Ontario’s Inspector General of Policing has found officers in Niagara failed in their duty to provide adequate policing when a 911 operator decided not to send anyone to investigate a silent call.
The report stems from a call in the early hours of Aug. 30, 2024.
On that day, Ralph Buerger made a 36-second call to 911, desperate for emergency medical help to be sent to his Welland, Ont., home.
Ralph, 59, was having a heart attack and couldn’t speak when the call connected. The 911 operator ultimately categorized the interaction as a “silent call,” choosing not to initiate a wellness check to the address the number was traced to.
The next morning, Ralph’s brother, Rick, discovered he had died overnight.
In the two years that have followed, Ralph’s family have sought answers and accountability for what could have gone wrong.
Eventually, at the end of July, those answers came when they received a report from the Inspector General of Policing for Ontario (IOP).
The 28-page report concluded Niagara Regional Police had failed in its duty when it didn’t conduct a wellness check on Ralph, with the force compounding the problem through poor oversight mechanisms and a culture that appeared to try to swerve accountability.
For Rick, who has spent two years navigating a web of police bureaucracies, the ruling is a relief that lays bare deep issues in the local force.
“I feel that this report shows the incompetence and negligence of the NRP. The report basically vindicates everything that I’ve been saying all along,” he said.
“(Chief) Bill Fordy and his deputy chiefs, they don’t give us trust in policing. They don’t even give us the real information of what the outcome of their investigation was.”
In a statement, Niagara Regional Police Service Board Chair Nyarayi Kapisavanhu said the organization was sorry for how they handled the call and its fallout.
“The Board is deeply sorry for the additional pain this process may cause and acknowledges the emotional toll that accompanies revisiting such a tragic loss,” they wrote.
The statement added that the report was “an important opportunity … to learn, strengthen our systems of oversight and accountability, and implement meaningful improvements aimed at reducing the likelihood of similar tragedies in the future.”
The investigation shows Ralph called 911 on the morning of Aug. 30, 2024, at 2:56 a.m. and stayed on the line for roughly 36 seconds.
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Investigators who listened to the call said they could hear sounds that could be someone falling or dropping four seconds into the call, followed by laboured breathing around 14 seconds.
Between 23 and 36 seconds, investigators said the “breathing is obvious and congested.”
Despite the sounds, the operator cleared the call as “silent” and chose not to send officers to the address the number was identified as calling from.
The report then paints a changing picture. In their interactions with Ralph’s family, police officers admitted something had gone wrong and promised answers, while internally the mechanisms moved slowly.
After Ralph died, his family found out about the 911 call he had tried to make. They were told by a detective who had heard a recording of the interaction that there was a “thump” on the call and that the situation was a “mistake.”
The investigation adds that a Niagara police inspector told the family there had been a “screwup,” and advised them to consider getting a “good civil lawyer” to help seek answers.
Behind the scenes, however, the report reveals the investigation moved slowly.
Niagara Regional Police’s professional standards division waited seven weeks to interview the call taker about what happened that night. When they did speak to the call taker, the interview lasted only six minutes.
The IOP described the interview by professional standards as featuring “leading questions that may have steered the call taker to answers that were consistent with NRPS procedures.”
Rick said the report revealed what he had worried was taking place behind the scenes.
“What kills me too is when they interviewed her, the 911 call taker, she just kept saying, ‘I don’t remember this,’” he said. “And they kept giving highly leading questions, which steered her to give answers, as it says in the report.”
Roughly a year after Ralph’s death, as the family continued to push for answers, they met with Chief Fordy and two of his deputies.
According to the report, one deputy chief suggested during a meeting with the family that there was a culture in the force of trying to avoid responsibility when things go wrong.
“I’m not saying this to be an excuse or a reason to lie, often times when things escalate that, when you’re a young police officer, you’re told cover your ass, cover your ass, do everything to cover your ass, to make sure you don’t bring liability and exposure to the organization, and sometimes that mentality sticks,” the investigation recounts the deputy telling the family.
“When things escalate to a point where it’s going to be external oversight bodies, it’s let the processes take their course, let those investigations happen and don’t commit that you did this or you did that.”
Rick said seeing the report lay out the failings of the force is an emotional moment.
“That’s what brought up emotions with the family. I suppress mine so I can keep going as much as I can, but definitely this gives us a vindication and it even brings out more than what we thought,” Rick said of the report.
“Our family is so appreciative of the IOP and all the work and all the investigating they’ve done because otherwise it would have been just swept under the rug.”
In a statement, Niagara Regional Police’s acting chief, Todd Waselovich, said the force would carefully review the report.
“Over the next 90 days, we will carefully review each recommendation in its entirety, develop a comprehensive action plan, and ensure the necessary changes are implemented to strengthen our Service,” he wrote in a statement.