Dispatcher Overrides 911 Plea for Help : Crime: She sent no squad car after a neighbor reported a robbery. The home was robbed and one occupant was sexually assaulted.

After a 911 call from a neighbor, a Monterey Park police dispatcher decided not to send a squad car to a residential robbery and sexual attack in progress after she telephoned and was told--apparently by one of the criminals--that everything was fine, authorities said Monday.

Deputy Police Chief Daniel Cross said Monday that the dispatcher erred in failing to send officers to the scene of the Feb. 13 incident. Three men and one woman posing as flower delivery people forced their way into the Ridgeside Drive house, tied up an 18-year-old woman and her mother, sexually assaulted the teen-ager and took a watch, a bracelet and $900 in cash, he said.

Cross said a gang linked to numerous residential robberies in the San Gabriel Valley and Orange County is believed responsible. He refused to name the gang. There have been no arrests in the Monterey Park case.

The neighbor had dialed 911 and told the dispatcher that the robbery was taking place, but did not know the family’s address, Cross said. But the caller’s address was displayed on the dispatcher’s computer screen and should have been given to an officer, he said.

“It looks like the dispatcher did not follow procedure,” Cross said.

Instead, the dispatcher hung up and dialed the victims’ telephone number, which the neighbor had provided. A woman--who police believe was the female suspect posing as the teen-age daughter--answered the phone and told the dispatcher there was no problem.

“She said that her mother just got excited when friends came over, and everything was OK,” Cross said.

Meanwhile, the neighbor called the teen-age victim’s father at work in Los Angeles. The father then called 911 and reached the Los Angeles Police Department, which called Monterey Park police and gave them the address.

At 6:45 p.m., nine minutes after the neighbor talked to the Monterey Park dispatcher, two patrol cars were sent to the house. They arrived seven minutes later. By then, the robbers had escaped. Cross would not provide details of the sexual assault.

He also would not say whether the crime might have been halted or the robbers caught if there had not been a delay. “I can’t speculate on that,” he said. “Obviously the response times would be faster. But whether or not we would have been able to catch them is anybody’s guess.”

Since the incident, which remains under internal investigation, the Police Department has changed some of its 911 procedures. Now officers must go to the scene of every 911 call. Previously, dispatchers were directed to telephone a house to confirm an emergency situation before sending out a car if a call sounded as if it were a prank or a mistake, Cross said.