Provo falls one step short

A lot of good things came out of the recent settlement between Provo City and the family of Scott Aston, who died last year because dispatchers apparently botched his 911 call for help. New procedures are in place, and dispatchers have a heightened awareness of the need to take each call seriously.

Before long, the city will have equipment allowing it to trace cell phone calls. The rest of the state will do the same, but Provo has a particular need because of the many college students there who use cell phones as their primary phones.

But the settlement fell short in one important area, and that concerns a timely notification of the public when public-safety problems occur.

This week, the city finally released documents related to Aston's case. Those documents included the results of an investigation the city ordered into its dispatch system by Ogden police. Until now, Provo officials had refused to release these documents because they said the city might have to prepare to defend itself against a lawsuit.

But that is not a legitimate reason for withholding public documents. If so, it could be used as an excuse to withhold just about anything related to any matter that held even the hint of controversy. In this case, the people of Provo, whose taxes fund public safety and whose lives depend on it, had a right to know immediately of the details of what went on. Instead, Provo did not even let Aston's family know about the dispatching errors for nearly two months. The public didn't find out until three months after that.

Thanks to dogged reporting, led by reporters at this newspaper, much of what came out in the documents released this week was already known. But it dribbled out piecemeal over several months.

The report did, however, add information about Provo's Communications Center Operations Policy manual, calling it "haphazard and disorganized," which may have contributed to the problems. It also shed light on just how sloppy the dispatchers were. When Aston called 911 on his cell phone and said he thought he was dying, the dispatchers did not take him seriously. They didn't ask his name or verify his address, nor did they note the name of his apartment complex, even though he gave it. At least one dispatcher went as far as to tell emergency workers Aston seemed to be fine.

As a result, emergency crews never located him. Four days later, Aston was found dead in his apartment, from causes that never were determined.

Now that documents have been released, it is clear Provo officials took this tragedy seriously and worked hard to implement changes to make sure it doesn't happen again. They also disciplined the dispatchers involved.

But they risked losing a large measure of public trust by withholding important information for almost a year. A new policy on immediate and honest disclosure would have made the resolution of the Aston case complete.