Baltimore council president wants fix after repeated communication system failures between police and fire

Baltimore's city council president wants to fix the troubled system that handles real-time police and fire communications. 

It has already failed several times this year, and the mother of a man who died in police custody over the summer said it led to severe delays in getting her son an ambulance. 

Hearing on CAD 

City Council President Zeke Cohen will hold an oversight hearing in February into the CAD system's failures.

"We've heard about some catastrophic failures of the system and that can never happen," Cohen told WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren. "It is critically important that public safety workers are able to receive real-time information from the CAD system."

At a prior hearing, Baltimore police commissioner Richard Worley said, "Our CAD system is many years old, and quite honestly, it's failed about 25 times this year."

In June, Dontae Melton Jr. pleaded for help at a West Baltimore intersection,  but he ended up dying in police custody. 

The computer-aided dispatch system (CAD), a main line of communication between police and fire, failed according to WJZ Investigates' review of dispatch transmissions.     

"On this night, what happened is that the CAD system had gone down," Worley said in August. The police department's had gone back up, but the fire department's hadn't." 

Worley added, "On nights when the CAD system is up and down, they have to continually adjust. The supervisor on scene did not know — and the communication center was not aware — that both sides were not up."

Heat may have also played a role in the system's failure. 

Cohen said the number of failures Worley cited has since been revised. Still, there have been many documented breakdowns. 

"When my team dug into it, it turned out there had been several failures of this system, and we're going to hold this hearing to really understand how bad the CAD system is right now, what the fixes are, and what we need to do in terms of replacing it wholesale or just upgrading it," Cohen said.

The fix could cost millions of dollars. Cohen said the system must work effectively. 

"This is about saving lives. This is about making sure that when that 911 call goes in, that the computer-aided dispatch system sends it out immediately in real time," Cohen told WJZ. 

The hearing is scheduled for February 19. 

"I want to understand what is going on with the system — how much would it cost to fix it versus how much would it cost to replace it," Cohen said. 

Mother's plea for answers 

Melton waited almost an hour for an ambulance. His condition rapidly deteriorated after he approached police for assistance during a mental health crisis. 

"His breathing is getting shallower and shallower. We're going to have to put him in a car. We can't continue to wait on a medic," an officer said on body-worn camera video.

Police ended up driving Melton in a patrol vehicle to Grace Medical Center, a trip WJZ Investigates found takes less than three minutes. 

Melton's mother has repeatedly questioned why more was not done to help her son in previous interviews with WJZ Investigates. 

"I want us to make it better so that no mother or father or family will ever have to feel this pain again," Eleshiea Goode said. "Because it's painful to think that he came to someone for help, and he laid on a hot pavement in handcuffs and shackles for over 40 minutes, an hour, while they were trying to determine how to help him, but it doesn't sound like anyone did."

Goode's heart is still heavy this holiday season. She shared a picture with WJZ Investigates of her son at a past Christmas celebration.

"My heart breaks every single day for my son because he deserves dignity. He should be here right now," she said.