Boston Police say 911 address glitch has been corrected
By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff
Boston police and a phone company said today they had corrected 911 problems that sent officers to the wrong neighborhood to investigate a homicide.
Appearing before a Boston City Council committee, Superindent in Chief Robert Dunford and David Green, an official from Comcast, both said the software glitch had been fixed.
On March 9, a woman called 911 to report a slaying and gave police the address of 698 Washington St. Police went to that address in Downtown Crossing first before arriving at the proper address in Dorchester 14 minutes after being called.
Green said the incident highlighted a software glitch that has since been corrected. Some Comcast phone customers were listed only as living in "Boston" when the database should have listed the names of specific neighborhoods.
"We have taken steps'' to update the software, he said.
City Councilor Charles Yancey, while saying public safety officials generally perform their tasks well, called the handling of the call "abysmal.''
"I don't understand how that could happen in the 21st century with all of our technology,'' Yancey said.
The March incident was one of two recent emergency call snafus that have embarrassed the department.
In April, police arrived at the home of a Hyde Park man 35 minutes after police were told he had been attacked and was bleeding. Dunford said the dispatcher who took the call wrongly listed it as low-priority. The department is retraining calltakers and increasing supervision in response, he said.
