Parkland has been notified

[Steve Thomas]

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/

12:30 PM

Channel 1 Channel 2

1	Go to the hospital - Parkland Hospital. Have them stand by.
	603 (ambulance)	603 out.	1	Get a man on top of that triple underpass and see what happened up there.
		noise for 34 seconds on this tape.	1	Have Parkland stand by.
	48 (Ptm. A.D. Duncan)	48, loud and clear.	Dispatcher	10-4. Dallas 1 -Station 5 will be notified.
	Dispatcher	56.	Dispatcher	1, any information whatsoever?
	91 (Ptm. W.D. Mentzel and Ptm. J.W. Courson)	91 clear.	1 (Chief of Police Jesse E. Curry)	Looks like the President has been hit. Have Parkland stand by.
	Dispatcher	55.	Dispatcher	10-4. They have been notified.

 

 

It never occurred to me before, but on the dispatch tapes, you never actually hear Parkland being notified. There are broadcasts being made on a police channel, or mechanism that are missing from the record we have.

Also, who, or what, is Station 5?

 

Steve Thomas

[Joseph McBride]

It's worth noting that Mentzel, who was part of the plot, weighs in quickly. Well before

Oswald was captured and officially identified, Mentzel

was sent with Tippit to hunt down Oswald in Mentzel's district (Tippit was out of his district).

[Steve Thomas]

4 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

It's worth noting that Mentzel, who was part of the plot, weighs in quickly. Well before

Oswald was captured and officially identified, Mentzel

was sent with Tippit to hunt down Oswald in Mentzel's district (Tippit was out of his district).

Joe,

 

Just as an aside, I'm not sure how Mentzel and Courson share the same call sign. Mentzel was in the Patrol Division,  Southwest Substation, Second Platoon (in a car)

see page 10 of  Batchelor's Exhibit 5002

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/pdf/WH19_Batchelor_Ex_5002.pdf

J.W. Courson was in the Traffic Division 4:00 PM to Midnight shift  as a solo motorcyclist. His call sign was 153. (see p. 18 of Batchelor's Exhibit 5002)

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/pdf/WH19_Batchelor_Ex_5002.pdf

and Purdue Lawrence's assignments for the motorcade

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1137#relPageId=509&tab=page

 

Two different Divisions altogether.

I'd still like to learn what Station 5 is.

 

Steve Thomas

[Chris Scally]

Hi Steve:

"Station 5" was the Sheriff's Office - you will note in a complete Channel 2 recording or transcript that immediately before the DPD Dispatcher said "Station 5 will be notified", Sheriff Decker (call sign "Dallas 1") had asked the Dispatcher to "Advise my department to have all men available back there".

As for the "Mentzel/Courson" issue, that seems to be a historical error, as I've come across it previously, and there is no evidence whatsoever that I could ever find to suggest that Mentzel and Courson were anywhere near one another. In reality, W.D. Mentzel (Call sign "91") took a break (possibly for lunch in Luby's Cafeteria at 430 W. Jefferson) at or about 12:31-12:32, and reported back for duty at just before 1:07 pm. J.W. Courson (call sign "153") was riding a police motorcycle in the motorcade, on the left side and towards the rear near the Press buses, and after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, he followed the rest of the vehicles to Parkland Hospital.  

Finally, it is probable / likely that a DPD Dispatcher's office telephone operator would have made the emergency call on a dedicated line to Parkland, asking them to stand-by for an emergency involving the President.

Hope this helps.

Chris.

[Edited to add info re Mentzel's lunch location]

 

 

  

 

Edited November 19, 2019 by Chris Scally
[Edited to add info re Mentzel's lunch location]

[Mark Knight]

Chris, I agree. There would be no reason for the dispatcher call to Parkland to show up in a radio transcript. This wasn't Station 51 calling Ramparts Hospital on the TV show EMERGENCY, it was Dallas Texas in 1963.

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Chris Scally said:

Hi Steve:

"Station 5" was the Sheriff's Office - you will note in a complete Channel 2 recording or transcript that immediately before the DPD Dispatcher said "Station 5 will be notified", Sheriff Decker (call sign "Dallas 1") had asked the Dispatcher to "Advise my department to have all men available back there".

 

Finally, it is probable / likely that a DPD Dispatcher's office telephone operator would have made the emergency call on a dedicated line to Parkland, asking them to stand-by for an emergency involving the President.

Hope this helps.

