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911 reform bill has local ties

The state house and senate are looking at a proposed bill to make it mandatory for all 911 telecommunicators to have statewide uniform training, and word as to whether or not it will go through is expected to be heard very soon.

Whether or not the bill passes may mean a lot more to the people of Boca Grande than they might think, and has  a particularly special meaning to one island resident.

Brian Lee, who works at the Boca Grande Baking Company, is part of Denise Amber Lee’s family. She lost her life to a murderer in January of 2008, and the bill before Florida legislature is named in her honor.

The Lee family believes, as do many, that her death could have been prevented if appropriate steps by Sarasota and Charlotte dispatchers had been taken.

The Lee family’s mission is to turn a senseless tragedy into a cause to help others, and to save lives. Peggy and Mark Lee sat down for an interview at the bakery this week with their son, Brian, who works there. Their eldest son, Nathan, was headed to Washington at the time to continue on the fight on his late wife’s behalf.

Brian recollected his relationship with Denise, having known her since the sixth grade. They rode bikes together, had the same friends, and he was the one who introduced his brother to his future wife.

He was also one of the people searching for Denise the night she disappeared, and in the days following before her body was found. He has stood with his family through the most terrible of times, and feels very strongly that this bill has to pass.

His father agrees.

“There are no uniform standards in the industry,” said Mark. “Barbers and nail technicians have to adhere to certain state standards, but telecommunicators in this state, the first people to take that frantic call that means life or death, are not held to the same standards.”

There were several problems that occurred during that time period after the family realized that Denise was missing and when her body was found. One of the most pressing, and poignant, issues was the fact that the incident crossed county lines and communication between the two law enforcement agencies was muddled.

It’s a situation that could occur on Gasparilla Island quite easily. With one-third of the island in Charlotte and the majority in Lee County, it’s not uncommon for the two agencies to have to interact during emergency calls.

And, it hasn’t been uncommon for problems in communications to occur.

Chief C.W. Blosser of the Boca Grande Fire Department explained that while Computer Aided Dispatch, or CAD screens that 911 telecommunicators use, can pull up an address if the caller is calling from a landline, most people are calling from cell phones.

“If the phone call is made from a land-based phone, the CAD screen will tell the 911 operator what the address of the emergency is,” he explained. “Cell phones create a problem, not only because there is no address listed immediately, but because you never know what cell phone tower in what county that call will be transmitted to.”

Blosser said that all island 911 callers need to be aware that they have to identify their location as Boca Grande, then give the physical address of the call and, if at all possible, the nearest intersecting road.

While some Boca Grande 911 calls go to Lee County telecommunications in Fort Myers, some can go to the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office. Some even go to Sarasota County.

“It all depends on where you’re at on the island,” he said. “It also depends on how busy the cell phone towers are at the time. We also have problems because some of the road names on Pine Island or Bokeelia can be similar to ours, and some of our street names even right here on the island sound very much alike. To a dispatcher in Fort Myers, who doesn’t know Boca Grande from Bokeelia, that’s a problem.”

He continued.

“Any time you can upgrade training and education, I think it’s a benefit. It will benefit Florida as a whole, and in a place that has a multi-agency response team it can really benefit us. It’s a good bill.

In a lot of ways, Florida leads the nation in emergency procedures. But not in this.”

The current legislation, called the Denise Amber Lee Act, has established a voluntary certification for 911 professionals. If the new bills, written by Representative Ken Roberson and Senator Nancy Detert, are passed, mandatory certification will begin October 1, 2011.

The Lees explained what happened that night when Denise disappeared.

“Five calls came in that night,” Mark said. “The ones that came into Sarasota County went all right, but when everything crossed into Charlotte County it went bad. That’s because training methods on how to take those types of calls varied. Of those five calls, any one of them could have helped to save her life. But there was no communication, there was no set call-taking standard.”

Most people know the details of that night. A 21-year-old woman, home alone with her two young boys, was confronted in her isolated North Port home by a stranger. She was able to secure the house as best she could, kiss her children good bye, and was taken away to be raped, murdered and buried in a shallow grave miles from her home.

While the family is eternally grateful the boys are still alive, they had to find ways to obtain their grandchildren’s blankets, diapers and toys from a crime scene that night. They had to go to Wal-mart at midnight to try to find bottles and formulas for the baby that Denise had been breastfeeding. They prayed that the leads coming in to the sheriff’s offices would turn into their daughter-in-law coming home safely.

Now, every day they have to live with the fact that Denise could still be alive today if just a few minor changes in destiny had happened. Changes that were in the hands of the telecommunicators in charge of the radio room that night in two counties. The same people that were taking the calls from witnesses, and from Denise herself.

Mark said that money is already collected from most cell phones and all landlines for the 911 program, and that money could be used for a program to train all Florida telecommunicators in a manner that would leave no room for error as to how different types of calls are handled.

“A call being answered in Miami should be handled the exact same way as a call being answered in Pensacola is,” he said. “There are lives at stake here, and the people answering those calls are the victim’s first defense. This bill died last year, it can’t die this year. So many things went wrong the night that Denise was taken, and there are so many things to be learned from this.”

According to the Lee family, the money that is currently raised by a tax on telephones is used primarily for equipment purchases, not training.

“This shows what can happen when they have all the best equipment in the world, and people manning that equipment that don’t know how to handle the situation,” said Peggy Lee. “While these calls were coming into the radio room, no one was watching the teletype machine spitting out “Be On the Lookout” bulletins for a green Camaro. They didn’t even know what to do with the information that was given to them from several people who called. What good are these pieces of equipment if they’re not being used properly, or at all for that matter?

“You can keep spending all the money in the world on technology, but the people taking the calls aren’t using it right, it’s just no good. The cost of the training, some departments say, is too much. They’re right, it is. It costs lives.”

Plans are currently being made to create a communications training academy, one that might be located in North Port on the site where Denise’s body was found.

Upon approval, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office will be recognized as a state training facility and be able to teach the curriculum to all public safety telecommunicators.