San Jose Mercury News
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Last week, Alameda officials made public police and fire records in connection with the Memorial Day suicide-by-drowning of Raymond Zack on Crown Memorial Beach.
The fire documents don’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. Essentially, firefighters didn’t go in after Zack because they hadn’t been trained in water rescue.
However, the police 911 tapes and the timeline are revealing -- though not for the reasons police hoped they would be.
Police officials have said the records show that they made every effort to rescue the mentally ill man who had waded out into the water, fully clothed, up to his neck. That Alameda dispatchers called four agencies in search of a boat capable of entering shallow water because they did not have one. They were turned down.
Yet police records show a surprising lack of urgency on the part of both the dispatchers and the cops on the beach. No one seemed to grasp the seriousness of the situation -- even after Zack was spotted floating face down.
The first 911 call came in at 11:30 a.m. from an Alameda resident named Sharon Brunetti. She had been walking on the beach when Dolores Berry, Zack’s 84-year-old stepmother, flagged her down. Berry had said her son was in the water and suicidal.
Brunetti passed the phone to a distraught Berry. “He’s out in the water right now. He’s trying to drown himself,” Berry told the dispatcher. “Hurry up. He’s way out there. He doesn’t swim. Please hurry.” Police and firefighters arrived within four minutes.
Alameda police contacted the Coast Guard, but were told the agency couldn’t send a boat for 40 minutes.
True, Alameda did begin to make calls to neighboring agencies to see if they could send a boat faster. But asking if a boat is available and clearly stating that you need immediate search and rescue assistance are not the same things.
At 11:37, Alameda police called the Alameda County Regional Emergency Communications Center:
“Hi, this is Alameda. Do you guys have a boat?”
Answer: “No not in Alameda. In San Leandro. We can contact the Coast Guard.”
If your house was burning down, would you call the fire department and say, “Hi, do you have a truck available?”
Alameda County fire officials said that Alameda never asked them to send a boat. They only asked if Alameda County Fire had one.
Meanwhile, out on the beach, police and firefighters were watching Zack through binoculars. And, in turn, at least 80 beachgoers were watching them watch Zack, wondering why they weren’t sending someone into the water to try and rescue him. Or at least try to talk him in.
Police and firefighters were waiting on the Coast Guard, which finally arrived at noon, but provided no assistance because its boat could not navigate the shallow water.
At 11:37, an officer reported that Zack was “still in the same place with his head above water.”
One minute later, “Still visual, same place head above water.”
But at 12:05, an officer advises that they “may have lost sight of him.”
An Alameda resident called 911 to say that, from his second-floor apartment, he could see a man floating face down.
At 12:19, one officer radios another: “you still have a visual on him correct?”
Response: "... affirm. He looks like he’s floating in a little bit.”
Five minutes later, an officer phones in, asking the dispatcher to call Alameda County Search and Rescue for a “salvage.”
That means to recover a body.
The dispatcher seemed confused: “What you said they are called, search and rescue?”
The officer on the beach then explained how to reach the search and rescue unit.
During this comedy of errors, an officer reports from the scene: “We got a volunteer that is going to go into the water and do the recovery.”
By “volunteer,” he meant the young woman who was so disgusted by police and firefighters standing around watching Zack float to shore that she jumped into the water and brought the nearly 300-pound man in herself.
Again, with zero help from those whose job it is to save people’s lives.
Officers called dispatch to request screens “to prop out here for privacy at the scene.”
Bear in mind, scores of people had been standing around watching this fiasco.
At 12:28, an officer reported, “the civilian is bringing the subject in.”
Two minutes later, the Alameda Fire Department began CPR on Zack.
We know the rest of the tragic story.
Copyright 2011 San Jose Mercury News
All Rights Reserved