Sheriff Probes 911 Action on Victim’s Plea

In the aftermath of a shooting rampage that left four people dead in East Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday launched an internal investigation of its 911 emergency response system, seeking to determine whether a deputy acted properly when she declined to dispatch a patrol car to the scene minutes before the killings occurred.

The shootings followed an attempt by one of the victims, Maria Navarro, 27, to summon aid to the house, where she had been warned that her estranged husband was headed with a gun to shoot her. Moments before calling the 911 number, witnesses said, Navarro had received a telephone warning from her estranged husband’s brother.

She and three others--two aunts and a family friend--were gunned down about 15 minutes after receiving the warning, witnesses said.

Restraining Order

Upon reaching the 911 dispatcher late Sunday night, Maria Navarro was told that no officers could be sent to the house until the husband arrived. The decision was made even though, earlier this year, a temporary restraining order had been issued barring Raymond Navarro from coming within 100 feet of his estranged wife.

Maria Navarro referred to the order in her 911 telephone call, but she and the deputy both apparently were unaware that it had expired, and the order appeared to play no role in the dispatcher’s decision.

“The department is looking at the call, the circumstances, and her training to decide whether she handled it right,” said Lt. John Hooge of the Sheriff’s substation in East Los Angeles.

At the same time, Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman also called for a report by the Sheriff’s Department on how the case was handled.

“I think we ought to get a report of what procedures the sheriff is using in 911 and whether he suggests any changes and how calls of this kind are treated,” Edelman said.

The case drew fire from leaders of battered women’s organizations, who argued that the 911 emergency system is in need of an overhaul.

“It didn’t work in this case,” said Betty Fisher, program director at Haven Hills Family Violence Center of San Fernando Valley, expressing sentiments voiced by many like her. “The way the system is set up to operate just doesn’t work. Unless the danger is imminent, law enforcement doesn’t give it a high priority. The criteria for determining imminent danger should be examined.”

Sheriff Sherman Block scheduled a press conference for today to discuss the matter for the first time in public. His department’s press officials continued to maintain that the 911 deputy followed proper procedures by refusing to dispatch officers to Maria Navarro’s home--a converted garage where she had been celebrating her 27th birthday. Those procedures generally call for officers to be sent to the scene when there is a known and immediate danger.

Hooge declined to identify the dispatcher, who remained on duty pending results of the review. He said the review could be completed as early as Monday.

“The station commander will determine what, if any, correction should be taken,” Hooge said. “Minimal fault would call for retraining. Complete negligence would call for dismissal.”

The Sunday night shootings resulted in the deaths of Maria Navarro, her aunts Francisca Arizpe, 62, of Los Angeles and Maria Garcia, 69, of Mexicali, Mexico, and a family friend, Leticia M. Dipp, 46, of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, a third aunt, Berta Galvan, was still listed in critical condition late Tuesday at County-USC Medical Center with a gunshot wound in her head. Another family friend, Richard Corvarrubias,remained listed in serious condition with a bullet wound in the abdomen.

Meanwhile, Raymond Navarro, 26, appeared at East Los Angeles Municipal Court for arraignment on two separate charges. Navarro was arraigned on a 2-month-old cocaine possession charge, but his arraignment on murder charges was postponed until early next week so that he can be given a public defender to handle that case, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Greg Denton.

Navarro had been scheduled to appear on the cocaine charge--a felony that carries a maximum penalty of three years in state prison--well before the shootings occurred, Denton said.

“It was sheer happenstance” that the court dates overlapped in the same week, Denton said.

The county’s 911 emergency system, designed to channel urgent calls to sheriff’s stations in individual neighborhoods, handles on the average 1,800 calls a day, about half of which are non-emergencies or pranks, according to county officials.

“We receive in excess of 5,000 calls during an average three-day period, and half of those calls should not have come in on the 911 line,” said Lt. Fred Price, a coordinator of the county emergency system. Dispatchers who are forced to sort through the deluge of calls run the risk of becoming jaded, which can affect their judgment, he acknowledged.

“When a boy cries wolf all the time,” Price said, “a call taker can become callous about what comes over that line.”

Although 911 systems vary from one law-enforcement agency to another, nearly all employ the same basic guidelines in evaluating and reacting to calls. In the county system, dispatchers are trained to take into account factors ranging from the vocal inflections of the caller to the nature of the reported disturbance, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Lynda Edmonds.

In most instances, patrol cars are dispatched only if danger is imminent, Edmonds said.

In tapes released by the Sheriff’s Department, Maria Navarro seemed to speak in a calm voice with the 911 dispatcher Sunday night.

She said of her estranged husband: “He just threatened me, ‘I’m coming over here with a 35, uh, some kind of gun.”

Moments later, after Navarro made it clear that her husband had not yet arrived, the dispatcher said:

“But he’s just threatening to do so?”

“Yes,” Navarro answered, “and I’m sure he will.”

“OK, well, the only thing to do is just call us if he comes over there . . . , “ the dispatcher answered. “I mean, what can we do? We can’t have a unit sit there and wait and see if he comes over.”

“Oh my God,” Navarro said, but she seemed resigned to the decision.

Her last words to the deputy were “Thank you.”

Navarro did not tell other guests at the party of the warning, according to witnesses, although some apparently were aware of her call to law enforcement.

Herb Lapin, an attorney for the district attorney’s special investigative unit in charge of overseeing public agencies, said the policies governing response to emergency calls vary from agency to agency, and that often the size of the community plays a role in establishing those policies.

“I can envision . . . some areas where there is an immediate bodily threat and the (police) unit just can’t get there . . . “ in time, Lapin said. “There just isn’t the manpower to do it.”

Cmdr. William Booth, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said the dispatchers who handle the city’s more than 5,700 emergency calls each day normally are aware of what patrol cars are available and what other crises already are being handled. He indicated that it would be impossible to make a judgment on the county’s response to Maria Navarro’s phone call without understanding all of the circumstances of the case.

Determining which cases constitute true emergencies is sometimes tricky, Booth said.

“You know right off if someone says my dog’s barking . . . it’s not an emergency,” he said. “If someone says there’s a man with an Uzi coming through my window, you know you have an emergency. Everything else in between is a matter of judgment.”

Times staff writers Victor Merina and Richard Simon contributed to this story.