A Walk in the Woods
Jan 15th, 2008 by JamieB
Yesterday, we shared a letter from Michael Berry, an attorney with Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, L.L.P. in Philadelphia, about why 911 tapes should fall under the presumption of openness in Senate Bill 1.
Berry’s three main points — (1) that 911 tapes are a critical and powerful way for the public to assess the performance of its government’s emergency services; (2) that they can provide important information to victims’ families; and (3) that they can document history, as they did after 9/11 — all came into play last November 4th on the Staple Bend Tunnel trail in Cambria County, when a couple out for an afternoon hike had to take cover for 47 minutes, while gunshots rang out around them and their frantic calls to 911 went unheeded.
As reported in a series of articles by Susan Evans in the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat, the couple’s pleas were blown off, while dispatchers tried to figure out who had jurisdiction, demanded information about the precise street and municipality from which the couple was calling, asked “how many” bullets are flying over their heads (the answer: “30 or 40″), and even had a chuckle.
In the end, the couple got off the trail on its own and never did see a police officer.
Several agencies are now conducting investigations into what happened, including the Cambria County government, the National Park Service and the Conemaugh Township police department.
Yet more than a month after the incident, the fate of the police officer who did not respond had not been made public. And East Taylor Township Secretary Shannan Kesler told Tribune-Democrat reporter Evans, “If they [the supervisor in charge of police and the police chief] wanted to talk to you, they would have called you.”
I think the public has a right to know what happened, how it happened, who is responsible, and what their elected officials did and/or will do about it. And if those 911 tapes had not ultimately been made available to Susan Evans and the Tribune-Democrat, the public would not have known any of that. And we still don’t know a lot of it.
That is just not right.