9-1-1 Abuse "Poster Boy"

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A Charlotte city councilman on Tuesday defended his verbal attack on city 911 dispatchers, saying he shouted and swore at them because he feared he might be the target of a terrorist bomb.

In two calls to 911 Monday night, council member Al Rousso cursed several times at dispatchers and threatened to report them to the City Council.

Rousso said his actions were understandable in light of recent violence directed at public institutions and public officials, including the truck bomb that killed 168 people at a federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
"The situation demanded that I use the type of language I used to get some action," Rousso said Tuesday. "The situation required drastic action."
Rousso said he became concerned when he returned to his car and found a van parked so close to the driver's side that he couldn't get into his vehicle. It was about 7:30 p.m.

Rousso asked the parking attendant to call 911. On the dispatch tape, which was released Tuesday, the attendant reported that "Councilman Rousso ... wants a cop down here. . . . A van hit his car."
Five minutes later, Rousso himself called 911.

He loudly and repeatedly demanded that a police car be sent to the parking garage. He said he believed a "suspicious" van parked next to his car might have a bomb in it.
"This could be a bomb the night before election!" he shouted at a dispatcher. "I'm not taking any chances!"

In a second call nine minutes later, Rousso came on the line and told an apparently puzzled dispatcher that the bomb already had gone off.
"At 7:30 we called you about a bomb scare -- at the Carillon parking lot -- to get a police car over here right away," Rousso said, without identifying himself. "Twenty minutes ago. Don't worry about it -- the bomb went off and killed about 400 people, so don't worry about it, OK?"

"Sir, what is your name?" asked the dispatcher, who was not the same one Rousso had spoken to before.
"None of your ... business!" Rousso shouted, his voice echoing in the parking garage. "Gimme a police car, will you? Connect me with a police car right now!"
"Sir, what is your name?" the dispatcher repeated.
"I don't give a damn! Gimme a -- Councilman Al Rousso, that's who it is, from the City Council. Gimme a police car right now! ....it!"

Rousso said Tuesday that he wasn't angry during his calls to 911.
"No. I was voicing my true opinion," he said. "The situation looked very, very suspicious."

Police arrived on the scene about 16 minutes after the first call from the parking attendant. A patrol officer and a sergeant spent about two hours on the scene. They wrote up the incident as an accident, based on Rousso's car door being dented.
Police did not search the van, and the owner drove it away at some point after Rousso and the police left. A spokesman for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said Rousso apparently did nothing wrong. Spokesman Keith Bridges also said that Rousso got no special treatment.

Council member Lynn Wheeler said it's her experience that the police "don't cut slack to City Council members. In fact, I feel they're sort of on the watch for us."

Wheeler said she would not criticize Rousso's actions, although she agreed that it would be "a good question" as to what would happen to an average citizen who acted as Rousso did.

Rousso was unapologetic.
"All I can tell you is, I thought something very bad was going to happen. I'm a very cautious person.
"It's a story that I didn't want anything to happen that would kill some people. That's the story, my friend."

(c) 1998, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).
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• 9-1-1 tape transcript
• What I did....first....