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Jun 11, 2008 3:47 pm US/Central
DPD Responds To False Alarm At High Speed
Compiled From Staff Reports
DALLAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
A communications breakdown sent several Dallas police officers on a false alarm call Wednesday morning. The officers were driving at high speed with their lights and sirens activated to what they thought was a shooting call.
In fact, there was no shooting. But the officers didn't know that at the time.
According to a Dallas Police Department incident report, the mix-up happened because of a test of the city's computer aided dispatch system.
The automated system, known by the acronym CAD, is used by the city to help dispatch emergency personnel based on information from 911 calls.
Wednesday, administrators of the CAD system sent a test call at 8:54 a.m. for emergency personnel to respond to a shooting. That call was followed by a second, identical test call one second later.
There was no shooting, because the calls were intended to be tests. But the Dallas Police Department's dispatchers were not informed about the tests and treated them as real incidents.
Dispatchers sent three police cars and a supervisor to the location of the fictional shooting at high speed.
The officers were responding on a 'Code Three' basis, which is the response level the department uses when people are in danger.
About one minute after the officers were dispatched, a CAD administrator told the dispatchers the calls had been tests.
Dispatchers then called the responding officers on the police radio and told them that there had been no shooting and that the 911 information was a test.
Some of the officers replied with complaints about the CAD system. On a recording of the police radio traffic one officer can be heard saying, "This is so embarrassing."
Another says, sarcastically, that CAD is a "great system."
According to a DPD spokeswoman, police officials are glad no one was injured. She says the incident is being reviewed.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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