Milwaukee 911 operators on leave after delayed response to home invasion

MILWAUKEE - The director of the City of Milwaukee's 911 call center admitted his team dropped the ball when employees did not dispatch police or fire resources to a battery-in-progress earlier this week.

Tony Bueno has led the city's Department of Emergency Communications since it was created in February 2025.

New computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system

What we know:

With the implementation of a new computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, the city restructured its dispatch system so that calls are first received by universal call takers (UCTs), who then work to get accurate and pertinent information before assigning the call to the police or fire dispatchers for proper resources. 

Previously, calls went right to police and fire dispatchers who often had to reroute the calls to the other departments. 

On Monday morning, when two call takers received two 911 calls from a third-party answering service employee detailing what they believed was an immediate threat to a 99-year-old woman's life near 14th & Cudahy, the calls ended with the takers telling the employee they were working on it.

911 recordings

What we know:

FOX6 News obtained all three 911 recordings via open records request.

"It sounds like he is kicking an elderly woman while they're down on the floor," the third-party answering service employee is heard telling the call taker on the second 911 call.

A short time later, the employee patches live audio through so the call taker can hear it.

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"Shut the [expletive] up," a man can be heard saying. "I'm going to beat the [expletive] out of you."

The call taker asked the employee if the feed she heard was coming from an emergency pendant — a device that enables emergency response with the push of a button. The employee said she didn't know, adding the call was routed to her from an overseas operator.

"Ma'am, are you there," the call taker is heard asking. "We have a call placed for service. I will go ahead and try to give it a quick call back just to see if anybody answers."

It's unclear if that call ever came.

No police or fire employees responded to the scene, just north of Layton, until after the woman called 911 herself at 7:51 a.m. telling them she'd just been the victim of the crime.

Internal investigation

Dig deeper:

The Department of Emergency Communications launched an internal investigation and placed the two call takers on administrative leave.

Bueno told FOX6 News Thursday the two employees have not yet been interviewed. They are given a 10-day period before being questioned.

FOX6's Sam Kraemer sat down with Bueno for an interview on what happened, the status of the investigation, the operations of his department and how it moves forward. That included a question on whether the call taker position is considered an entry level position.

What they're saying:

"It is. And unfortunately, I will say that that is the hardest position in this department. And by far, I've held every position in a call center and that is the most stressful position. You, a lot of people, wash out because they can't handle that stress. just knowing that the next phone that rings, you don't know what's going to be there. Is it going to be something simple about a garbage pickup, or is it going to be somebody, holding their loved one together? You never know," Bueno said.

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"Well, then I would ask, why is the most stressful job an entry-level position," Kraemer asked.

"Yeah, that's just the nature of the beast. There have been, within the industry, there's been attempts to start people out at a dispatch level, but that doesn't really prepare you for the dispatching," Bueno said. "You don't get a sense for how urgent it is to get people out and get people in route to the call. So, yeah, it's a hard thing to do. We just need to make sure that we give them the resources we have."

Bueno said he is not leading the investigation. His operations manager is handling it.

While the investigation is in its early stages, Bueno said he believes the call takers had enough information to elevate the call to require an immediate response from police and fire.

"So I'm going to try not to, assume anything, but at least from the outset, it appeared that relevant information was available to indicate that there was something happening, it was in progress, and that some of them was in danger or being assaulted. I think that is apparent in the call," Bueno said. "Now, there might be reasons why they took a different action. I don't know, we'll wait for that. But at least having that information, that should be pretty straightforward that we can hear a call. We know that there's somebody presently in danger and that call should have received a higher response, an immediate response, and immediate dispatch. So, we dropped the ball there."

Call takers classify the incoming calls on a priority scale of 0-9. Calls ranked 0, 1 and 2 are considered the highest priority and require immediate dispatch of police and fire.

The call takers labeled the two 911 calls Monday as a welfare check, which measures a level 3 priority, the highest level call that does not require immediate dispatch.

FOX6 News is looking to speak with more employees in the center to gain a better understanding of the system, working conditions and call pressures. To aid in our reporting, please contact FOX6's Sam Kraemer by emailing him at Sam.Kraemer@FOX.com. You can remain anonymous.

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