911 Emergency Telephone System

It was a terrible convergence of events that ended in murder: Not one but two 911 calls reporting the kidnapping of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz were mishandled by operators. But such lapses are rare, police say. They point to the small number of complaints--less than 200 annually for the last three years--despite call volumes upward of 1.7 million a year.

A Los Angeles Police Department disciplinary board Tuesday found that two police officers "should have conducted a more thorough investigation" of the kidnapping of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz of West Hills, who was murdered two days later. The chairman of the three-member Board of Rights, Capt. Gary Williams, said a penalty for officers Brent Rygh and Donovan Lyons will be announced today after the panel hears character witnesses for them.

As a Brentwood postal worker dying of anthrax struggled for every breath on his bathroom floor, his wife frantically ticked off his mysterious symptoms for a 911 dispatcher. The possibility of anthrax was never mentioned. A day earlier, Joseph P. Curseen Jr. was diagnosed with dehydration by doctors at a local hospital and sent home. The 911 conversation, made public Friday by Prince George's County, Md., officials, took place on Oct. 22.

Federal regulators on Friday gave wireless carriers up to three more years to roll out a controversial new technology that would pinpoint the location of a cell phone user dialing 911. The 3-1 ruling by the Federal Communications Commission eased an Oct. 1 deadline the agency had imposed on the industry to begin deploying a $2-billion system that would track a mobile phone within 150 to 1,000 feet of its location. The FCC relaxed its stance after Verizon Wireless, Nextel Communications Inc.

Emergency agencies say Gov. Gray Davis and the state Legislature have jeopardized vital improvements to California's 911 call system, including the ability to track emergency calls from mobile phones, by shifting 70% of the program's reserve funds in their scramble to balance the state budget.

Police received an emergency call about a possible scream heard outside Chandra Levy's apartment building in the early morning hours of the day after the 24-year-old intern was last seen, District of Columbia police disclosed Sunday. But as tantalizing as that new information sounds, it only underscores the frustrating nature of the investigation so far, because police also say it appears Levy used her computer for more than three hours later that morning.

A computer glitch in the Orange County sheriff's 911 dispatch system sent deputies to the wrong city last month, prompting a review of the system. A sheriff's spokesman said that two days after the call from the South County suburb of Coto de Caza, the caller, Katherine Dalton Phillips, was strangled by her boyfriend in her home but that the computer mishap played no role in the murder. "She did not die as a result of the officer not going to the right address.

A computer glitch in the Orange County sheriff's 911 dispatch system caused deputies to be sent to the wrong city after a call from Coto de Caza in April, prompting a wide-scale review of the system. The caller, Katherine Dalton Phillips, was strangled two days later, apparently by her boyfriend, but a Sheriff's Department spokesman said the computer mishap did not contribute to the killing. "She did not die as a result of the officer not going to the right address.

Authorities are investigating why a 911 call from a woman to a West Covina dispatcher, reporting that her brother had been shot in a Northern California city, was never referred to local police as the victim lay dying for more than three hours. During the incident earlier this month, Pittsburg police finally went to the victim after Yvette Segala flew from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area and flagged down a patrol car.