Today the Santa Cruz Police Department received a number of inquiries from concerned citizens and community leaders regarding a report in the local media that there had been at least one call to 911 in the days leading up to the murder of Shannon Collins that may have been unattended to. The media report cited a local resident in the story who claimed that the department did not "contact him" in regards to his call about the alleged suspect, Charles Edwards III. Our agency reached out to the 911 (dispatch) center to conduct research on these claims and the following is a release sent out by the dispatch center.
Deputy Chief Rick Martinez
**********
May 10, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Dennis Kidd, Interim General Manager
Santa Cruz Regional 9-1-1
www.scr911.org
Regional 9-1-1 Research into Community Calls Regarding Recent Homicide
This morning the Santa Cruz Regional 9-1-1 was contacted by the Santa Cruz Police Department to assist them in researching recent claims by community members that they had called the police department regarding the alleged suspect in Monday’s murder, Charles Edwards. SCPD asked us to research several names and phone numbers in an effort to substantiate or refute claims that 9-1-1 had been called in the days leading up to Monday’s tragic event. As a result of this request, Regional 9-1-1 performed an extensive
search on the phone numbers and individuals claiming to have called dispatch (which includes the non-emergency SCPD phone line). This search included all calls for service in the area of the incident for the last week, all calls from the individuals claiming to have contacted our dispatch center, calls with descriptors similar to Mr. Edwards, calls that were coded for suspicious persons and more.
For background, when 9-1-1 is called, the phone number that it is being called from is captured in the 9-1-1 database. This number is captured regardless of whether the number is “blocked” or “unlisted” or coming from a cellphone. In researching phone numbers associated with Don Adams, who has stated he called the police about the suspect, we were unable to locate any such call from known phone numbers (or addresses) for Mr. Adams. We were able to locate a call for service that Mr. Adams placed on May 3, 2012 for a
situation that was not related to this incident. Whereas Mr. Adams is a frequent caller to 9-1-1 reporting situations in his neighborhood, we continue to urge him, and others, to call 9-1-1 anytime they feel like a police response is necessary.
Furthermore, we researched our non-emergency phone system for those same phone numbers and were unable to locate any related incident.
