Latisha Rogers, the assistant office manager at Tops Friendly Market for 13 years, gave a tearful account of the mass shooting at a memorial service on Sunday. The alleged gunman, Payton Gendron, targeted the predominately Black neighborhood supermarket.
Rogers shared that she attempted to call the police and was hung up on during the active shooting.
“I called 911, I go through the whole operator and everything, the dispatcher comes on and I’m whispering to her and I said, ‘Miss, please send help to 1275 Jefferson, there is a shooter in the store,'” she told WGRZ. “She proceeded in a very nasty tone and says, ‘I can’t hear you, why are you whispering, you don’t have to whisper, they can’t hear you.'”
“I was telling her, ‘Ma”am, he’s still in the store,” Rogers said, according to The Buffalo News. “He’s shooting. I’m scared for my life. I don’t want him to hear me. Can you please send help?’ She got mad at me, hung up in my face.”
The assistant office manager called her boyfriend and told him to call 911, The Buffalo News reports.
“I felt that lady left me to die yesterday,” Latisha said.
The public safety communicator is now on administrative leave.
An internal investigation is underway, and the operator is scheduled to attend a disciplinary hearing on May 30. Peter Anderson, a spokesperson for Erie County, said that “termination will be sought,” according to The New York Times.
The dispatcher had an eight-year career with the county, Anderson said in a statement, according to HuffPost. He also revealed that the employee’s action “had no bearing on the dispatching of the call” and the police responded to the call in approximately 30 seconds.
Buffalo’s police commissioner, Joseph Gramaglia, said that an emergency call was received at 2:30 p.m., and the police arrived at the scene at 2:31 p.m., according to the Times.
Blavity contacted the Buffalo Police Department and the Erie County’s Sheriff’s Office requesting a training guideline on the protocol for 911 operators when receiving calls from people in distress. After 20 minutes of being redirected, Blavity was transferred to APCO International, which creates the national protocol guideline for all emergency dispatchers. We reached out to the organization but have not received a response.
Madison Ruffo, a spokeswoman for CSEA Region 6, the public employees’ union that represents the dispatcher, said the organization’s policy is not to make any formal comments on its members during disciplinary matters, according to the Times.
