indeed any kind of investigation.

What I do know is that, if true, the mishandling of a 911 call made by Zimmerman and the seeming dismissal of a good lead brought to the detective in charge of the Marino case should raise some serious alarm bells.

That the director of the Dane County 911 Center, Joe Norwick, has so far refused to comment at all about this incident, falsely blaming it on a request from the MPD, should cause the community to seriously question who we've placed in charge of such a vital service.

If you make a mistake, especially one pertaining to such sensitive issues, you owe it to yourself and to your community to own up and make amends, working to see that such mistakes don't happen again in the future. There's no hyperbole involved when I say that people's lives are at stake here. We can't afford to fuck around.

Thankfully, reporters with Isthmus have been dogged in their determination to follow up on these cases, actually following leads and doing some hard-hitting reporting. It's reassuring to know that there are still journalists out there willing to ask the hard questions and write about stories that matter. I can only hope that further public pressure will bring some accountability to people like Joe Norwick, and help spur more vigorous investigation into these unsolved murders. We owe it to ourselves, but most of all, we owe it to the victims and their families.

Further info.

UPDATE (12:25PM):

The Capital Times is reporting that, in a press conference today, Joe Norwick has confirmed that Zimmermann made a 911 call the day she was murdered. Further, he explains that "Brittany Zimmermann made a 911 call on April 2, but the dispatcher taking the call immediately received another call that was a non-emergency call and did not immediately return the 911 call made by Zimmermann." She "apparently didn't answer a few minutes later when the dispatcher finally did call back. If a dispatcher takes a 911 call and doesn't hear anything, the policy is to call back."

This all smells pretty bad to me. First, why on earth did the dispatcher give precedence to a non-emergency call over hers? Second, the final sentence makes it sound as though she wasn't saying anything when she first called. This needs to be more clear. Regardless, if a 911 dispatcher gets a call and no one's talking, shouldn't they ask for a squad car to check out the situation? I'm not up on my dispatcher procedure, so if anyone can explain how this works to me, that'd be great. All in all, though, this whole thing is pretty infuriating, and we should be pressing Norwick to release the recordings of said calls. Then maybe we could make some sense of it all.

UPDATE (1:38PM):

Just noticed that the Cap Times updated their news story on this, which notes a few new details in Norwick's story about the call:

The Dane County 911 dispatch center director said a UW-Madison student slain in her campus area apartment April 2 made a 911 phone call on her cell phone, but dispatchers failed to call her back.

Director Joe Norwick said today that when Brittany Zimmermann made the call, the dispatcher, who was unnamed, had no way of knowing the call wasn't one of many non-emergency or misdialed phone calls that the center receives every day.

Norwick declined to say how long Zimmermann's phone call lasted, or whether there was any communication from Zimmermann. He said the dispatcher, after a time, discontinued the call to answer another 911 call, which turned out to be a non-emergency call.

The dispatcher then called back on the second 911 call, discovered it wasn't an emergency, then took another 911 call regarding an unwanted person in a residence. The dispatcher failed to get back to Zimmermann's call and never made a call back, even though 911 center policy dictates that return calls be made.

I'm still very curious to know if anything was said or could be heard during the first call Zimmermann made. Also of interest is how long the initial call lasted, how accurate GPS information from cell phones really is, and why in the hell the dispatcher failed to follow-up properly?

It might help if Norwick would actually release this information. Being that it's a vital public service, I think we have a right to know about procedure and potential mistakes so that the right people can be held accountable and the problems can be fixed.