For Amir Jordan's grandmother, the past two years have been a "nightmare." The family's lawyers say the nightmare could have been prevented if Cincinnati's 911 center worked to correct failures instead of concealing them.
Jordan, 19, was struck and killed by a Cincinnati police cruiser in August 2024. The officer believed he was responding to a top-priority shooting, but the lawsuit argues dispatchers knew quickly that the call was not serious and had about five minutes to slow down officer instead of continuing the dangerous, high-speed response.
Lawyer Zach Gottesman said this misclassification of calls is an ongoing problem that leadership at the center knew about for years. But instead of fixing it, he said, they worked to keep the problems
out of public record.
Paula McClendon, Jordan's grandmother, spoke to the press Aug. 19, a day after a lawsuit was filed against Cincinnati and several employees at city's Emergency Communication Center.
'We feel totally disrepected'
McClendon knows exactly how long her grandson has been dead.
"That was one year, 11 months and 19 days ago," she said. In all that time, she said city officials have never told her the true story about what happened.
"As a family, we feel totally disrespected," she said. "We feel that we have no worth and that Amir's life didn't matter."
She said the city has not shown any accountability or basic human decency.
Just this month, the city named a street after Jordan. In a news release about the event, officials did not say he was struck by a police cruiser and said the renaming should "serve as a reminder to his community about the importance of pedestrian safety."
"You can name one street after Amir or a hundred, but it does not stop our pain," McClendon said.
She said that after losing her grandson, her husband took his own life, further adding to her family's grief.
Before he died, Jordan was working at St. Vincent de Paul after graduating high school and was known for greeting every employee when he arrived and saying goodbye to each one when he left, she said.
McClendon said her great grandson, who has autism, thought of Jordan as his best friend. She said Jordan told the youngster any time he was upset, he could come talk to him and play with him.
McClendon said Jordan was loving, very compassionate and adored animals.
"The real joy in my life has been taken away," McClendon said.
'Fraud on the citizens of Cincinnati'
Gottesman explained that he had heard about Jordan through police officers who knew his story was an example of problems at the Emergency Communication Center. Gottesman has represented many first responders in court over the years, and has heard many complaints about the 911 center misclassifying calls.
"Our ECC doesn't relay accurate information to our officers," Gottesman said.
Tom Bruns, another of the family's lawyers, said multiple police officers at different ranks will testify that "this tragedy was inevitable." Bruns said that these officers knew that eventually the mistakes at the center would result in a death.
Gottesman said that the unwritten policies of the center's director, William Vedra, kept failures out of the public record, all while the center was reporting to federal court due to oversight prompted by the Kyle Plush case.
He said Vedra's actions are a "fraud on the citizens of Cincinnati" and could be considered "dereliction of duty," a criminal infraction.
Cincinnati officials have a policy of not commenting on pending litigation. The Enquirer has asked for a response to the allegations and has not received one.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Grandmother says losing 19-year-old to police crash is a 'nightmare'
