Police Admit Error in Deaf Man’s 911 Call

An internal investigation by the San Diego Police Department has concluded that a 911 operator hung up on Jay Shufeldt, the 74-year-old deaf man whose wife died after what he says were repeated attempts to call for help on the emergency phone system.

Capt. George Malloy said Tuesday that the operator failed to recognize the signal transmitted by Shufeldt’s Teletype machine--a beeping sound operators should know. Instead, “she thought that children were playing with the phone” and hung up twice, he said.

However, Malloy said the operator traced the second call but received no response when she dialed the number. Malloy also maintained that emergency help reached Shufeldt within 21 minutes of his first aborted call, rather than several hours, as Shufeldt maintains.

“Suffice it to say, the operator made a mistake,” said Malloy, the captain in charge of communications for the Police Department, which operates the city’s 911 system. “But it wasn’t a three-hour delay.”

Shufeldt’s wife, Mary, 72, died July 17 of what Shufeldt’s lawyer says was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. They say Shufeldt tried over several hours to get through to 911. Finally he reached his daughter, who is not deaf. She called 911 and got through.

But Mrs. Shufeldt died before paramedics could revive her and take her to a hospital. Now Shufeldt’s lawyer, Gregg Relyea, says he is exploring the possibility of a lawsuit against the Police Department over the 911 system.

The case has disturbed the city’s deaf community, of which Shufeldt is an active member. After meeting with police 10 days ago, some deaf people expressed disappointment that the department was unwilling to promise that a case like the Shufeldts’ would not happen again.

On Tuesday, Relyea disputed the findings of the department’s internal investigation, citing records of Shufeldt’s long-distance phone calls to his son in Los Angeles. Shufeldt has said he called his son several times to keep him up to date while he was calling 911.

According to Relyea, phone records indicate Shufeldt called his son six times between 7:26 and 9:42 p.m. that night. Shufeldt’s Teletype printout suggests that, between the calls, Shufeldt attempted unsuccessfully to make other calls, Relyea said.

“My client indicated to me that he started making calls (to 911) in the early evening,” said Relyea, noting that emergency help arrived at 9:45 p.m. He called it “highly unlikely” that the operator could have called back and received no response because Shufeldt did not leave the house.

Relyea said the police have declined to show him the telephone logs that they say indicate that Shufeldt made only two calls, and made them in a short space of time. He said he had also been unable to find out when the operator says she made the return call.

“I would hate to think they are going to push this 74-year-old man all the way through several years of litigation just to get access to the information surrounding the death of his wife,” Relyea said.

According to Malloy, the department has completed its internal investigation but is withholding the report because the case may end up in court. He declined Tuesday to disclose the times of the phone calls from Shufeldt or the operator’s call back to him.

Malloy said the department has “taken corrective measures,” including action against the operator who hung up the two calls. He would not specify what action was taken but confirmed that she is still working in the department, in the same job.

He said the department had also made “some internal changes,” including retraining 911 operators to recognize the electronic signal from a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD). Operators are trained using a tape recording provided by the state 911 system.

Malloy said the office also modified its method of circulating briefing memos, in order to verify that everyone affected sees them. He said the operator who mistook the sound of Shufeldt’s TDD for a prank call apparently had not known the TDD signal.

Under the city’s system, 911 operators who receive calls from TDDs are expected to immediately transfer the call to a TDD in the communications room. There, another operator is to take the call and communicate with the caller via TDD.

Shufeldt, a retired newspaper printer, has said he tried repeatedly to call 911 when he found his wife having difficulty breathing. Shufeldt and Relyea say they are uncertain how many times he called, but Relyea said Tuesday that it was at least four or five.

Finally, Shufeldt reached his daughter, who lives elsewhere in San Diego. She called 911 and paramedics arrived. But when they placed Mrs. Shufeldt on the floor and began efforts to resuscitate her, she died, Shufeldt said.