Davis changes protocol for 911 calls
Police commissioner acts after street mix-up
One day after police acknowledged that officers heading to the scene of a homicide were sent to the right address, but in the wrong neighborhood, Commissioner Edward F. Davis announced a solution. From now on, when someone calls 911 about a serious emergency at an address with a street name that exists in more than one neighborhood, dispatchers must send cruisers to all the possible locations.
"We're just going to make sure we dispatch multiple cars to multiple addresses until we make sure officers are at the right place," Davis said in a telephone interview yesterday. "We need to implement a plan that will avoid this kind of confusion in the future."
Davis said the policy would be in place until officials find a way to improve the 911 system so that when operators enter the address of an emergency, the precise location flashes up on their computer. Police define a serious emergency as a crime in progress or an act of violence.
The announcement was made a day after the Globe reported that police arrived at the scene of a slaying 14 minutes after a woman called 911 to report a fatal stabbing at her Dorchester apartment building.
The caller told a 911 operator Sunday morning that the homicide occurred at 689 Washington St. Instead of sending police to Dorchester, the operator gave them the same address in Downtown Crossing. Officers ended up at a Malaysian restaurant two blocks from Boston Common and about 7 miles from the scene of the homicide.
The victim - Melissa Santiago, 29 - had been dead for hours by the time police arrived at the right address. Her boyfriend, Jose Torres, was arrested later that day and charged with murder.
The error occurred after the 911 operator entered the address into a new computer system that called up the downtown location.
Davis said the mistake was a result of overconfidence in technology. But, he said, it also showed how even computer systems developed to pinpoint exact locations can fail in a city like Boston, where the same street address can occur in different neighborhoods.
"Obviously, this situation shines a bright light on a problem," said John Grossman, undersecretary of forensic science and technology at the state Executive Office of Public Safety.
Since 2002, the state has spent $80 million upgrading 911 systems at about 270 emergency call centers around the Commonwealth. In January, Boston, the city with the largest population and arguably the most confusing street patterns, became the last department to receive the upgrade.
The overhaul had several purposes, Grossman said. State officials wanted to improve how 911 calls are recorded and allow State Police to transfer 911 calls coming from cellphones to local municipalities.
They also wanted to improve mapping data so that operators would know the exact location of an emergency.
Under the new system, telephone companies provide the telephone numbers and addresses of customers to a database that 911 operators can use during emergencies. The number of a caller calling from a land line would flash up on a computer screen, along with the address. A computer mapping system, known as MapStar, would automatically pull up an address on a screen.
But the oddity of Boston's street names can cause that system to provide the wrong location, which is what happened Sunday morning.
A secondary computer system showed the operator three potential Washington Street addresses in West Roxbury, Dorchester, and Downtown Crossing, but the operator chose the Downtown Crossing address because it flashed up on the map, police said.
"They put a lot of confidence in that location that was popping up," Davis said. "Computers aren't always reliable, unfortunately."
Davis said it was the first time he had heard about a problem with the new system.
Grossman, who said he spoke with Davis about the problem yesterday, said he is not sure how to prevent the error from reoccurring.
Some solutions, he said, could include instructing telephone companies to ask customers the names of their neighborhoods, so that more complete information will be entered into the database.
Davis also pointed out that with some neighborhoods it is possible to pinpoint the location with ZIP codes or from the first three digits after the area code. For example, the 911 caller Sunday dialed three times from a number starting with 617-506, which is common to Codman Square.
The 911 operators may need to be retrained so they know to ask what neighborhood the call is coming from, Grossman said. "I'm not ready to say how we can fix the problem. It's complicated."
Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.
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