Or maybe he didn’t want to be called a Karen and fired. Notice it was the 911 operator that kept pushing for the race.
I've been in that situation where I was trying to call police about an incident on the street, but the crowd around me was mixed, and when the operator asked me what race, I did not want to say the race out loud. I said, "I'm in a group of bystanders here", so the operator said the races one at a time and when he said the relevant one I said "yes."