Did Officers Stop For White Castle "Sliders" En Route To 911 Calls? Husband Murdered Ronayle White

NBC5.com ^ | 05.22.02

[Coleus]

White Castle Security Tapes Subpoenaed In 911 Investigation

Did Officers Stop For "Sliders" En Route To Distress Call?

CHICAGO -- A lawyer representing the family of a woman who was murdered as she called 911 has subpoenaed videotapes from two fast food restaurants.

NBC5's Derrick Blakey reported that while it's only a tip, the attorney would like to see security tapes from White Castle restaurants at 103rd Street and Michigan Avenue, and at 11th and Halsted streets. They want to determine whether the first Chicago police officers assigned to respond to Ronayle White's distress call went for "sliders" instead.

"They do have a number of cameras at each store and (because) they are in good lighting, they're able to show the license plate numbers, occupants of cars and other identifying information," Richard Mallen, attorney for the White family, told NBC5.

According to Blakley, Mallen was reluctant to guess how credible the tip might be without seeing the videotape. But the 103rd St. White Castle is known to be a popular stop for Fifth District police, who often go there for food or coffee during their shift.

White made three 911 calls before she was shot to death by her estranged husband, but the first of three squad cars dispatched arrived last, 17 minutes after the initial call. What's more, police have no systematic data on response times, because most officers don't use squad-car computer terminals, called PDTs, to report their arrival at crime scenes.

"The department policy is to respond on the PDT on arrival at your assignment, as soon as you arrive there," Fraternal Order of Police president Mark Donahue said. Blakely reported that he was told that the first car assigned to White's distress call did just that, but most do not. Police said further that it's not an issue, citing that out of 2.7 million 911 calls last year, there were only 130 complaints of slow response.

But without regular use of the PDT's, Blakley pointed out, no one knows how many other times response may have been slow with no complaint filed.

"The use of those terminals can only improve safety and service," said Mallen. "I cannot understand why they would not be used."

Blakley looked at just how seldom the PDT's are used and inside sources indicated that they are used on far less than 10 percent of all calls.

Donahue, newly-elected to his position, said his union wouldn't object to installing more sophisticated satellite tracking gear that can pinpoint every squad car at all times. Blakley's sources told him that in the past, the FOP opposed that, claiming it was "a big brother"intrusion.

 

Where Were Cops During Ronyale White's 911 Calls?

White's Mother Speaks Publicly For First Time

CHICAGO --

	PREVIOUS ARTICLES Firing Recommended For Cops' Delayed Response (7/2) Police Present Findings In Ronyale White Investigation (6/10) Judge Puts Hold On Cell Phone Records In 911 Investigation (5/24) White Castle Security Tapes Subpoenaed In 911 Investigation (5/21) 911 Operator Defends Delayed Response To Call (5/16) Lawsuit Filed In Death Of Ronyale White (5/15) 911 Operators Suspended In Investigation Of Delayed Response (5/13) Report: Police Responded Late To 911 Calls (5/8)

The case of Ronyale White's murder grabbed headlines when it was reported that she had made repeated calls to 911 but was killed, allegedly by her estranged husband, before police responded to the scene.

In an exclusive report, Unit 5's Renee Ferguson revealed that one of the responding officers was allegedly not in the squad car, and the other one was checking his personal message on his home answering machine -- while they were supposed to be headed toward White's house.

In an interview with Ferguson, Ronyale White's mother spoke publicly for the first time about the murder and the police response.

"It makes me feel ill," Lorraine White said.

White said she still finds it difficult to think about the last frightened and violent moments of her daughter Ronyale's life.

"I can't imagine what my daughter went through," White said. "I can only think, visualize it in my mind, because it never goes away."

More difficult, she said, is understanding how her daughter's pleas for help on the night of May 3 went ignored by two officers who were reportedly two minutes away but took 16 minutes to arrive. By then, Ronyale had been beaten and shot twice in the head.

"Every day I close my eyes, I see her in that window," White said. "Feeling how she felt -- I don't know, but I have a horrible feeling in my gut every night I close my eyes. I don't want to see another woman go through what my daughter did."

In her first call to 911, Ronyale told an operator that her estranged husband, Louis Drexel, was in her home, and she needed police to come.

Moments later, Ronyale made another call for help. By that time, Unit 5 learned, the situation in her far-south-side home had escalated. According to an amended complaint filed Wednesday, the 911 operator "...heard Ronyale White get attacked and scream repeatedly..." and "...knew that Drexel had a gun and was threatening to shoot...White."

FeedRoom
	Evidence In The White Murder

Where were the two officers who were sent to the scene?

Court records allege that one of the responding officers was not even in his assigned car:

"(He) was engaged in recreational/social activities beyond, outside of, and/or in violation of his duties as a Chicago police officer."

The complaint alleges that the other officer "...had a history of not responding to calls where a potential for violence existed."

Unit 5 found another possible reason why the officer didn't respond to White's repeated 911 calls.

Documents allege that he was "...making phone calls of a personal nature... to his home answering machine to check his personal messages at the time... White was being attacked."

Unit 5 also learned that Chicago police have no written regulations instructing dispatchers to not hang up on a caller who's being threatened by a person with a gun. A police spokesman told Unit 5 that those regulations are being rewritten in the wake of Ronyale White's death.

The two responding officers, Ferguson reported, have been suspended, and Police Superintendent Terry Hillard recommended that they be fired.

 

Police Present Findings In Ronyale White Investigation

 

911 Operator Defends Delayed Response To Call

 

Firing Recommended For Cops' Delayed Response

 

Ebony: Dying for love: the epidemic of domestic abuse cases.

