NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans inspector general seized computers and cell phones in his investigation of Tyrell Morris, the embattled director of the city’s 911 emergency operations, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
Meanwhile, more concerns are being raised about botched 911 calls and how the agency has responded to those errors under Morris’ leadership.
The IG is investigating Morris for possibly committing a crime when, according to metadata in files provided by the Orleans Parish Communications District, Morris altered a public record to make it look like he didn’t have to submit to drug and alcohol screening after he got into a car accident with his taxpayer-funded vehicle.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell stood by Morris, declining at a news conference this week to join calls for his suspension and suggesting that his leadership has been stellar.
“Tyrell Morris, director of OPCD, is a vital part of our public safety team, as has been demonstrated over the past five years as I've been mayor,” Cantrell said. “And that's something that we will continue to engage him as our director.”
In fact, Morris has faced a slew of controversies and errors at OPCD under his leadership. The most consequential involved botched 911 dispatches using a new cloud-based emergency call management system he touted and implemented under a no-bid deal.
Mischler said the errors have only escalated since Morris implemented the new system, which Morris said would use algorithms to avoid mistakes. This year alone:
-- A driver of a Corvette died after 911 dispatched a horrific pre-dawn crash as a simple power pole fire.
-- A 15-year-old died from a gunshot wound after a 911 operator transposed numbers and sent first responders to an address miles away.
-- Another serious-injury wreck was reported by 911 dispatchers as a minor crash.
-- A fire at the Esplanade at City Park apartments was never dispatched by 911. Entergy crews had to respond and put out the fire themselves.
-- A shooting victim who didn’t speak English called 911 and said he had been shot, but an interpreter used by the agency falsely said the caller was faking it.
Monica Muñoz saw one of those failures up-close, the deadly crash of the Corvette. She awoke Feb. 20 before the crack of dawn to a loud crash. She ran in her pajamas around the corner onto Orleans Avenue to find a horrific scene. The Corvette crashed into a parked car and a power pole. Its roof was torn off, the front end was crumpled and the driver was trapped, bleeding profusely from the nose and neck.
“Even though he was unconscious, I told him help is on the way,” she said. “And we waited for what seemed like eternity.”
Muñoz told a passerby who had called 911 to ask for the jaws of life to extricate the driver, Bobby “Big B” Ferrell. A friend visiting Muñoz from out of town stayed by the caller while Muñoz held a towel to Ferrell’s neck, making sure the caller relayed everything Muñoz said.
But public records provided by the local firefighters’ union show none of that information was relayed to first responders until firefighters arrived more than 10 minutes later. Instead, only one of nine 911 calls was dispatched to the fire department, and it only noted that an electric pole and wires were on fire.
Local fire union president Aaron Mischler says the 911 call-takers and dispatchers put his first responders in an impossible position.
Four days later, Ferrell died from his injuries.
“Had we got the right information, there was a good chance we could have saved his life,” Mischler said.
City Councilwoman Helena Moreno asked Morris about this incident and some of the others at a hearing in March. He told her he would look into it to get more details. But in the moment, he essentially blamed the Fire Department for the way the system he implemented automates the response to certain emergency calls.
“Based on what was reported to 911, a single vehicle accident, a single engine response is what the fire department has determined for us is what the response will be,” he said.
He never addressed Moreno’s question about the eight other calls, several of which provided more detail about the accident and the danger Ferrell was facing.
But records provided by the fire union show OPCD did an internal review and found the first 911 call, which came in at 5:48 a.m., provided few details other than a loud boom and the power going out, and the second call, which came in at 5:49 a.m., was recorded by the call-taker only as an electrical hazard.
The next call, which came in 13 seconds later, came from the passerby on the bicycle. The OPCD report says the 911 operator marked it as a duplicate of the previous calls and “did not document any of the information provided by the caller about the jaws of life being needed, someone needing an ambulance ‘real bad,’ etc.”
Several 911 operators marked other calls as duplicates, too, some without even recording the details, the OPCD report said. At 5:53, four minutes after the bicycle rider called for the jaws of life, the call was dispatched to the fire department as a simple outside fire, needing just one fire engine.
The engine arrived at 6 a.m. Only then did the firefighters realize the severity of the situation. That was already more than 10 minutes after the 911 call requesting the jaws of life. The fire captain on scene then struck one alarm, signaling the need for the full fire company. He requested an ambulance, the police and Entergy power crews.
Records show the fire union requested recordings of all 911 calls related to the incident on March 3. On March 30, the union got a recording of the one call about the electric pole on fire and none of the others.
“We still to this day have not received them,” Mischler said.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.