Our view: 911 call raises questions

Published 11:03 am Wednesday, January 19, 2011

If a Murray County 911 operator really did make a false call to 911 that resulted in a potentially deadly confrontation between a Whitfield sheriff’s deputy and a homeowner, then she ought to be fired from her job and prosecuted.

That is an easy call to make.

That this incident happened in May, and it wasn’t until Sunday’s story in The Daily Citizen that the public knew about it, also suggests that more of an effort needs to be made in Murray County to be more forthcoming to the public when incidents like this happen.

If you didn’t read Sunday’s story, the facts are:

Murray County 911 operator Dana Johnson calls Murray County 911 last May to report that there is a party going on in Whitfield County where underage drinking is taking place. She tells the 911 operator her name but says she wants to remain anonymous as far as anyone knowing where the information came from.

The 911 operator in Murray County passes the information on to 911 in Whitfield County, which sends deputies to investigate.

Upon arriving at the Tibbs Bridge Road home of Garett Beaver, the deputy and Beaver nearly shoot each other before the deputy identifies himself. It was determined by the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office that the report was false and that there had not been a party at Beaver’s house that night.

That’s where it might have all ended, but Beaver decided to do some investigating himself.

What he found out is that Johnson is a friend of his ex-wife, Karen McDonald, and that it was McDonald who passed along the information to Johnson at a social function that Johnson used as the basis for her call to Murray County 911.

Johnson told The Daily Citizen she was “acting in good faith” and relayed the information from Beaver’s ex-wife, believing it to be true.

The incident is being reviewed by the district attorney’s office and it could be presented to the Murray County grand jury, said District Attorney Kermit McManus.

Johnson was suspended from her job for five days without pay. That suspension did not happen until early October, however, and only came after Beaver started demanding some action be taken.

We did not know about the incident until Beaver brought it to our attention earlier this month.

We certainly believe there is enough evidence for this case to be presented to a grand jury. Johnson is a trained 911 operator and to simply pass along information from a person who obviously did not have firsthand knowledge of what was happening at Beaver’s house strains believability. If there is any evidence that a false call was made to 911 then Johnson should be prosecuted for it.

This case also begs the question of why nothing was done in Murray County between May and October to punish Johnson. At the very least, a serious lapse in judgment was made, and at the worst a law was broken.

That should have triggered some sort of internal investigation and a suspension in May for Johnson, not October when Beaver started asking questions about it. Additionally, someone in Murray County law enforcement should have stepped up and told the public what was happening.

That way there would be no second guessing their decisions and Beaver’s name would have been cleared.

The right response to any such situation is to let the light shine on it, not try to hide that it happened. But that is what it looks like happened in this case.

Like Johnson, it looks like Murray officials made the wrong choice.

The Daily Citizen