HOUSTON – Two supervisors at the Houston Emergency Center have been reprimanded after a former Houston 911 operator allegedly hung up on hundreds of emergency callers for months before being discovered.
Crenshanda Williams, 43, was charged with two counts of interfering with an emergency call.
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Prosecutors said more charges could be filed since more people have come forward claiming they were also victims.
During an audit, the Houston Emergency Center found Williams purposely hung up on hundreds of callers from October 2015 to March 2016.
“We were able to narrow down about 825 calls where someone was calling 911 and not emergency line that she hung up on that person and they called back within five minutes.” said Claire Morneau, with the Harris County district attorney's office.
The two charges stem from one call reporting an armed robbery at a convenience store, in which the owner died, and another call about street racing.
Prosecutors said Williams admitted to investigators that she often hung up on callers if she didn't feel like talking to them.
They said in one recording, after the call was disconnected, Williams can be heard saying, “Ain't nobody got time for that, for real.”
Williams went to work at the Houston Emergency Center in July 2014, but investigators didn’t become aware of the hundreds of dropped calls until spring of this year.
HEC officials say her supervisors should have caught the problem much earlier. Two employees have been reprimanded and put on probationary status for one year. Joe Laud with HEC says changes have been made in policies and procedures to try to insure it doesn’t happen again.
Williams is no longer employed at the Houston Emergency Center. She faces trial on two Class A misdemeanors. She could face up to a year in jail, and a $4,000 fine for each if convicted.
