Delays like the slow response to a 911 call shortly before the Olympic park bombing are commonplace in Atlanta, city residents said as the mayor acknowledged the emergency system was flawed the night of the bombing.
Garrison Daniel, an ex-Marine, told a public hearing Wednesday he called 911 twice the night before to report "screams and cries from women and children coming out of the house down the street" but said police never arrived."On my second call, I was told first of all they did not have a record of my original call. . . . She said, `Oh, yes, now I remember . . . you didn't give a complete address."'
On another occasion, Daniel said, it took police 30 minutes to arrive after he called about a neighborhood burglar. When the officer arrived, he told Daniel, "`Well, I got the call five minutes ago,"' Daniel said.
Others complained that emergency phone lines are so busy that callers frequently are connected to recordings rather than operators.
The residents spoke in a three-hour session called by city council members concerned because the 911 call warning of a bomb in Centennial Olympic Park wasn't dispatched for 10 minutes.
The knapsack bomb exploded on July 27, killing one concertgoer and injuring dozens.
The operator who received the call waited to report it to a dispatcher because she could not find the park's address. The computer system requires an address for each report, although there is a bypass system she could have used.
Campbell, who did not attend the hearing, acknowledged earlier Wednesday that the delay "clearly is a problem," but said it did not make the carnage at the bombing worse.
"The bomb had already been discovered," he noted. Officers had spotted the knapsack and were trying to clear people away when it exploded.
State officers didn't learn of the threat until hours after the bomb exploded, but Campbell said even if they had known earlier, "I don't know what they would have done differently."