Dispatcher streams Netflix, officers notified of shooting 30 minutes later, report says

3 calls, 34 minutes elapse before officers notified of shooting

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. – A Netflix movie led to a Coral Springs dispatch supervisor’s suspension after officers never responded to a shooting call in June, an internal affairs report concluded.

Just before 7 p.m. on June 9, Guadalupe Herrera called 911 after someone shot at her red Volkswagen as she was pulling out of a gas station. Her front windshield was shattered and a bullet narrowly missed her head, she told one Coral Springs dispatcher.

Herrera called 911 again, at 7:16 p.m., asking why officers had not yet responded and she spoke to a different Coral Springs dispatcher.

At 7:20 p.m., Herrera called one more time to let the dispatchers know that she was no longer going to wait for officers to arrive and, instead, she told dispatchers, she would drive herself to the police station.

The report found that, for more nearly 34 minutes, no officers were notified of the shooting.

The reason the Coral Springs police officers didn’t respond immediately to the shooting, the report stated, was because the initial call was logged as a “suspicious incident,” instead of a shooting incident.

The latter are prioritized and routinely initiate immediate officer response.

Herrera mentioned shooting in each of her calls, the reports stated.

A complaint was filled around July 4, prompting an investigation into how two different dispatchers and their supervisor, Julie Vidaud, did not notice or correctly log the call.

An information technology employee for the city of Coral Springs was asked to look into Vidaud's workstation history, which revealed that, during the time of the initial call, she was logged into a Netflix account, the report read.

The report shows the most used application under Vidaud's network login for the 30-day time frame. The top three on the list are:

1. Netflix at 3.7 GB
2. Hulu at 3.4 GB
3. Xfinity TV at 1.8 GB

One gigabyte of data is equal to about one hour of live streaming, the internal affairs report read.

According to officials, the first dispatcher, who mislabeled the call to begin with, was immediately fired, while the second dispatcher was disciplined and later fired.

Vidaud, the report concluded, was cited for a dereliction of duty and suspended for two days.

She was also facing an allegation that she lied about what she was doing during the call. However, the report concluded that was not the case.

A fourth employee who was not named in the report was given an official reprimand.

Herrera's shooter, arrest affidavits read, was Kyriakos Manolas, 33, of Coconut Creek. 

Manolas was arrested on attempted first-degree murder charges. He is expected to appear in court Friday. 


About the Authors

Saira Anwer joined the Local 10 News team in July 2018. Saira is two-time Emmy-nominated reporter and comes to South Florida from Madison, Wisconsin, where she was working as a reporter and anchor.

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