 

Lisa Madigan - Attorney General

 

Northwest Indiana News: nwitimes.com - News

 

Chicago cop abuse

[adam_az]

huh?

[T.Smith]

Nobody can drive by a White Castle drunk

Nobody should be driving by a White Castle {Krystal} drunk.

[m1-lightning]

I believe JustPiper has the Chicagoland/Illinois ping list.

[Richard Kimball]

The individual officers are to blame, but the department system is also a significant problem. If you read the old Wambaugh book, The Blue Knight, you'll see a lot of the attitude that prevails. Police don't like to be on a leash. Many also believe that you don't nail the bad guys by responding to calls, but by nosing around looking for stuff. If departmental policies aren't strict, they will not notify dispatch of their location, arrival times, etc. At the fire station where I worked, I saw on several occasions officers report responding on their hand-helds and then finish watching a series of downs on a football game. I've also seen them delay answering radio queries for available units to see if they could pass a call onto someone else. The subject call of this article is the classic try to dodge it call, a domestic dispute with estranged spouse. Most police departments have terrible systems for tracking personnel, and many police officers I've known have a serious "the rules apply to everybody but me" attitude. This means that in most departments, if you don't have a strict accountability system, including patrol routes, boundaries of patrol, response time parameters, etc, many officers will spend the shift doing whatever they feel like.

[Houmatt]

Iv'e said it once, I have said it 100 times:

Don't depend on the police! Buy a gun and learn how to use it! Refuse to become a statistic!

[New Horizon]

Where I come from they are not called Sliders, they are called Belly Bombers (in the St. Louis Area).

I always referred to them as "Gut Grenades".

"Whitey One-Biteys" was runner-up.

[dead]

They were "Murder Burgers" in my NJ neck of the woods.

(oddly appropriate to this story)

[Enterprise]

"Many also believe that you don't nail the bad guys by responding to calls, but by nosing around looking for stuff."

This is true. Generally, you don't nail the bad guys by answering calls. However, good officers answer their calls, and THEN fill up their free time, if they have any, looking to nail bad guys.

[1rudeboy]

. . . under the law in most states the police have no legal duty to provide protection to any particular individual under most circumstances.

Maybe in some cases, but in this case, the legal duty was established the moment she called 911.

[FreePaul]

I'm not as willing as NBC to accept allegations by a plaintiff's attorney as fact.

I agree with you on that. However, I didn't see any dispute about seventeen minutes to respond to a 911 call. Who is going to investigate the police department other than a plaintiff's attorney. Certainly not their fellow officers.

[gcruse]

Well, you can also
make some shrewd bets based on who
libertarians

decide to attack
on almost every issue.
(The "Manson" factor...)

I've read gibberish that makes more sense....

[mvpel]

Actually, no - under well-established case law and statutes, a call to 911 does not impose a liability on the police. They'll get there when and if they can, and if you die in the meantime, it's not their fault.

One of the only circumstances where this principle doesn't usually apply in most states is when someone is under police protection for a specific reason, such as being a material witness in a mafia prosecution.

[Mr. Lucky]

...and nobody can eat one sober.

[1rudeboy]

Oops, I mis-spoke. The legal duty was established the moment the city agreed to send a patrol car to the location. “. . . [V]oluntary assumption of a duty to act carrie[s] with it the obligation to act with reasonable care.” Furthermore, it can likely be established that the victim relied to her detriment that the police would promptly respond. In other words, her attorney will likely argue that, for example, the victim did not flee the area because she believed the police were on the way.

The seminal case (where the above quote and reasoning appear) in this regard is a 1982 case, DeLong v. Erie County., 89 A.D.2d 376, 455 N.Y.S.2d 887. It is taught to most first-year law students.

The city will settle out of court.

[mvpel]

It goes to whether they acted with reasonable care, not to the concept of police protection, though. If the cops had acted with reasonable care and it still took them 17 minutes to get there, there'd be no cause of action, yes?

[1rudeboy]

That's the whole issue: was there negligence, or not? No negligence, and your position holds.

[Coleus]

They were "Murder Burgers" in my NJ neck of the woods.>>>

That's what I call them too. As a matter of fact, I think I will get some tomorrow for lunch after all this talk, I'm getting cravings.

More White Castle in the News

400-Pound Ohio Man Dies In Struggle With Police
Officers Placed On Leave During Investigation

Why do White Castles give me Gas?

[mvpel]

The question then becomes is it negligent for them to stop for a bite to eat on the way to a call? It's probably going to depend on the tenor of the victim on the 911 tapes, but it's still a long shot.

Linda Riss in New York asked the police to protect her against her boyfriend due to specific threats he was making against her, and the following day he threw lye in her face, and her lawsuit failed.

In Warren v. DC, police didn't show up after 30 minutes of repeated assurances from a 911 operator to two women, calling to report the screams of the victim downstairs, that the police were on the way. When the screams stopped, they assumed the intruders had left and went downstairs, and were then captured and sexually tortured by the intruders for another 14 hours along with their roommate, and in their subsequent lawsuit against the DC police, they lost.

The court said that it is a "fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen."

See http://home.pacbell.net/dragon13/policeprot.html or the book, Dial 911 and Die.

[walford]

If the White Castle 'sliders' are anything like the Little Tavern 'deathballs' that were available in the DC area back in the day, I could understand the cops' delay. They may not have stopped to eat on the way to the call. They may have already eaten and violated a Cardinal Rule when it comes to these little 'burgers.' NEVER EAT MORE THAN THREE.

[theFIRMbss]

1>huh?
2>I've read gibberish that makes more sense....

1) Classic lib response!
2) I'm sure you -- a lib -- have read
lots of gibberish...