NEW ORLEANS — On Thursday, councilwoman Helena Moreno spoke at a hearing on domestic violence.
The hearing came a day after three children were killed in a New Orleans East house fire. 911 took 25 minutes to respond to the initial domestic abuse call from the children's mother. The father, Joseph Washington, 29, was charged with three counts of second-degree murder.
Here's what Councilwoman Moreno said on Thursday:
So often, it still seems like domestic violence is not taken seriously. And that when a victim says, 'I need help,' — It means they need help, and they need help right now.
And let me tell you why I bring this up. I bring this up because I'm concerned about the timeline of the calls that were made by the children's mother just a couple of nights ago. By looking at a variety of different pieces of information, everything from, you know, getting information from NOFD, to NOPD news releases, things like that.
At 11:55 p.m., the mother called 911 — Myself and Councilmember Harris have listened to her 911 calls.
She specifically says that he is going crazy, my children are screaming, he is threatening to set the house on fire, my children are inside. I'm trying to race there to get there.
And the call taker at that time says a unit will be dispatched as soon as possible. Okay. Now, the mother calls back.
I'm sorry, y'all, this is a lot. The mother then calls back. She says, is someone there? are police there? Can you tell me are my children O.K.?
The call taker asked, do you have any new information on this situation?
She says, no, I'm still trying to get there are my children, O.K.?
The dispatcher again says a unit will be dispatched as soon as possible.
Now, the mother's initial call was at 11:57. Looking at the neighbor's ring camera from across the street, it shows that the father was walking out of the house at 11:57.
... Okay. Now, there is another 911 call that comes in later. This is now from a neighbor — I don't have the time of this call — But this is now from a neighbor who is now calling saying, there's a house on fire.
"There's a house on fire! We need the fire department here!"
Now, it isn't until 12:09 that NOFD tells me that they were dispatched. And they arrived very quickly. They got there within five minutes. They got there at 12:14 a.m. And it isn't until they get there that then NOPD gets dispatched, and they to get there within only just five minutes.
So my question is: Why at 11:55 wasn't fire and NOPD dispatched? Because you know what, if they got there within five minutes, they would have been there around 12:01, just a few minutes after that father had left. Maybe the circumstances would have been different.
And I'm sorry that I'm feeling this kind of way. But like y'all, we just went through Asia Davis!
Asia Davis called and said, my boyfriend beat me up: 'My boyfriend beat me. He beat me with a cell phone. He just left.'
Police show up 12 hours later, she's not there.
Asia Davis calls back another day, she says, I just got beat — The same thing. It's my boyfriend, this happened to me again.
Police show up 13 hours later, she's not there. Well guess what happened on the third call?
It was a body. It was Asia Davis' body, because she was murdered. We just had a vigil for her last night. So how long? How long are we going to just say, that's just domestic violence. You know, it's just being exaggerated. It's not worth sending somebody right now ...
People are being killed! Women and children are losing their lives. And let me just be very clear that people who are perpetrating this type of violence in their homes are also doing it in our streets. So if we took domestic violence maybe a little bit more seriously, maybe we'd have a safer city.
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