“A cop just hit a pole,” she said.
“A cop hit a pole?” the dispatcher responded.
“Yeah, real bad,” she answered.
“Where?” the dispatcher asked.
“Riverside Avenue,” she said, before naming a nearby business.
“We’re sending help,” the dispatcher said, then asked rather plaintively, “Can you see if he’s OK?”
At about the same time, another caller, a man, reached a different emergency dispatcher.
“Hey, listen, we’re on Riverside Avenue and one of your cruisers just hit a telephone pole,” the man said.
“A cruiser?” the dispatcher answered. “A police cruiser?”
“Yeah,” the fellow said.
The caller said “the guy seems to be unconscious” behind the wheel. “He’s not responding,” the man said.
“Are you sure it’s a Bristol police cruiser?” the dispatcher asked.
“Listen, this isn’t a joke,” the caller said.
Digital audio files obtained by The Bristol Press through a Freedom of Information Act request provide a glimpse into the confusing minutes surrounding the on-duty crash that sent Mosback to St. Francis Hospital and knocked out power to thousands of residents for hours.
Mosback, who suffered only minor injuries, resigned from the force in September after an insurance company for the city declined to pay his workers compensation claim for medical bills after discovering a laboratory report that showed the officer had been intoxicated at the time of the late night, on-duty wreck.
Nothing in the hours of audio provided by the city – including dispatch messages, phone calls and other communications – proves that anyone knew Mosback had been drinking before totaling the 2008 Ford Crown Victoria.
Mosback, a 5-year veteran who has since asked for his job back, was briefly suspended for violating departmental policies in the accident but has not been charged with any crime. Two outside investigations are underway into the police department’s handling of the case.
The audio files, which encompass the first hour after the crash, do not disclose the names of the people talking. Most are calls among public safety personnel and dispatchers.
In addition to the Mosback crash, police also had to deal with another accident, a death and a young man who had a seizure, the ordinary background of many a night. Click here for the full story.
Here's a video I made to let everybody hear some of the audio:
If you go back to this posting, you can see some of the documents pertaining to the case. I have more to add there. Have to get to that.
*****
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
8 comments:
This kind of sounds like a Johnny Cash song (The Night Moback crashed his cruiser).
Does anyone actually care about this story anymore? BORING!
I care about finding out what really happened and if this type of behaviour is endemic to our Police Department.
Keep at it Steve, we do need to know
Concerned Citizen
You should. Next time it could be your family instead of a pole. Or you could get tazered by an out of control cop and have it covered up then do 3 years for interfering with an officer. Or have out of control cop shoot the floor in the PD, or have another hoarding guns and steeling them from evidence and have investigation covered by the states attorney
this story interested me... weeks ago. Now thats its being beat yto death by the bristol press, i could really care less about the end result.
I think the tapes clearly demonstrate that there was NO COVER UP by any officers that night. The dispatchers are shocked by the information they received and subsequent calls from officers at the hospital show genuine concern over Mosback's condition. There was not any attempt to sync stories, no veiled references to intoxication, nothing nefarious at all.
If there was a big cover up by all the officers on scene, and on duty that night, I'm sure someone would've slipped and said something to indicate so. The fact that there is at least an hour of tapes with no such reference clearly supports that conclusion.
Let me ammend my remark from November 6, 2010 8:47 AM.
Although this story is boring, it's outstanding that you are keeping the heat on this.
Don't let it go.
You're an asset to the community (albeit an ass___ sometimes too).
3:22 - how do we know that you are not one of the officers in question?
let the investigation dictate the outcome rather than your whining whimpers.
2:33: I assure you I am not. I agree, let's have the investigation and let the chips fall where they may. But, the audio tapes are a large piece of, in this case, exculpatory evidence. I think they foreshadow the outcome but if I am wrong, so be it.
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