What They Are Saying About: Brittany Zimmermann's 9-1-1 Call

Submitted by Jesse Russell on Fri, 2008-05-02 12:33. Current | Crime

As reported by Emily Mills on Dane101 yesterday afternoon, reporter Jason Shepard at Isthmus dropped a bomb on the cooling Brittany Zimmermann case when he revealed Dane County emergency line dispatchers received a call from Zimmermann's cell phone which resulted in no officers being dispatched to her home. The contents of the phone call are not being disclosed by the police due to possible evidence, but the department told the press yesterday: "it would be accurate to state that there is evidence contained in the call which should have resulted in a Madison Police officer being dispatched. That would have been consistent with both Madison Police Department policy and national 911 standards."

This statement has Madisonians alarmed, wondering if they can trust to call 9-1-1 when they are faced with an emergency which may result in an inability to speak. It hasn't only set off an wildfire in the city and surrounding county, it has brought back the bright spotlight of the national media and bloggers. No doubt the result will be reporters seeking 9-1-1 logs on the days Joel Marino was stabbed and the day Kelly Nolan first went missing to see if there are other related hang ups and lack of response. We round up what is being said in the local and national blogosphere below regarding this unsettling turn of circumstances in an already tragic event.

The career of Dane County Public Safety Communications Director Joseph Norwick is likely to be cut short as a number of blogs and the Wisconsin State Journal focus on his comment from yesterday's press conference, "“I don’t think there’s anything to apologize for at this time.”

MadTownMoxie writes on Dvorak Uncenesored:

MadTownMoxie wrote:

And the moronic Director says there is nothing to apologize for? I tell you it will be a comfort (though somewhat empty considering it revolves around the death of an innocent random victim) to all when head roll from this. And rightfully so.

SeeThirty's Sounding Board lays it out clearly:

SeeThirty wrote:

911 is supposed to be about saving lives. If you have a problem with following the rules, you should not be working for 911 service. Joseph Norwick should be fired, in my opinion. Someone died here, and to suggest a mere “policy change”, strikes me as complicity in that death. Fire the dispatcher, see to it that all your remaining and future dispatchers understand the importance of their jobs, and then we’ll talk. Two things that clearly do not ever belong in emergency services.. a) people who don’t follow instructions, and b) supervisors who don’t appear to grasp the enormity of the damage when people in this job don’t follow instructions.

TheDailyBs echoes many comments around the Internet that in other cities, if no one responds on the other line, police are dispatched:

TheDailyBs wrote:

This girl was scared and being brutally attacked and you don’t fucking send out police officers? And now you want to say you “didn’t hear anything that would need an officer to go to scene”… well I don’t know where you live, but in Texas, if a child or person calls 911, they track it and immediately show up at that address.

Dustin Christopher says Chief Wray shouldn't be let off so easily:

Dustin wrote:

Like the decision to withhold information for a week that the home was broken into, keeping this from the public was bad judgement, and it reeks of a coverup. Norwick saying his department has "nothing to apologize for at this time" is despicable, but Wray should be ashamed of the growing lack of transparency in his department. Five unsolved murders in one year is scary. A public that doesn't know enough to protect themselves about any of them is damn alarming.

Wisconsin Sunbeam has put in Freedom of Information requests for internal 9-1-1 center communications regarding Zimmermann.

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