Dispatcher Who Took the Tamir Rice 911 Call Has Resigned
Cleveland Police released documents Thursday confirming, Beth Mandl, the dispatcher who took the 9/11 call that sent Frank Gamback and Tim Loehmann to respond, has resigned. She was absent from her job since April, and on July 16th sent a letter to the department resigning. So if the Cleveland Police feel they did nothing wrong in this case, why did they not tell us this news when it happened? Why are we only hearing about this in Sepotember?
Ms. Mandl sent a one sentence letter saying, “I have enjoyed working here and I will miss you all.” Mandl said the job was stressful and spoke about quitting before she abandoned the post, according to a department letter. But unlike police who kill people, she was not paid during her absence. In the 9/11 call, she was told by the caller that the gun was “probably fake,” and that the male was “a juvenile.” Information she never relayed to the responding officers.
In 2008, Mandl was fired from her dispatcher job with Case Western Reserve University’s Police Department. About the same time, she was arrested and charged with bringing a gun to a bar. Obviously Cleveland police overlooked that in hiring her to dispatch in Cleveland. This leads me to ask, “Who is doing the hiring for the Cleveland Police?” Maybe the person doing that job should be re-evaluated?
Greater Cleveland CopBlock has been on the ground asking questions,, fundraising, and protesting the Tamir Rice shooting since it happened last November. Instead of getting answers, we in Cleveland have only been left with more questions. Officer Loehmann and Garmback, nor anyone else in the Cleveland Police Department have yet to be held accountable for this child’s death at their hands.
