A former Houston 911 operator was sentenced to 10 days in jail this week for hanging up on thousands of people calling for help, according to prosecutors.
Crenshanda Williams, 44, was found guilty Wednesday of interference with emergency telephone calls. She will spend 10 days in jail and 18 months on probation.
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Williams was a 911 operator for a year-and-a-half before she was caught in August 2016, according to court documents. The Houston Chronicle reports that she hung up on calls for help during robberies and homicides.
Williams was caught after a monthly audit in which Houston Emergency Center officials noticed that many of her calls lasted less than 20 seconds. Prosecutors said that Williams hung up on thousands of short calls.
"The citizens of Harris County rely on 911 operators to dispatch help in their time of need," Assistant District Attorney Lauren Reeder said in a statement. "When a public servant betrays the community's trust and breaks the law, we have a responsibility to hold them criminally accountable."
Investigators said that Williams once hung up on a man who called after his wife collapsed and lost consciousness. An ambulance arrived after a different operator answered a second call and the woman survived.
Williams also hung up on a robbery in progress, according to investigators. A man called after an armed robber entered a convenience store where he was buying lottery tickets. The man called 911 and was hung up on by Williams, according to police. The man called a second time and got a different operator, but by time police arrived, the store manager had been shot and killed.
In another incident, a man said he called to report two vehicles racing on a highway where people had been killed speeding weeks earlier. Court documents said Williams answered the call, and before the man could finish explaining, she said, "Ain't nobody got time for this. For real," and hung up, according to KTRK.
Williams' attorney, Franklin Bynum, said the case revealed "systematic" problems at the Houston Emergency Center.
“She was going through a hard time in her life, and she was a poor performing worker at the Houston Emergency Center,” Bynum said. “But punishing her doesn’t do anything to fix the problems that still exist at the emergency center.”