Officials Apologize for Ignoring Call on Man Who Died

The Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department has publicly apologized for ignoring a call to help a homeless man who appeared intoxicated but actually was dying in a gas station phone booth.

Jerome Josephson, 43, died early Saturday less than an hour after the call came in to the Sheriff’s Department--and despite the efforts of a local Caltrans worker who tracked down a California Highway Patrol officer and gave the victim cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

“I’m not going to make any excuses for us,” Sheriff’s Capt. Berle Murray said Wednesday. “We made some procedural errors here. We’re darn sorry it happened.”

Long faced with budget problems, the Sheriff’s Department has no deputies who routinely patrol the coastal portion of the rural, 100-mile-long county between the hours of 2 a.m. and noon.

When problems or emergencies arise, a dispatcher is supposed to call on state or federal agencies for help or wake up one of the department’s deputies to respond to the call, Murray said.

But in the case of Josephson, the dispatcher on duty simply said there was no one available to help.

“This dispatcher is a good, good employee,” Murray said. “We just made a mistake. She feels flaming terrible.”

The final chapter of Josephson’s life began Friday afternoon when he was arrested by the Sheriff’s Department for public intoxication and taken to the nearby Ft. Bragg City Jail. He was released about 11 p.m. that night.

At about 6:30 Saturday morning, Caltrans worker Brian Tarner came across Josephson mumbling incoherently at a gas station south of Ft. Bragg. The owner of the gas station called the Sheriff’s Department for assistance, reporting that a drunk had passed out in the station’s phone booth, Murray said.

When the dispatcher declined to provide assistance, Tarner drove into town and found a CHP officer who returned to the scene with him. Both attempted to revive Josephson before paramedics took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy is pending.

Department officials said the dispatcher erred in not consulting with her superior and in not contacting the CHP directly for assistance. The department has improved its internal policies so that a similar mistake does not occur again, officials said.

“The dispatcher did not intend to cause that man harm,” said Sheriff James Tuso. “It was a mistake. A deputy should have been dispatched, or at least we should have found out if another agency was available to respond.”