Mayor Gives Statement On 911 Center

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has released a statement regarding the county 911 center's failure to notify responding police officers that accused police killer Richard Poplawski had access to weapons. The statement is as follows...

"The County's 911 Center has saved countless lives and I have commended their management and dispatchers many times. Saturday's tragic events, however, revealed a flaw in the 911 system. We now know that the 911 dispatcher was made aware that guns were present in the Fairfield Street home and that this information was not communicated to the officers. Before responding to the call, the officers should have had the benefit of knowing that the actor owned firearms. We will never know if Saturday's events would have gone differently had the officers known.

While no system can account completely for human error, what is clear is that the 911 Center did not work as it should have and now must take a very hard look at itself. Management must determine what went wrong and take swift action to make the necessary changes. I have impressed this point upon the management of the County's 911 Center and have called for them to develop a plan of action to address flaws in the system and to ensure that this type of incident never happens again."