Should Provo 911 send a call for help?

Ogden's review of Aston's call found the dispatcher failed to ask Aston his name and failed to verify his address properly, among other errors.

Some actual examples of problems are included in Ferre's memos. Geslison said each is an example of human error, not inadequate staffing.

• In April 2003, a dispatcher failed to send an ambulance to a medical call because she missed information being relayed by people on the scene.

• About that same time, dispatchers mistakenly coached a caller through CPR on someone who was choking. The person died.

• An officer called for backup, but because "a newer unqualified dispatcher" was working in a "short-staff situation," she mistook the officer's call number and sent backup to the wrong officer.

• A dispatcher sent an ambulance to the wrong address because she was handling two lines and monitoring the police scanner traffic and failed to verify the address where help was needed.

Goodbye

"When I left, those poor dispatchers were working so much overtime they were exhausted," Ferre said. "No one could get vacation time. They were just burned-out people. They were working with brand-new people who had no business being on the radio. When that's all you have, you learn to work with it."

She said she grew tired of "fighting the whole system by myself," a feeling that grew after the city settled with the Aston family for $220,000.

"That was our leverage," she said. "When I saw it would settle, I saw nothing would change. I'm kind of a perfectionist. Throughout my career I was constantly improving things and took pride in the fact we were the best. As we went downhill and I no longer could say we were the best, it was tough."

Geslison and Bolda dispute Ferre's representations.

"It's not an accurate description," Bolda said of Ferre's depiction of the state of the dispatch center when she left. "And prior to the day she left, she was the manager of the dispatch center."

"So," Geslison added, "what did she do about it?"

Provo officials say they are doing the best they can and that their best is good enough. They don't have supervisors on hand 24 hours a day, but they try to have experienced hands on deck at all times.

"We're trying to spread around our (seven) senior dispatchers throughout the shifts so when we have a newly qualified person who has passed her training, she has senior-dispatcher help to assist and monitor the activities of those newer dispatchers," Bolda said.

Geslison said that at the most critical staffing moments in the past several years, Ferre declined to fill in, something he expects of other supervisors in the police department.