In the news:
Originally published Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 3:58 PM
Delayed response in Powell deaths suggests need for better training
No one knows if the Pierce County Sheriff's Department could have stopped Josh Powell from killing his children and himself. But officials are right to question deputies' delayed response.
Seattle Times Editorial
A DRAMATIC failure to comprehend the urgency of the situation before Josh Powell killed his children and himself underscores the need to improve training of at least one Pierce County-based emergency dispatcher and to monitor training overall.
The public must be able to trust in the dispatchers' ability to discern emergencies and quickly send help. The Pierce County Sheriff's Department acknowledges that in the Powell case, the dispatcher spent too much time bantering.
According to the Sheriff's Department, the caseworker called 911 at 12:08 p.m., but deputies weren't dispatched until 12:16 p.m. By then the home was engulfed in flames.
The 911 call tapes reveal a lengthy question-and-answer session in which both the dispatcher and the caseworker are inarticulate and unclear about the nature of the emergency.
The caseworker said she feared for the children's lives and told the dispatcher that Powell was a person of interest in the case of his missing wife. But details about Powell's background and custody case did not convey the sense of urgency they were meant to.
Prioritizing emergencies is part of a dispatcher's job. Key questions designed to get swiftly to the heart of the emergency are supposed to be part of the training. But the dispatcher never seemed convinced of a life-threatening emergency.
The call ends with the caseworker asking how long it would take for a deputy to arrive and the dispatcher replying, "I don't know, ma'am; they have to respond to emergency, life-threatening situations first."
It didn't help that the caseworker didn't know the address of the home she had just driven to or that the dispatcher incorrectly said GPS couldn't be used to track the location. Precious time was spent getting the address from the caseworker's car.
Deputies were also not informed that the caseworker smelled gasoline. That information — along with upgrading the call to a priority — might have shaved about five minutes from deputies' response time, said sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Ed Troyer.
The point now is not to cast about for blame but to ask pertinent questions that better inform future training and better prepare the people who work in these emergency situations.
