CLEVELAND (WJW) – The FOX 8 I-Team has found 911 callers put on hold when they tried to report gunfire that ended with a teen killed.
In one call, you could hear a witness make an urgent call to police reporting the gunfire that ended with a 16-year-old boy killed.
The call was answered by Cuyahoga County dispatch, and you could hear a witness say, “Hey, we got gunfire. Looks like a gunfight happening … West 130th.”
The call was then transferred to city of Cleveland dispatch, and the witness got a recording.
“You have reached 911 for Cleveland police. All operators are currently handling other emergencies. Stay on the line for the next available operator,” the recording said.
That 911 caller spoke out to the I-Team.
“I was very frustrated being put on hold the way I was,” he said.
And, we found he was not the only caller put on hold for that incident. It happened after midnight Sunday morning at West 130th and Lorain.
Meanwhile, we also found a woman put on hold after getting transferred to the city while trying to report an unrelated case with violence 15 minutes earlier.
In that call, a woman told county dispatch, “This is the second time I called. I need the police. There’s a big fight out there. They got guns. They got knives out here.”
“OK, stay on the line,” a county dispatcher told the woman, but as the woman was transferred, she heard, “You have reached 911 for Cleveland police.”
Back to the 911 calls put on hold surrounding the deadly shooting, we asked Cleveland police about what we heard on those recordings and what it meant for police response.
Cleveland police tell us they are looking into this, investigating the calls that came in, dispatch staffing and police response.
Cleveland police said despite calls being put on hold, officers got to the scene of the teen shot within seven minutes.
As for the investigation into the shooting of the teen, we found the first charge filed for obstruction of justice.
One man was arrested after a manhunt that lasted an hour. And, police said what that suspect said did not match video from the scene.
These are not the first times we’ve heard Cleveland 911 calls put on hold. Just the latest. The I-Team has exposed the problem again and again.
Sometimes it’s a result of short staffing in dispatch, and other times it results from an avalanche of calls coming in at once on major incidents.
The caller we spoke with who had been put on hold this time said, “I would like for the city to do better. It will have to do more of an investigation into this.”
Ed Gallek
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