Finally Heard : Deaf Woman Is Pleased by City Pledge to Improve Handling of TDD Emergency Calls; Her Complaint Prompted U.S. Pressure for Action

“There was blood all over the place,” Sheri Farinha Mutti said. “I’d never seen anything like it. I was scared.”

Mutti is deaf. In her moment of terror, she sought help through the Los Angeles 911 system. When that system failed her, she took matters into her own hands.

Her complaint ultimately led to a settlement earlier this month between the Justice Department and the city, with the city agreeing to give telephone operators and police personnel special training on how to handle calls received over a communications system for the deaf.

Mutti, a longtime activist for the hearing-impaired, is proud but wary.

“It’s nice to finally have a victory, to know they’re finally going to do something,” she said, speaking to a reporter through a sign-language interpreter. “But I still wonder about that 911 system--whether the police really will respond when someone in the deaf community needs them.”

Mutti said her ordeal began on a warm July night in 1992, when she and her 2 1/2-year-old son, Ryan, were getting ready for bed in their Sun Valley home.

“Ryan was jumping up and down on the bed, which is right under the window, when he suddenly veered forward and his head crashed down on the window sill,” Mutti said. “There was a deep cut on his head, blood gushing out all over the bedspread.”

As she had been instructed to do in the event of an emergency, Mutti dialed 911, using the city’s telecommunication device for the deaf, known as TDD.

The flashing light on her device told her the call had gone through. But instead of a message on her TDD screen asking her what she needed, the light stopped flashing, showing that the party on the other end had hung up.

“I redialed,” Mutti said. “They hung up again. . . .

“By then, I’m totally freaking out,” she said. “There was so much blood. I wanted someone to tell me what to do. I called back again. They hung up again.”

Grabbing her son, the 34-year-old woman ran down three flights of stairs to the basement, where her husband, Steven, who also is deaf, was working on his computer. The three of them drove to a nearby hospital.

His head bandaged, Ryan recovered fully. But Mutti--who has since moved to Sacramento to accept an executive position with the Northern California Center on Deafness--did not forget the desperation of that night and her inability to reach the Los Angeles Police Department in her time of need.

She wrote the Department of Justice in Washington, complaining that the city had failed to live up to the new federal Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires cities to ensure that their telephone emergency services provide access to individuals using TDDs.

“Nobody was minding the store,” she said. “I think it was ignorance, a lack of training. That’s what infuriated me.”

She said a beeping noise on the line alerts anyone answering a phone that the call is coming from a TDD machine. Operators at 911 centers see an address flash on their screens, showing the location from which the call is being made.

Mutti said she knows the call was received and her address appeared on a screen because, while the family was at the hospital, a patrol car stopped by her home.

“How did they know it wasn’t a life-and-death emergency?” she asked.

LAPD Cmdr. David Kalish, who is in charge of the department’s communications systems, said records show that Mutti’s calls came in about a minute apart, beginning at 9:33 p.m.

“What happened was one of the machines was malfunctioning,” Kalish said a few days ago. “There definitely was a problem.”

He said that although Mutti’s address and phone number appeared on the screen, the call was never accepted by a TDD machine at the 911 center, and Mutti was unable to reach anyone. Kalish said that after getting busy signals when they attempted to return the calls, police drove to the Mutti home, arriving there at 9:50 p.m., about 15 minutes after her last call and about 10 minutes after she had left for the hospital.

Mutti said the Justice Department asked for a letter requesting an investigation. That eventually led to this month’s settlement, in which Los Angeles city officials pledged to improve the Police Department’s TDD system.

Some of the training for operators will involve the use of an instructional video prepared by Richard Ray, who is deaf and a coordinator for the city’s Office for the Disabled.

“We already had been looking at and evaluating the existing 911 system to enhance access,” Ray said through an interpreter. “We were able to find (TDD) equipment that would be compatible with that system.” “

He said the new equipment, which could be in place by Aug. 15--well before the Justice Department’s target date in early September--will automatically switch an incoming TDD call to a TDD machine at a 911 center, instead of requiring an operator to respond to an alerting beep signal.

“With the new equipment, we’ll be able to take a (TDD) call at each answering point,” Kalish said.

Says Mutti: “It’s kind of a mixed feeling. I’m happy, and I’m optimistic. But there’s still that feeling. Will I really be safe?”