A cross-county DUI

CLEARWATER - Five days a week, Becky Algeri and her husband, Ron Sansome, drive to work through Pinellas County before the break of dawn. At that time in the morning, they’ve seen plenty of hazards on the road.

“Usually it's us, deer and drunks,” Algeri said, recalling a driver they saw in March weaving all over the road. They called 911, and their call was routed to the Clearwater Police Department.

“On McMullen Booth Road southbound toward Sunset Point, he apparently is drunk,” Becky Algeri told the police dispatcher on the recorded line.

“Okay, if you could just drop back a little,” the dispatcher cautioned her, “stay away from him and we'll get an officer check out the area and see if he can make contact with him.”

Moments later, the couple spotted three Pinellas County Sheriff’s cars just up the road at a gas station, but the deputies never moved.

“And we were just wondering why they weren't responding to this drunk driver that we had been following forever,” Algeri recalls.

FOX 13 learned those sheriff's deputies didn’t know anything about the call to 911 because of a common communications breakdown. When a call comes in to Pinellas County's 911 call center, it's routed to one of many dispatch centers. In this example, the call went to Clearwater Police, but there are 24 different law enforcement agencies in the county. When a suspect crosses from one jurisdiction into the next, police in that part of the county might not know about the pursuit unless the information is transferred from the other agency’s dispatcher.

“We thought the 911 would work all together and that everyone would know basically,” Samson remembered. “I'm really not blaming the Pinellas County Sheriff because if they didn't get the call, they didn't know.”

It’s happened to us as well. “It happens far too often,” Largo Police Chief Lester Aradi told investigative reporter Doug Smith.

Chief Aradi, who chairs the Pinellas Police Standards Council, raised the issue to a task force back in 2003. Aradi presented a solution: a hailing frequency.

“Every car is equipped with a separate radio that is used only during emergency situations but that is live all the time and being monitored,” Aradi said, explaining the system that would allow every law enforcement officer in the county to hear dispatchers report crimes that cross jurisdictional lines on a single radio frequency.

A 2004 report by the Pinellas Assembly shows the task force unanimously recommended “the establishment of a countywide emergency radio channel that can be monitored by all agencies so officers can call for assistance without waiting for relays through dispatch."

It’s not a difficult fix, but it would cost approximately $1,000 a patrol car. The idea went nowhere, leaving Becky Algeri and Ron Sansome very frustrated with the county’s communications system and at seeing a drunk driver escape punishment.

“I know he could have killed someone,” recalled Algeri.