911 dispatchers have hugely important jobs, as quick thinking and the ability to keep a cool head under immense pressure can often be the difference between life and death. And then there’s Crenshanda Williams, who was employed as a telecommunicator with the Houston Emergency Center starting in July 2014, who has been charged with interference with emergency telephone calls because she basically didn’t feel like helping people.
Williams first began being investigated when supervisors noticed an “abnormally high” occurrence of short calls lasting less than 20 seconds, and it was later determined that she had hung up on thousands of calls between October 2015 and March 2016 alone. And at least one of those calls did cost someone their life, as Williams was found to have hung up on a witness at a gas station robbery, audibly sighing at the caller before she put the phone down. That person had to call back a second time, and by the time police arrived on the scene, a person was already dead.
And it only gets worse from there.
In another incident, on March 13, a security guard called 911 to report two motorists driving recklessly at high speed as they raced each other on I-45 South. Again, police say, Williams was the 911 operator. The call was terminated before the guard could fully state his name.
In describing a recording of the call, investigators say Williams remained on the line after terminating the call and can be heard to say, “Ain’t nobody got time for this. For real.”
When finally questioned about her behavior, Williams very simply told police that “she often hangs up on calls that have not been connected because she did not want to talk to anyone at that time.”
(Via Click 2 Houston, CW39)