After allegedly hanging up on a grocery employee hiding during last month’s gun spree in Buffalo, New York, a 911 operator has been fired.
Sheila E. Ayers was fired after Latisha Rogers, the assistant office manager at Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, claimed she called 911 as 18-year-old gunman Payton Gendron opened fire on May 14, murdering ten black individuals and injured three more.
I dialed 911, went through the entire operator and everything, and then the dispatcher came on and I was whispering to her,’ she told WGRZ. ‘ “Miss, please send assistance to 1275 Jefferson because there is a shooter in the store,” I said.
Rogers reports that Ayers spoke to her in a “nasty tone” and asked why she was whispering before hanging up.
‘I can’t hear you, why are you whispering?’ she says. The Tops employee recalled, “You don’t have to whisper since they can’t hear you.”
“Ma’am, he’s still in the store, he’s still firing!” I proceeded to murmur. I’m afraid for my life; please send assistance.” My phone slid out of my hand as a result of my nervousness, she mumbled something I couldn’t understand, and then the phone hung up.’
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz told WGRZ that authorities had been analyzing the 911 call since the incident on May 14 and had placed the operator on paid administrative leave two days later until the investigation into the call was completed.
According to the Washington Post, Ayers has been a 911 dispatcher in the area for eight years.
Poloncarz told reporters at a press conference on May 18 that the 911 call taker had acted “completely improperly and did not follow protocol,” and that the county wanted to fire him.
Following the fatal shooting last month, Ayers apologized to Buffalo News for her phone conversation with Rogers during the shooting. She went on to say that Rogers’ story of what happened to local authorities had been changed’ multiple times.’
Ayers told a local news site, “I’m being vilified for one side of the story.”
The Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) Local 815, which supported Ayers during the hearing, has announced that it will file a grievance over his dismissal.
The emergency call center in Erie County receives 911 calls from both landlines and mobile phones on a regular basis. According to Poloncarz, dispatchers at the local center are normally taught to detect that if someone is whispering in a 911 call, the caller is most likely in danger.
He stated that he would share the transcript and recording of the 911 call in the aftermath of the shooting.
Despite the Committee on Open Government, which is under New York state’s governance, expressing the opinion that “911 tapes can be viewed as records compiled in the ordinary course of business and as such, should generally be subject to disclosure,” according to the Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press, First Assistant Erie County Attorney Jeremy Toh denied Poloncarz’s claims to the Buffalo News.
911 calls’shall not be made available’ to the public, according to Section 308.4 of New York county law.
Meanwhile, Payton Gendron, 18, the supermarket shooter, was indicted by a grand jury on charges of domestic terrorism motivated by hatred, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison, as well as 10 counts of first-degree murder.
If Gendron is convicted, the heinous nature of the shooting and the large number of victims will almost certainly result in a life sentence.
The death penalty is not enforced in New York. Adding a state terrorism charge, on the other hand, might have a stronger emotional impact and help authorities send a message about violent extremism.
Domestic Acts of Terrorism Motivated by Hate in the First Degree accuses Gendron of killing ‘because of the presumed race and/or color’ of his victims, according to the domestic terrorism allegation.
‘This individual was motivated by hatred for people he had never met for no reason other than the color of their skin,’ said Buffalo lawyer John Elmore, who represented the victims’ families Katherine ‘Kat’ Massey, 72, and Andre Mackniel, 53.
Elmore expressed his desire for a conviction on all counts.In the aftermath of a mass massacre targeting Mexicans at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, former Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed the domestic terrorism hate crime statute in August 2019. After an attack on a rabbi’s home in Munsey, New York, the ‘Josef Neumann Hate Crimes Domestic Terrorism Act’ was signed into law on April 3, 2020, and went into effect on November 1, 2020.
The law built on a prior domestic terrorism statute enacted in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which was primarily intended to combat international extremism.
Prosecutors said Gendron traveled three hours from his home in Conklin, New York, to Buffalo with the intent of killing as many black people as he could. He uploaded documents detailing his white supremacist views and how he had been planning the attack for months just before the attack.
The gunman opened fire on consumers at a Tops grocery in Buffalo on Saturday afternoon, brandishing an AR-15-style rifle he had recently acquired.
Eight customers, the store security officer, and a church deacon who drove shoppers to and from the store with their groceries were all charged with murder. The victims ranged in age from 32 to 86.
The shooting, which was followed 10 days later by a mass shooting inside a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school that murdered 19 children and two teachers, reignited a national debate about gun control.