TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

After Slaying, Charlotte Sheriff Favors Dispatcher Certification

ADVERTISEMENT

By CAROL E. LEE

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: April 9, 2008

Updated: 04/09/2008 01:17 pm

TALLAHASSEE - Charlotte County Sheriff John Davenport said today he would favor state certification of 911 dispatchers - a move backed by a father who blamed his daughter's slaying on poor communications within Davenport's department.

"Such legislation would provide consistency in the type of training 911 operators receive, which would certainly help minimize mistakes being made," the sheriff says in a written statement released today.

Davenport's comments come the day after testimony before a legislative committee by Rick Goff, a sergeant in his department and the father of 21-year-old Denise Amber Lee. Lee was killed Jan. 17 as authorities were looking for her. Tips to 911 about her whereabouts were not relayed to law enforcement officers.

Davenport said that each law enforcement agency in the state provides its own level of training to operators. In Charlotte County, they get more than 1,000 hours of training over nine months, he said.

"It must be understood however," Davenport says in the written statement, "that no matter how much training and education a person receives in any profession, when you have human beings performing human tasks, you will always have human error.

"That being said however, the more training and education we can give our employees the better chance we have of minimizing human error."

Goff testified in Tallahassee on Tuesday that he is convinced dispatchers' handling of a 911 call cost his daughter her life. Now he is pushing for a state law that might prevent such a mistake.

Goff and Nathan Lee, his son-in-law, were in the Capitol on Tuesday as advocates for a bill that would establish state standards for the training and certification of 911 emergency dispatchers. Goff wept during the House committee meeting Tuesday morning when he introduced himself as "the father of Denise Amber Lee."

"She's my daughter who was kidnapped, raped and murdered from her house in North Port where her two children were at home," Goff said.

The committee passed the bill unanimously.

"This is an important bill that will save lives," said its sponsor, Rep. Carl Domino, R-Juno Beach. Domino first filed the legislation last year at the urging of emergency first responders.

Lee, Goff and some lawmakers want it to go further -- to require every 911 dispatcher in Florida's 67 counties to have the same training.

As the bill is written, the state training standards and certification would not be mandatory. The Florida Department of Health would create criteria that counties would have the option of using.

Domino said that 28 of the 31 states that have uniform standards for training 911 dispatchers make them mandatory. The cost of making them mandatory kept his bill from advancing in 2007.

Now the state has less money.

"Because of our poor budget year, we're not going to make it mandatory," said Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Democrat whose district includes part of Charlotte County. "Hopefully everyone will voluntarily subscribe to these standards."

Goff agreed to testify on behalf of the legislation after learning about it from another lawmaker a few weeks ago.

He and Lee will return to Tallahassee next week when a committee takes up the Senate version of the bill, which Aronberg is sponsoring.

"There were mistakes made, and that's what we're trying to correct," Goff said.

In an e-mail message to Domino supporting the legislation, Goff wrote, "It is the family as well as the whole communities' opinion that if this call would have been handled correctly that my daughter would still be alive and home with her family.

"On behalf of the Goff/Lee family, we would like to offer our assistance in pushing for your bill to be passed, since this incident has had such an impact on our lives. There is not a day goes by that we [don't] think about the mistakes made in the dispatch center the day my daughter was kidnapped and murdered, and to think that it happened within my own agency. Again, on behalf of Denise, our family will do everything to see this bill passed, and would even love to see it listed under her name, so that when her children are older they will know their mother was a special person."

During his testimony Tuesday, Goff said his daughter, whom authorities say was abducted by Michael King on the afternoon of Jan. 17, got the attention of a woman at a stoplight by screaming and banging on the back window of King's Chevrolet Camaro.

The driver called Charlotte County's 911 dispatch center, he said, but that call was not relayed to the squads of deputies and police who were blocks away looking for his missing daughter.

"She was found later buried in a shallow grave, shot in the head," Goff told the panel of legislators, his voice cracking in the starkly silent room. "We had cars on the road waiting to apprehend the guy right where she was at, but they never dispatched the car. On behalf of my daughter, I'd like this bill passed."

Later, seated in Domino's office, Nathan Lee said, "If anybody's heard that call, how that call was handled -- if I was having a heart attack and was talking to whoever was on that line, I would not be alive."

Goff added, "That's the call that could have saved her life."

King, 36, pleaded not guilty last month to charges that he kidnapped, raped and killed Denise Lee.

Charlotte County trains its 911 dispatchers in an in-house program based on recommendations from the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, said Capt. Sherman Robinson, the logistics commander who handles the dispatch center.

It takes six to eight months to complete.

Several lawmakers agreed with Lee's family and voiced support for making statewide standards mandatory.

"Mr. Goff, as a parent, I am just speechless at your testimony," said Rep. Matt Hudson, R-Naples, during Tuesday's committee meeting. "It was powerful, and I can't imagine what you must be feeling. We cannot have 67 different versions for 67 different counties of how we go about this process."

Goff and Lee both said Tuesday that they want an apology from Charlotte County Sheriff John Davenport.

"That was the first thing we wanted," Goff said.

They also want stiffer penalties for the two dispatchers who handled the call they say could have saved Denise Lee's life.

"We wanted them terminated, at least terminated, if not criminally charged, and that was not done," Goff said.

The sheriff's office temporarily suspended the dispatchers.

Herald-Tribune staff writer Anna Scott contributed to this report.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT