Posted on 10/30/2019 8:04:53 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
A Utah woman is suing the company that provides dispatch software to the Salt Lake City police department, saying its protocols prevented her from receiving help after she was stabbed by a home invader, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Bre Lasley and her sister called 911 four times after the stranger stabbed Lasley in 2015, but Priority Dispatch's protocols required them to answer a series of scripted prompts about the situation and their attacker before help would be sent. As a result, only one officer arrived at the scene, and that was only because he happened to be in the neighborhood and heard the women's cries for help, the paper reported.
“It’s a system set up for failure,” Lasley told the paper. “It’s not a system set up to help in that situation. You don’t have time to answer questions. Literally every second matters.”
Lasley only discovered after the fact that the officer, who shot and killed her attacker upon arriving, had not been sent as a result of her call.
“I think about all the seconds and all the minutes that we were fighting that we could have had help. That we should have had help,” she said. “But we didn’t.”
“Bre and her sister did what everyone in their situation would hope to do — successfully call 911,” Lasley’s attorney Michael Young wrote. “Bre and her sister trusted in [Priority Dispatch’s] software system to help them. Instead, their calls for help did not generate a response.”
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Un-be-lievable.
Replicated multiple times a day coast to coast and border to border.
These CAD scripts are NOT one size fits all and turn 911 center professionals into nothing more than robots with a pulse.
Not really unbelievable when one understands the police have no duty to protect members of the public.
Wasn’t the police mgmt the decision maker on the question tree?
My thoughts as well. I’m sure the software can be Configured by each agency using it to handle certain calls in certain ways based on their own agencies policies. So another agency a few states are reading the same software they have no required questions for the same call because that is their policy. I wonder if they believe the software company has deeper pockets Than the city?
There are some paths that can be adapted by local users but serious script revisions require $eriou$ $oftware change$.
Got it?
Our place expedites the dispatch and response and offers ore-arrival instructions to the caller until medics get on the scene and relay pertinent info to the responders...no built-in delay until ALL info is obtained, that’s just dumb. Common sense ain’t so common.
Correct. Someone in the PD command signed off on the process. The 911 center doesn’t operate in a vacuum.
So now you get voice jail when you call 911? WTH??
“Would you be willing to take a service provider survey at the end of this call....?”
De-fund and shut down 911. Go back to using real police dispatchers for emergency calls. The commie centralization thing never continues to work well. Someone needs to be accountable.
I was somewhat frustrated by this because I wrote software professionally for many years.
The gist of it is that the programmers are never put out "in the field" to experience what is actually needed.
Hands-on would get their minds right pretty quick.
It's a sad commentary because most of the programmers are actually pretty bright people - quick on the uptake.
No reason for 2nd amendment. Just call 911 and the police will protect you./ssss
I would say possibly... more and more ECC centers are becoming independent of singular agencies...they stand alone and look after themselves first... despite what the agencies want... I have been dealing with this issue since our jurisdiction moved buildings in 2005.. and the dispatch center moved out from under the police Dept and became an independent entity...
Just like very few customer service supervisors have ever phoned in to their firm and experienced what a customer goes through trying to reach a live human being.
Just like very few customer service supervisors have ever phoned in to their firm and experienced what a customer goes through trying to reach a live human being.
Just like very few customer service supervisors have ever phoned in to their firm and experienced what a customer goes through trying to reach a live human being.
It should be very hard to sue the software company for providing a product that met the purchasing agency’s specifications. Her lawyer is looking for a deep pocket. The quality of the response seems to be indicative of a city government that spends far more on Parks and Recreation than it does on Public Service Administration.
When I worked for a Rent-A-Rig oil company as a programmer, I had a "See Jim and figger out what he wants." request.
As soon as I walked into Jim's office, he says "What the hell are you people going to do to me now?" Told him I was to write a program for what he needed, and that this was his chance to get his thoughts in code.
As I left, he said that I was the first programmer to actually come and ask what was needed and not just given a program "some guy downstairs wrote."
Where possible, I always went to the user and sat down and talked things through. During the session, I'd tell them about other data that was available, and could they use it. Half the time they'd light up with "Hell yes! I never thought of that!" and implemented some pretty neat stuff.
One I remember what a mechanic's To-Do list. When the guy opened up a repair request, we showed him all the other stuff that needed repair in that same area so that he didn't have to close up the cover, only to reopen it again for the next job. Sometimes saved a ton of time.
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