By Police1 Staff
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Three dispatchers were fired Friday in the wake of the fatal shooting of 47-year-old Deputy Chris Smith.
According to the Tallahassee Democrat, Smith was killed by 53-year-old suspect Curtis Wade Holley November 22 as Smith and Deputy Colin Wulfekuhl responded to the call of a house fire and were subsequently ambushed.
Wulfekuhl was saved by his body armor. Holley was killed by another officer who arrived on the scene after a gun battle.
An internal review concluded the veteran dispatchers had failed to inform first responders that Holley had threatened to shoot police if they came to his residence during an incident that took place two weeks prior to the deadly shooting.
“The system functioned properly. It displayed the premise hazard,” Tim Lee, director of the joint Consolidated Dispatch Agency, told the Tallahassee Democrat. “The dispatcher, through human error, failed to click on the premise hazard.”
An audit of the Consolidated Dispatch Agency, which has reportedly suffered from shutdowns and software errors, had been ordered by the city commissioner prior to the shooting.
“Hindsight is 20/20, working a call is not that easy,” one of the fired dispatchers, Gwen Forehand, told the Democrat. “It’s easy to go back and look back and say, ‘Hey this is what happened.’ I just hate people had to get fired behind it.”
Forehand believes the agency should require more training.
The audit of CDA is still ongoing.