Settle Down

Maybe the biggest advantage of bringing in an outsider to run the Dane County 911 Center is that he won't have been mired in this kerfuffle since the beginning. Sometimes, it takes a view from outside the building to tell if you've got a kitchen fire or a full-blown house fire on your hands.

John Dejung officially assumed the mantle of 911 Center Director this week, and I'm hoping my initial impressions are accurate. I only had about 20 minutes or so to meet Dejung yesterday, part of which was spent in a press conference-style briefing with other reporters, but he struck me as very level-headed, coolly competent and completely nonplussed by the size of the dynamite sandwich chunk he's bitten off to chew.

His resume certainly inspires confidence, but what I really took heart in was that in his first day on the job, he did what many other local officials haven't been able or haven't chosen to do -- he drew a line between what constitutes good, common sense 911 policy and what's just looking for something to scream about.

I asked Dejung whether the policy regarding non-emergency calls at his award-winning 911 center in Minneapolis would have yielded a different result in the sad but overly-politicized death of Farrell Kurlish last March, and what I got -- a straight answer -- floored me.

"This is perhaps going to sound flip, but, frankly, the operators that talk with residents on the phone aren't clairvoyant. Sometimes they have to deal with what they have to deal with, and unfortunately, once in a blue moon, there are things that can come along and bite you... It's very unfortunate, and an opportunity to look at procedures and policies and beef them up where they need to be beefed up, but frankly in Minneapolis I'm not sure that would have been avoided."

I always appreciate a straight answer, but coming from a guy that exudes an almost Mister Rogers-like sense of safety and security, I left the meeting feeling pretty confident that John Dejung is not another Joe Norwick. The underlying message to be taken away from all this, at least for the time being I think, is "Everybody chill the hell out. JD's got this thing."

There's just one thing I find disconcerting about John Dejung, and that's the eerie resemblance he bears to Dane County Supervisor Matt Veldran. The two men met for the first time yesterday, and I felt a chill run up my spine when they faced each other and shook hands. Veldran said something like, "I'm not on the 911 oversight committee, I just had to stop out and meet this guy everybody keeps saying looks so much like me."

It was a Kodak moment, and there I was without my camera. But honestly, judge for yourself. That's Dejung on the left and Veldran on the right.

John Dejung and Matt Veldran -- separated at birth?

Who Ya Gonna Call?

I know the Dane County 911 Center has become the political kickball de jure over the past year, and I'm very glad of the shortcomings that have been exposed and addressed to some degree. But I'd like to take a moment to try and draw a line between what constitutes a legitimate gripe and what's just piling on.

By now you've read the tragic story of Farrell Kurlish, the 32-year-old man who was found dead in his car last March, poisoned by a carbon monoxide leak. The story has generated quite a bit of controversy, because the vehicle sat out on the street idling for seven hours after a neighbor phoned in a complaint to the 911 center's non-emergency line.

Mind you, this was a call to the center's non-emergency line, and if you read the transcript of the call, at no point does the caller indicate there was any kind of problem that required police intervention.

Call taker: "Police and fire."
Caller: "Yeah, there’s a pickup truck that’s
been idling in front of my house for one half-hour. Is that legal?"
Call taker: "Sure."
Caller: "Hmm?"
Call taker: "Yeah, sure."
Caller: "In the street?"
Call taker: "Uh-huh."
Caller: "Holy (expletive), what’s the town
coming to?"

And at that point, without any further ado, the caller hangs up. With that 20-20 hindsight we always hear about, yeah, it might have helped to have dispatched police officers to the scene immediately. But what the 911 Center's biggest critics are trying to say is that, based on those 35 syllables of information from the caller, the 911 operator should have sent help, or at least followed up on the call.

Now, none of the news stories that I've seen so far (that I haven't written myself) make note of the fact that this same 911 operator, Nathan Waite, was in fact commended for his performance in the line of duty as recently as January, when he gave instructions on birthing a premature child to a father parked on the side of a snowy road near McFarland. At the time, county officials hailed Waite as the hero who saved the day by keeping his head, making sure the panicked mother and father on the other end kept their heads, and calmly talking the husband through procedures as delicate as using a shoe lace to tie off an umbilical cord.

I myself covered the press conference that was thrown together by County Executive Kathleen Falk's staff as an election loomed against a foe who had made the 911 center a key issue. While I'm not surprised that the County Executive has not arranged a press conference in his defense, I did get a chance to meet Mr. Waite and chat with him briefly.

Nathan Waite is competent, humble, young and kind of quiet. I certainly don't see him as being "complacent," or lacking "the appropriate attitude of concern," to quote the internal investigation into the matter. In fact, I posit he reacted in exactly the right way.

My tax dollars pay Nathan Waite's salary, just the same as they pay for the police officers that patrol our streets. As such, in no way do I want either 911 operators or police officers wasting time responding to calls about every vehicle left running in the street. Following that logic, there should be a police response every time a garden hose is left running, a door is left ajar or a dog is heard barking in the distance.

Nathan Waite is a very busy man with a lot of important duties on his plate who was reacting to a stupid question from a person who was at best lazy and at worst an imbecile. The caller to the non-emergency line didn't say anything was wrong. She didn't sound like she was under duress. She certainly didn't open her front door and walk the thirty feet to the idling car and peer inside to see if everything was all right, which could potentially have saved a life.

The caller simply peered out a slat in the blinds and did what misanthropic old ladies are prone to do -- she complained to the first person who would listen. You can ask any 911 operator, and they will tell you the non-emergency line is a source of more useless complaints than Charter Communications' customer service.

Now I agree with Police Captain Carl Gloede that some kind of written procedures should be implemented to sort out non-emergency calls that might have some kind of urgent nature to them. It certainly could have helped in the Lake's Edge Park murder last fall.

But trying to link Farrell Kurlish's death to a failure on the part of the 911 Center is akin to kicking an opponent when they're down. Whatever political point or progress critics of the 911 Center are trying to make gets lost, especially when hard working civil servants like Nathan Waite get dragged into the fray to have their reputations tarnished.

I hope Waite sticks it out through the coming weeks of punishment and retraining he's going to be put through, then goes on to become a supervisor at the 911 Center. Maybe we can even talk him into running for County Exec.