Two days before a gunman killed four people and injured several others in Philadelphia on July 4, the same shooter was on the same street and fired the same assault rifle. Yet, Philadelphia police sent to the first incident went to the wrong address after a woman called 911 to report hearing gunfire. The department has opened an investigation into why the officers went to the wrong location. Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said police received one 911 call on July 2 around 2 a.m. for a report of a shooting on the 1600 block of 56th Street. Officers were instead sent to North 56th Street, about three miles away from the crime scene on South 56th Street, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The reason for that error was not immediately clear Officials suggested it could have happened if a dispatcher manually entered location data into their system. When officers arrived on North 56th Street, they found no evidence of a shooting, and a dispatcher reached back out to the caller, who officials said did not provide enough information to allow them to realize they had gone to the wrong neighborhood. The woman who placed the call said that she heard back from a dispatcher, but said she hung up after being placed on hold because she didn’t think authorities were taking her call seriously. She attributed that mistrust of police to personal experience: Two of her sons were recently killed, one in 2021, another in 2022, and neither case has been solvedThe implications of the mishandled 911 response are now at the heart of the investigation. The July 4 shooting killed five people, wounded two others and two people were injured by shards of glass.
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