Cincinnati Police and 911 dispatchers fouled up yet another emergency call, and the victim is dead.

(AP wire stories expire, this one is archived in Read More)

Police investigating delay in responding to emergency

The Associated Press
4/7/03 10:50 AM

CINCINNATI (AP) -- Police are investigating a 911 call that they say was mishandled and caused them to delay sending officers to an apartment where an 81-year-old woman was being beaten to death.

Officers took 16 minutes after they were dispatched March 19 to get to Laverne Jansen's apartment, where they found her dead.

"Knowing what the results are now, we wish it was a 16-second response time," said police Chief Thomas Streicher, who ordered the investigation.

Preliminary findings in the investigation indicate the call was incorrectly logged as "unknown trouble." That is not a priority category and often turns out to be problems like young people fighting, Streicher said.

Jansen's neighbor called 911 just before 2:12 p.m. that day to say that a man had knocked on Jansen's door and told the woman to get on the floor, according to police tapes. The neighbor stayed on the phone for almost 20 minutes with the 911 call taker, describing what she saw from her door's peephole and what the man looked like when he left.

No arrest has been made.