Dave Statter at STATter911 has been keeping everybody informed on two recent dispatching disasters at Fort Wayne (HERE) and Atlanta (HERE). Now worried about losing their reputation as the country’s most disfunctional city, the Detroit, Michigan, emergency dispatch center has entered dispatching derby with their own bit of muddle.
Detroit News reporter Charlie LeDuff got a phone call on Tuesday with a tip for him. The caller told him that there was a dead body at the bottom of an elevator shaft in an abandoned warehouse, and the body was frozen in a pond of ice. After getting directions on where it was, Charlie thought he’d better check out the veracity of the tip before calling the cops. So off he went to see for himself, and sure enough, there was a body frozen in the ice.
Detroit News photo
Charlie calls a policeman that he knows and tells him. The cop tells him to call 911. Doing as he was told, LeDuff calls the dispatch center and, telling them that he’s a reporter, passes along the information about the body in ice.
After struggling with a call-taker who couldn’t understand where this downtown warehouse is, he finally got the report filed. Twenty minutes later, 911 calls him back and a different person asks again where the big 8-story building in the heart of downtown is. Charlie tells him. That’s contact with officialdom #3.
24 hours later on Wednesday, Charlie drops by the hard-to-find warehouse and sees no activity. No crime scene tape. Only a pair of legs sticking out of the ice. So he calls 911 again. The call-taker hangs up on him. Phone call #5 follows shortly after and he goes through the routine again. Shortly after that call, contact #6 is completed when a Detroit Fire engine company officer calls Charlie and they arrange to meet where the reporter can lead the mystical way to the body where the glacial extrication finally got underway.
Detroit News
To properly appreciate this tale, you need to read the full story in Charlie LeDuff’s own words HERE.
