Publication Date: Friday, May 28, 2004
Police criticized for communications breakdown
Police criticized for communications breakdown
(May 28, 2004) Officers failed to notify neighborhood of mountain lion's presence
by Bill D'Agostino
Linda Furrier is still having nightmares about the day in early May when a mountain lion roamed through her neighborhood.
For a half an hour starting at around noon, Furrier's small children played in her yard on Walnut Drive on May 17, even though police knew the 99-pound cougar was recently spotted nearby. By noon, police had been scouring the neighborhood for the wild animal for more than seven hours.
At a public forum to discuss the contentious event on Wednesday morning, Furrier chastised police for not notifying her about the threat. It was the family's black Labrador, Kelsey, who finally spotted the lion and chased it up a tree, where police ultimately shot and killed it.
During the forum, Police Chief Lynne Johnson acknowledged the incident was so "dynamic" she forgot the importance of continually communicating with neighbors like Furrier. After the second sighting of the puma at 5:40 a.m., police should have used the community's telephone alert system to notify residents, Johnson admitted.
"I apologize for that and take full responsibility," the chief said. She added the system was being activated when police finally spotted the lion sleeping in a tree, and shot it at 1:05 p.m.
The city bought the system -- which is capable of calling hundreds of residents an hour with short, specific messages -- after nighttime floods damaged hundreds of Palo Alto homes in the same neighborhood in 1998, and the city got similar criticism for not alerting the public fast enough.
Using multiple phone lines, the automated system can send hundreds of messages per hour to specific areas of the city. The database is updated monthly and contains both listed and unlisted phone numbers but not cell phone numbers-- although that is currently being negotiated with cell-phone providers, according to Sheryl Contois, the police's technical services coordinator.
It was intended to replace the decades-old air raid sirens, which Fire Chief Ruben Grijalva said is outdated and not useful.
"If you hear a siren go off and you live in tornado country, you know it means tornado," Grijalva said. "If you hear a siren go off in Palo Alto, you don't know if it means a wild-land fire or a chemical event or a terrorist event or a mountain lion. The phone dial allows us to give out specific information."
That news disappointed Millie Nelson, who's lived on Newell Road since the 1940s, and was one of the three-dozen people who showed up Wednesday morning.
"Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but nothing gets your attention like a siren," Nelson said after the meeting.
Replacing the old sirens would have required adding 50 to 60 automobile-sized systems on telephone polls, Grijalva said.
During the meeting, the police also recounted the events leading up to the shooting. The police department's decision received intense criticism, including a note that called the police murderers. The letter was signed, "a teacher at Gunn High School." The police have received around 500 e-mails and 250 phone calls, Johnson said.
Although the meeting did partially re-ignite that debate (Johnson said police would always choose people over animals), neighborhood leader Karen White, who organized the forum, intended the discussion to center on new ways to notify residents in the event of an emergency.
White is the president of Duveneck/St. Francis Neighborhood Association. Using neighborhood e-mail listservs to disseminate detailed messages quickly was one idea floated during the meeting.
"That's very doable," Johnson said.
The Duveneck/St. Francis listserv was wild with news of the mountain lion on May 17.
At 12:40 p.m., 20 minutes before the lion was shot, White wrote that the mountain lion had been located in a neighborhood yard. "Area residents should keep their pets indoors," she warned.
But Furrier and others at the meeting argued that police should first use more "common-sense" techniques to alert residents, especially the loudspeakers on police cars.
"All of us are not online all day," Duveneck/St. Francis resident Mary Schaefer reiterated.
Neighborhood leaders added that e-mail would only be used as one additional way for police to contact residents. Some homes are set back from the street, or so well insulated from sound, that even bullhorns are not foolproof, some noted.
"There are no panaceas," Barron Park Neighborhood Association President Doug Moran said. "There are no silver bullets."
"We need all sorts of back-up systems," Midtown Residents Association President Annette Ashton said.
Staff writer Bill D'Agostino can be e-mailed at bdagostino@paweekly.com
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