The family of a 16-year-old who suffocated in his van after calling 911 twice got answers to some of their questions today, but more remain.
Cincinnati’s Acting City Manager Patrick Duhaney outlined responses to 33 questions posed by the Plush family following the April 10 death of their son Kyle in a Seven Hills School parking lot. Duhaney also sketched out changes the city will make in the wake of Plush’s death.
“We owe it to the general public, and especially to the Plush family, to get this right,” Duhaney said during Cincinnati City Council’s Law and Public Safety Committee meeting. “We have made every effort to answer their questions as succinctly as possible while providing detail as needed.”
Plush’s death caused a firestorm of controversy around long-running problems at the city’s Emergency Communications Center, where technology glitches and services outages had been reported for years. The incident had political implications — it was a final factor in the ouster of former City Manager Harry Black last month.
Some of the lingering questions around Plush’s death included why two Cincinnati Police officers didn’t leave their police cruiser when responding to Plush’s call, the role of technological failures with the city’s computer-aided dispatch systems, why dispatchers didn’t pass along vital information about Plush’s situation and how much detail officers had about his location.
“That evening I drove to the school and found Kyle,” his father, Don Plush, told council today. “Two days later, my family was planning Kyle’s visitation, funeral and burial. This can’t happen to another family. We are 100 percent committed to the effort of improving our emergency response process. This is not an easy task, nor is it a quick one. Together we will succeed.”
According to the report released by city administration today answering the Plush family’s questions, the first call attendant to hear from Plush, Amber Smith, had the GP coordinates within five to 10 feet of Plush’s location.
Under current procedures, the operator enters that information into the system, which relays it to officers as an address. Duhaney told the Plushes that the city is exploring an updated system that would give officers more detailed directions beyond an address. The system, called Inform Mobile, costs roughly $500,000 and relays maps available at the city’s emergency communications center to each squad car when officers are responding to an emergency call. The vendor for the city’s computer-aided dispatch system, TriTech, recommended the additional technology last summer as it worked on fixing problems with the system. Cincinnati firefighters now have that technology — and fire officials say it was worth the money — but the Cincinnati Police Department didn’t get the update.
The officers were sent to the correct address, within five to 10 feet of Plush’s location, but found no one in distress there. Body camera footage of the officers’ roughly 10-minute run shows that they did not leave their cruiser during that call. Officer statements made during dispatch indicate that they may have thought the call was a prank.
Plush’s family asked if it was standard that officers don’t leave their cruisers when responding to an emergency call. That depends, Duhaney said.
“There is no standard protocol for how officers should respond to reports to someone stuck in a vehicle,” he said.
Duhaney said CPD training procedures will be updated to instruct officers to get out of their vehicles if they can’t find a caller right away, and to ask for more information from dispatchers. The city is also purchasing technology updates that will give officers more detailed information on the location of callers. The city is also considering automatic GPS location services for squad cars, which would have allowed the dispatcher to know where officers were in relation to the caller. CPD policy will also be updated to give higher urgency to multiple calls from the same phone number.
Cincinnati City Councilman Greg Landsman said that policy related to when officers should get out of their cruisers should change immediately.
“What I took away from today is that we had the location,” he said at the end of the committee meeting. “There are obviously going to be technology updates, but what does it mean to take the subjectivity out of this? How do we ensure that human error is diminished as much as possible? Can we say today that officers will get out of their vehicles? Shouldn’t it just be that first responders will get out of their vehicles and check every vehicle they believe needs to be checked?”
Plush’s father wants to know what officers were doing in the eight minutes between when they turned their body cameras off and the time when they entered another nearby parking lot.
The family also had questions on the dispatch end. Smith and a second call-taker were reportedly unable to hear key information relayed by Plush during his calls, including a statement that he couldn’t breathe and was afraid he would die if not helped soon.
Smith received a 90 percent rating of her actions around Plush’s call. In the future, quality control efforts by the city will be amended to take into account technology issues, and training will stress the need of call-takers to turn up audio volumes on quiet calls and to review recordings of those calls.
Plush’s family questioned whether that rating took into account Plush’s banging and screaming. Duhaney said the call-taker did not hear those sounds, but did receive negative marks for not relaying important information to officers about Plush’s location and the urgency of his call. Call receivers will now get training around increasing audio volume and call reviews for multiple calls from the same number.
“Leaving this information out is not acceptable,” Duhaney said. The quality assurance program the city used currently is based on 24 questions around response to calls. It is now under complete review, Duhaney says.
Plush’s family also wanted to know why initial call-taker Smith was on a 16-hour shift the day of the incident. It’s common for ECC employees to take 12-hour shifts, but it’s unclear how often they take extended shifts like Smith’s and what that means for response from the center.
“I’d like to understand that a bit more, and what effect that has on someone’s performance,” Plush’s father said.
Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld said he has doubts about the long shifts
“I have skepticism about a 12-hour day,” he said. “My skepticism is increased by 25 percent or more for a 16-hour day.”
The family’s questions also centered around reported system failures the day of the incident. City IT staff confirmed that multiple CAD workstations experienced problems throughout the day, including the workstation used by the second dispatcher during the time of Plush’s call. Those problems were logged within 15 minutes, Duhaney said. He says the city is still working on updates and technology fixes.
Plush’s father said he’s heartened by the city’s response to the issues he has raised, but still thinks there is much work to be done. He listened to his son’s 911 calls for the first time since Plush’s death today, he said, in an effort to understand as much as he can about the incident.
“This is a great start, and I’m confident it will help us get answers to the numerous failures that happened April 10,” he said today. “We just need to continue to push the ball forward on this and make a difference. As each day goes by, we’re exposed to another event like this. We can’t let that happen. That would be inexcusable.”
Mayor John Cranley had strong words about what he called failures around the response to Plush’s calls.
“It seems to me that there were three things done that were just wrong. It seems to me that the receivers should have listened to the recordings and turned the volume up. It’s wrong that fire wasn’t dispatched for someone who said they were stuck in a vehicle. They have the jaws of life and GPS coordinates. It’s wrong that the officers didn’t get out of their vehicles to check the five vans that were in the parking lot. I want you to hear that from your mayor, that those three things were wrong. “
Plush’s family outlined a few more questions for the city, which administration hopes to address at the next Law and Public Safety Committee meeting June 12. In the meantime, the city is moving forward with an independent investigation into Plush’s death. Duhaney says the city has had interviews with three companies for an independent investigation, and that cost estimates from the three are due this week. He hopes to hire a firm in time for the next committee meeting.
