# Giggling dispatcher no laughing matter for kin of OD victim



## mikey742

*Giggling dispatcher no laughing matter for kin of OD victim
*By *Brock Parker*/ Somerville Journal
Thursday, January 26, 2006 - Updated: 03:36 AM EST

 E-mail article View text version View most popular*A* Somerville woman sees no humor in her brother's death and is demanding an apology after a 911 operator laughed the night he died. 
"No one should be laughed at. It is a life," said Annemarie McCarthy of her brother, Richard Sperlinga, an ex-con who died of a drug overdose in October at the age of 45. 
 More on: *Somerville 911*







"I think I have an overdose..."







"Can you step it up..."







"...We really need a unit at that address..."







"What's the update? He dead?" But Somerville police are standing by dispatcher Kristine Vallery, saying she did her job and will not be punished. 
"I hope that an inadvertent giggle on a phone call doesn't distract from five or six dispatchers and police officers who worked very hard to save this man's life," said police Capt. Michael Devereaux, who added he told the dispatcher to be "more discreet." 
Sperlinga was found naked and unresponsive on a couch by his girlfriend in their Somerville apartment early in the morning on Oct. 15. She called police, who responded by sending four officers to attempt a rescue, Devereaux said. 
Extra officers were also called because Sperlinga had history as a drug dealer, and his father, Sal Sperlinga, was a member of the Winter Hill gang, before he was shot to death in 1980 in Magoun Square. The Winter Hill gang was an organized crime ring that operated heavily out of Winter Hill in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 
When the family requested a copy of the 911 emergency tape, they heard Vallery laugh when police Officer Marcos Frietas called in to report Sperlinga was dead. 
"As a citizen of the city, he deserved better," Billy said of his late brother. "He was no angel, but he was no Ted Bundy." 
Police Public Information Officer Paul Upton said, "there's not a person in this building that isn't sorry this family was offended."


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## Crvtte65

Either I am an idiot, or that was written very poorly. Where did the laugh come from? When, the same night?? How did they hear the dispatcher giggle when he called in he was dead, was that officer at the scene? Where they still on the phone with the dispatch if they were on scene and WHY were they still on the phone...


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## clancy-dawg

Because....


mikey742 said:


> ...the family requested a copy of the 911 emergency tape...


Here's the portion that appears to be a land line from a PO to dispatch.







"What's the update? He dead?"

PS- good for SPD for having a set and standing behind their people when they've done nothing wrong.


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## Curious EMT

She giggled becasue the cop took the DOA's pulse with his thumb... 

As Larry the Cable guy would say,"I dont care Who you are that there is funny!"


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