For 15 minutes, and possibly longer, DC police urgently requested EMS to Connecticut Avenue and N Street NW in the Dupont Circle Neighborhood. An officer rhythmically compressed the chest of 22-year-old Ronnie Massey early Sunday morning, trying to revive the shooting victim. Despite multiple priority radio transmissions from police saying DC Fire & EMS crews were needed immediately, emergency medical help did not arrive promptly. Both radio traffic and DC government sources indicate this significant delay was fueled by confusion among dispatchers inside DC911.

According to the sources, the Office of Unified Communications (OUC) has discovered that a police dispatcher combined the electronic dispatch records for another shooting five minutes earlier with the Connecticut Avenue and N Street incident. The earlier shooting was about five blocks north. It was also on Connecticut Avenue, in the 1700 block, near R Street.

The joining of the two calls into one apparently failed to immediately alert fire and EMS dispatchers that help was needed at multiple locations on Connecticut Avenue. This left the gravely wounded Massey with no firefighters, EMTs or medics assigned for an extended period. Shortly after they finally arrived, Ronnie Massey was pronounced dead at the scene.

The timeline

According to DC Police, the first shooting occurred at 2:55 a.m. At 2:59, DC911 dispatched Engine 9, Medic 21 and EMS 7 to the 1700 block of Connecticut Avenue NW.

Police say the second shooting, reported initially as the 1200 block of Connecticut (between M and N), occurred around 3:00. After police arrived, an officer began CPR on Massey. DC Police were able to say later on Sunday that the two shootings were separate and unrelated.

The first-time fire and EMS dispatchers acknowledged there was a shooting victim at or near Connecticut and N was at 3:10. At that time, a fire/EMS dispatcher told Engine 9 that the location of their shooting was changed to the 1200 block of Connecticut Avenue NW. With the calls being merged by the police dispatcher, instead of appearing in the dispatch computer as a separate shooting, 1200 Connecticut initially showed as an updated address for Engine 9’s call in the 1700 block. But there was a problem that prevented Engine 9 from responding to the new location. They were already treating a man who had been shot. They had a victim but no police at 1700 Connecticut, while police had a victim in cardiac arrest with no fire and EMS in the 1200 block.

It wasn’t until three minutes later, at 3:13, that fire and EMS dispatchers reported for the first time that CPR was being performed on a shooting victim at Connecticut and N. Despite these two reports of shooting victims at locations other than the 1700 block of Connecticut Avenue, the radio traffic does not show additional fire and EMS units being dispatched.

At 3:15, dispatchers finally sent help, but not to the 1200 block of Connecticut Avenue or Connecticut and N. AMR 47 and Medic 1 were dispatched to the 1700 block of Connecticut Avenue, where Engine 9, Medic 21, and EMS 7 were already treating a shooting victim.

A minute later, OUC corrected this and redirected AMR 47 and Medic 1, along with other units, to the 1200 block of Connecticut Avenue. That dispatch was sixteen minutes after DC Police said the second shooting occurred. Sources tell STATter911 that during much of that time, DC Police kept urgently calling for EMS as an officer continued to pump Ronnie Massey’s chest.

Adding to this chaotic situation was a second person who was wounded during the shooting in the 1200 block and police concerns about the possibility of additional shots being fired. People who have heard the encrypted police radio traffic not publicly available say things were quite intense on the Second District radio channel. The DC Police helicopter known as Falcon 1 came up on another channel to ask that a message be relayed to the 2D dispatcher. The 2D channel had been too busy for them to get a message in.

What it all means

It’s not unusual to get multiple calls for the same shooting with victims scattered to different locations. Shootings do occur in the Dupont Circle area, though it’s not a frequent source of gunfire in the District of Columbia. My own knowledge of DC left me very surprised that police reported these were actually two separate and unrelated shootings within five blocks and as many minutes on Connecticut Avenue. My point is that it might be hard to completely fault a dispatcher for thinking, “How could these not be part of the same incident?”

That doesn’t excuse a 911 center for losing more than 15 minutes in sending EMS to a gunshot victim whose heart has stopped. A lot of questions remain:

• Did the dispatcher follow the correct procedure when merging the two calls and did they do it at the proper time?
• Did fire/EMS dispatchers immediately react to the new addresses in the computer provided by police dispatchers, or was there a delay? In other words, OUC has a long history of dispatchers failing to promptly read and react to address updates and other crucial information and response notes. Did that occur here?
• Where were the supervisors on both the police and fire/EMS sides of the 911 center? Could they have done more to make sure the ball wasn’t dropped, delaying help for a dying man?

For it to take 15 or more minutes to dispatch EMS to such a dire emergency means something went very wrong inside the Office of Unified Communications. Without the computer timeline, 911 calls, and police radio traffic, I admit that I can’t give you a lot of answers.

Here’s what I do know with great certainty. This is another cardiac arrest where OUC didn’t promptly send fire and EMS. In previous cases that STATter911 has documented, OUC Director Heather McGaffin has failed to live up to her 2023 pre-confirmation pledge of transparency about the agency’s mistakes.

One of the major reasons 911 has failed under the three terms of Mayor Muriel Bowser is that when bad things happened, the mayor always allowed OUC to investigate itself. STATter911 has proven those investigations were more about covering up than telling the truth. Lessons were never learned. Policies were never changed. Accountability remains virtually nonexistent.

Systems and people failed Sunday morning. Will the city’s current leaders just shrug as they always do? Will someone in the upper reaches of the DC government’s chain of command, as has happened previously, try to make the case that the victim would have died anyway, so the errors don’t matter? Or, for once, will a real leader in the Bowser administration step forward, say this shouldn’t happen, explain exactly what went wrong, and outline what is needed to fix it?

With a little more than two months left before there’s a new mayor, I realize it’s not likely the Bowser administration will finally take responsibility for the mess they’ve made after 12 years of running DC911. But here’s one hope. It’s that the incoming administration will take note of what happened Sunday morning. That they will do the investigation and get the answers about Ronnie Massey’s final minutes and why DC’s skilled paramedics weren’t promptly sent in an effort to revive him. Answers that could help a new mayor prevent this from happening again, while creating a 911 center that is worthy of the District of Columbia and its people.