A 911 dispatcher accused of hanging up on a caller from a Buffalo supermarket during Saturday’s mass shooting could be fired. The unidentified dispatcher faces a disciplinary hearing later this month at which “termination will be sought,” according to a spokesman for Erie County, New York. The investigation was prompted by comments from Latisha Rogers, an office manager at the Tops supermarket who called 911 after the gunman began his rampage. “She was yelling at me, saying, ‘Why are you whispering? You don’t have to whisper,’” Rogers told The Buffalo News, “and I was telling her, ‘Ma’am, he’s still in the store. He’s shooting. I’m scared for my life. I don’t want him to hear me. Can you please send help?’ She got mad at me, hung up in my face.” Ten people, all of them Black, were killed in one of America’s worst racist mass killings. The Erie County spokesman said the dispatcher’s actions “had no bearing on the dispatching of the call”: Buffalo police said officers arrived at the store one minute after the first 911 call.
