911 dispatcher on Powell case: I wish I understood better

Questions have been raised about the way operators who handled 911 calls from a case worker and others who called in the moments before Josh Powell torched his home, killing his two sons and himself.

Emergency call logs show that nearly eight minutes elapsed between when a social worker called 911 to report that Josh Powell’s children were in danger and when sheriff’s deputies were dispatched, and it took another 14 minutes for a deputy to get to the home.

In an interview with Dateline NBC, the 911 dispatcher refers to himself as someone who isn’t new at 911-call taking, and adds that the situation has been horrible and a nightmare.

“I just wished that I had understood better what the circumstances were and the lethal quality of this call, and all of the dangerous potential that was there,” he said.

Experts insist we shouldn’t rush to judgment about the dispatcher, saying while the operator may have seemed indifferent or asking seemingly irrelevant questions, but it’s what we don’t hear on the tapes that actually matters.

“You don’t automatically default to the notion that the person you’re dealing with is a psychopath,” the dispatcher tells Dateline. “We’re normal people adn we don’t live in that sort of a mindset.”

Pierce County Sheriff’s Detective Ed Troyer said the sheriff’s department is displeased with the dispatcher’s etiquette because he left the social worker with the impression that no help was immediately on the way.

“Are we unhappy with the etiquette and the manner? Yes,” Troyer said. “Did it affect the response time? No. Dispatchers are typing information and addresses while they’re on the phone with callers.”

The officer who took the call from the case worker only speaks with the public, while a dispatcher determines the appropriate response, according to Jodi Maier, Supervisor with the Pierce County Law Enforcement Support Agency. The organization oversees 911 for 11 different agencies in Pierce County, including the responders to Powell’s Graham home.

“The only two pieces of information they need in order to send a call is where and what is going on,” Maier said.

“As I re-listen to the call I missed,” said the dispatcher, ” the fact that she smelled gas, I heard her say that, but immediately following that comment with I want to move my car out of the driveway. Well sitting in an idling vehicle you would smell gas well I didn’t give it the significance that it deserved. I should have asked her more about that.”

Maier wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the Powell case, but reiterated the public often misunderstands just because the communications officer is talking or speaking to the customer that nothing is happening. The time necessary to dispatch an officer depends on the information provided by the caller and the determination of the level of perceived threat, according to Maier.

The call takers known officially as Communications Officers have three designations for determining response. “Code 1” is considered life threatening. “Priority 2” is imminent danger to life or property while “Priority 3” is for all other calls.

Despite the criticisms of the operator in the Powell case, a former 911 dispatcher told 97.3 KIRO FM’s Ross and Burbank Show the call takers need to ask as many questions as possible to properly handle the situation.

“You know, a lot of the questions they ask, there’s no superfluous question. Everything has a purpose,” said Sam Cadle, who asked not to divulge which municipality he worked for.

He said operators regularly take domestic calls similar to the Powell case and while he doesn’t want to speculate whether the operator failed to grasp the severity of the situation, he said it is unfair to speculate if a quicker response would have changed the outcome.

“You know, I think they did the best they could with what they had and I don’t think the outcome would have been different either way.”