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Florida 911 Supervisor Was Playing Netflix During Call About Shooting

The call was mislabeled, leading to a 34-minute delay in it being dispatched to an officer.

A Florida 911 dispatch supervisor was watching a movie on Netflix while on the job, an internal affairs investigation found. Supervisor Julie Vidaud was watching I Am Mother when a call came in from Guadalupe Herrera, whose car windshield had just been shattered in a drive-by shooting that was later found to be a premeditated murder attempt. The call, however, was labeled a “suspicious incident,” rather than a priority, causing a 34-minute delay in it being dispatched to an officer, investigators found. After waiting for a responding officer and calling back 16 minutes later, Herrera eventually drove herself to the police station. “It was a very hard situation,” she told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It was a drive-by shooting. My windshield was shattered. Nobody showed up.”

When investigators looked into why the erroneous call label wasn’t caught by a supervisor, they discovered on Vidaud’s computer that the movie was playing during the call. The supervisor said she played movies in the background at work, but wasn’t watching the film at the time of the call. The two dispatchers who handled Herrera’s call have been fired. Vidaud is facing discipline for “failure to supervise,” and is expected to receive a two-day suspension without pay, police said. The agency now prohibits any media streaming during shifts, the Sentinel reports.