DEPUTY FIRED FOR 911 DELAYS.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - A Lancaster sheriff's station desk deputy was forced to resign over a 2003 incident in which the deputy delayed sending help to a 911 caller whose estranged boyfriend then stabbed her to death, a recently released report says.

The deputy later that night placed a caller reporting a burglary on hold for two minutes while the deputy talked to another employee, used obscenities in another call and two months later put on hold a distraught woman reporting that two men believed to be connected to a murder were approaching her home.

``We reviewed hundreds of phone calls,'' Lancaster sheriff's station commander Capt. Carl Deeley said of the deputy's behavior. ``We found a problem that had not been obvious before.''

Concerning the January 2003 slaying of 43-year-old Regina Nixon, who was stabbed to death in front of her Palmdale home as her children watched, the action against the deputy was disclosed Thursday in the 2005 annual report from the Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review.

Relieved of duty since 2003, the deputy in February dropped her appeal of her firing and agreed to retire, records show.

The Office of Independent Review is a panel of civil rights attorneys who oversee internal Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department investigations and recommend discipline.

The former deputy's name is being kept confidential under state law, according to the office.

The office did not investigate the 911-call case, but monitored the Sheriff's Department's internal investigation and agreed with the Sheriff's Department's decision to fire the deputy, the report said. The investigation started as a routine examination of the recording of the 911 call, common after serious crimes, Deeley said. The recording convinced Lancaster sheriff's station officials that they should examine other calls handled by the deputy, he said.

The investigation did not indicate that Nixon could have been saved if the desk deputy had acted differently, Deeley said, but ``regardless, that call was mishandled.''

Deputies captured the boyfriend after Nixon was fatally stabbed, and he is now serving a 22-year prison sentence for voluntary manslaughter.

While the stabbing occurred in Palmdale, the 911 call was answered in Lancaster because the Lancaster sheriff's station handles the 911 calls for both communities. That will end with the opening next year of the new Palmdale sheriff's station, which will have its own 911 system.

The Office of Independent Review report said the woman called 911 and pleaded for protection from her estranged boyfriend, who she said had come to her house and threatened and choked her. The woman told the desk deputy that she was outside the house with her children but feared he would come after her.

First, the deputy inadvertently hung up on her, the report said. When the woman called back and pleaded for a patrol car, the deputy failed to transfer the call immediately for a car to be dispatched. Then the woman's 13-year-old son came on the line and said his mother was being stabbed.

The deputy failed to recognize that the boy was not the woman who had first called and continued to delay dispatching a patrol car, the report said.

Later that night, the desk deputy was talking to another employee on the phone about the stabbing victim's call when a ``burglary now'' call came in. The deputy placed that caller on hold for more than two minutes, telling the fellow employee: ``People breaking into an empty house, like I care.''

Also that evening, when the deputy failed to successfully transfer another 911 call to another station, the caller called back. The deputy gave the caller the telephone number of the other station and ended the call with obscenities.

Two months later, the same deputy received a 911 call from a distraught woman who reported that two men were approaching her home and that she believed they were the men deputies had been seeking in a connection with a killing earlier that evening.

The deputy became confrontational with the woman, insisted on obtaining standard background information that could be obtained later, and ultimately put her on hold, the report said. The deputy sent a request for service to the dispatcher but failed to mention the call might relate to the homicide investigation a few hours earlier.

Sheriff's officials decided to fire the deputy after concluding that her situation wasn't one that could be corrected by training or other efforts, Deeley said.

``We recruit from human beings, and some people aren't cut out for this kind of work,'' Deeley said.

Charles F. Bostwick, [phone]

chuck.bostwick(at)dailynews.com