Chris.

 

Chris and Mark,

 

You could be entirely right in that Station 5 could be referring to the Dallas County Sheriff's office. I haven't gone back and researched Dallas, TX radio call signs and codes to see if that designation appears anywhere else besides these particular dispatch tapes.

In my initial post, I wrote, " There are broadcasts being made on a police channel, or mechanism that are missing from the record we have."

I 'd draw your attention to CE 705 at (17H369) This is a copy of the Sheriff's Department dispatch tapes.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1134#relPageId=395&tab=page

 

 

And I'd ask "hot line"? What "hot line"? Our Channel 2 dispatch tapes say that Station 5 will be notified, and the Sheriff's Department reports that it has been notified, but

I don't think we have a record of the actual communications being made over a "hot line". Is there a police channel or mechanism that we don't have a record of?

 

Steve Thomas

 

[Chris Scally]

Steve:

I honestly believe that the DPD had a "hot line" or "emergency-only" phone which could contact hospitals, Sheriff's Department, Courthouse, County Jail, etc by simply pressing a designated button. This would have been a standard telephone line, used by the telephone operator(s) in the DPD Dispatcher's Office. As such, it was not a police radio channel of any kind, and calls on it would almost certainly not have been recorded (although they might have been 'recorded' manually in a paper log of some kind). I've never heard or seen any reference to such a recording if such even existed.

i would also caution against over-reliance on transcripts from the time, too. Most of them contain glaring errors and are incomplete, some to a significant degree. The only reliable (if we accept that they have not been amended/edited/tampered with) records of what was actually said and at what time are the original physical recordings (or verified copies of them) which still exist, and these are degrading significantly with the passage of time. Even the multitude of versions of the DPD Channel 1 and 2 radio transcripts are each at variance with the actual recordings, so ...!

As for police channels or mechanisms that we have no record of, I would suggest not, and the only radio comms network that I know of (but have no transcripts or recordings from) is a Secret Service one between the vehicles in the motorcade. Nobody to my knowledge has ever found a recording or transcript of it, and I suspect that it no longer exists in any form.

Chris.

   

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Chris Scally said:

Steve:

As for police channels or mechanisms that we have no record of, I would suggest not, and the only radio comms network that I know of (but have no transcripts or recordings from) is a Secret Service one between the vehicles in the motorcade. Nobody to my knowledge has ever found a recording or transcript of it, and I suspect that it no longer exists in any form.

Chris.

   

Chris,

 

There is the one operating out of the Fair Park office.

 

Steve Thomas

[David Josephs]

Wouldn't that same line be the cause for the ambulance to have arrived so early at Tippit?

Jasper in the ambulance talks of a "Police hot line telephone circuit"

FWIW   DJ

[Chris Scally]

Yes, David -

That is exactly the "hot line" or "emergency only" phone line I was thinking about. Have you ever come across anything which might indicate an electronic logging/recording system or mechanism was linked to that phone line? I certainly haven't, and was just theorizing that there might have been some sort of log-book beside it, in which something like a one- or two-line handwritten entry might have been made (or was supposed to have been made), containing date, approximate time, who was called, and the reason for the call. Just a theory, however - I've no evidence that such a log existed, and if it did exist, it has probably been lost or taken as a "souvenir" long ago!

Chris

 

[David Josephs]

28 minutes ago, Chris Scally said:

That is exactly the "hot line" or "emergency only" phone line I was thinking about

There MUST be a phone log since it is still a call reaching both ends of the line.  But since it appears to be a one way line OUT to the different ER services... the logs would only be at the receiving stations?

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/pdf/WH24_CE_2002.pdf

      page 5

Tim of Shooting 3. A. Patrolmen Willie B. Slack (Attachment 91) Called dispatcher for doctor and ambulance.
1. Dispatcher called O'Neal Funeral Home on "Hot Line" for ambulance.
(a) Funeral home logged call at 11 .21 a.m., 4. November 24, 1963

 

Mrs. CASON. [spelling] F-a-r-r. And he was in charge on that Sunday because we did not have a sergeant there, and he had asked to speak to Farr, and I told him Officer Farr was working channel 2, which is a separate channel that we have, and so he told me, he said, "They just shot Oswald," or "Somebody just shot Oswald," and I told him, "Okay." And placed him on hold and told Farr that he had a red light on 531, and I proceeded to call the ambulance service on the hot line.
Mr. HUBERT. Please describe the hot line?
Mrs. CASON. The hot line is a straight line from our dispatcher office to the ambulance company which requires no dialing. You just lift it up and it rings from our office to theirs.
Mr. HUBERT. So, then, immediately upon getting this information from Slack you passed it on to Farr by word of mouth?
Mrs. CASON. I did not tell Officer Farr that Oswald had just been shot. I felt it was more important to get the ambulance and in time they would know soon enough. I told them he had a red light, and I knew Slack would tell him what happened in the basement.
Mr. HUBERT. So then you flipped the button for the hot line at O'Neal Funeral Home?
Mrs. CASON. Yes; I did.
Mr. HUBERT. Did you get it immediately?
Mrs. CASON. Yes.

Edited November 20, 2019 by David Josephs

[David Josephs]

A question....

Dallas Methodist ER off N Beckley and E Colorado is closer than PARKLAND - I mean Parkland is 3 miles, Methodist 2
yet it seems they ALWAYS went to Parkland..

Tippit was moved from Methodist to Parkland for the Autopsy by Rose....

FWIW

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dealey+Plaza,+Dallas,+TX+75202/Methodist+Dallas+Medical+Center+Emergency+Room,+North+Beckley+Avenue,+Dallas,+TX/@32.7447119,-96.8234696,1935a,35y,38.97t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x864e9915d508f639:0xcfa47bf25b709fe0!2m2!1d-96.8082993!2d32.7788184!1m5!1m1!1s0x864e997849bae6e9:0xa3e4b6b790f34e91!2m2!1d-96.825309!2d32.7595975!3e0

[Steve Thomas]

15 hours ago, David Josephs said:

Mrs. CASON.... I proceeded to call the ambulance service on the hot line.

 

Mr. HUBERT. Please describe the hot line?
Mrs. CASON. The hot line is a straight line from our dispatcher office to the ambulance company which requires no dialing. You just lift it up and it rings from our office to theirs.

David,

 

I wonder if the hot line was WRR.

Statement by Colonel John W. Mayo, Chairman of City-County Civil Defense and Disaster Commission at the Dedication of the Emergency Operations Center at Fair Park.

http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/fallout/docs/may241961a.jpg

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25119-old-dallas-civil-defense-emergency-operations-center/?tab=comments#comment-383820

Notice the top right hand corner. Letter also by Boise Smith WRR transmitter building.

In the Batchelor's Exhibit CE5002 https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh19/pdf/WH19_Batchelor_Ex_5002.pdf

Boise Smith is listed as a Deputy Chief of Police (along with Lumpkin, Stevenson and Batchelor) and as the Director of the Civil Defense and Disaster Commission. As such, he reported directly to Curry.

Colonel Boise Smith was also associated with the 4150^th Army Reserve Training School in Dallas. George Lumpkin was the Commandant.

This Statement appeared on the Civil Defense and Disaster Commission letter head co-signed by Boise Smith, WRR transmitter Building at Fair Park.

WRR was a city-owned radio station.

 

See the following  statement by Mayo decrying the artists being displayed at the Art Museum

http://washingtonbabylon.com/bunker-command-center-jfk-assassination-merely-worlds-interesting-basement/

"In March of 1955, Col. John W. Mayo, commander of the Dallas Metropolitan Post No. 581 of the American Legion, sent a communication to the Trustees of the Art Museum decrying many of the Museum’s policies and saying that the Post objected ‘to the Museum patronizing and supporting artists … whose political beliefs are dedicated to destroying our way of life."

In this same website, it says, " An online exhibit by the Dallas City Hall provides the following historical summary of WRR, the station-of-choice for Dallas-Fort Worth highbrows since 1964, when it switched to an all classical format. Until the departments had their own internal support, WRR supplied and maintained all radio equipment for Police, Fire, Park and Recreation, Water, Public Works, and the former Health Department. At its peak it furnished dispatching services for Dallas County, Cockrell Hill Police Department, and private ambulance services (in the days before 911). WRR discontinued these adjunct services in 1969."

 

Steve Thomas

 

[Mark Knight]

I worked in the parts department at a car dealership that had a body shop several blocks away. We had there what we called a "ring-down" phone line between the parts department and the body shop. The phone had no dial, and when you removed the receiver from the cradle, the phone on the other end would ring.

It sounds as if this sort of system may have been what was used.

[Chris Scally]

Sounds that way to me, too, Mark.