Woman questions 911 dispatcher training, saying they told her to wake intruder sleeping in her Winnipeg home

A Winnipeg woman says she's been left shaken after waking up to find a stranger in her home and waiting twenty minutes for police to arrive. She's now questioning that response time, and also why a 911 dispatcher suggested she could confront the intruder herself.

Angela Chalmers woke up to the sound of her dog Loki growling and barking at the top of her stairs shortly before 7:00 a.m. on June 18.

"I came down to see what it was that he was barking at, and I walked halfway down the stairs and there was a strange man lying right here on my couch," said Chalmers.

 "It was terrifying."

Chalmers went back upstairs and quietly alerted her roommate. The pair barricaded themselves in a room upstairs and called 911 while hiding in a closet, only to be told police couldn't come right away.

"They said that the police were really busy and would we mind going downstairs and waking him up ourselves?" she said.

Chalmers did mind. She and her roommate stayed upstairs until police arrived twenty minutes later and the pair ran downstairs and out of the house in the Earl Grey neighbourhood.

It took four officers to get the man out of her home after he woke up and became aggressive, she said.

Police say the incident is being reviewed and the 911 dispatcher who spoke to Chalmers has been provided feedback on the handling of the call, some of which deviated from standard practice, said Kelly Dehn, director of public affairs for the Winnipeg Police Service in an emailed statement. 

Dehn said response times can vary for any call depending on the time of day and resources available, as well as the urgency of the event, but said the call was appropriately dispatched in a timely manner.

A police spokesperson also said they would typically advise callers not to approach a person, which could put their safety in jeopardy. 

"A person would be advised to exit the building or residence until police arrival," said Const. Claude Chancy in an email.

Chalmers says the officers who responded were apologetic about the delay, but she worries things could have turned out very different if she had followed the 911 dispatcher's suggestion.

"I wasn't harmed, nothing was taken, it worked out okay this time, but had I been someone else … and took that 911 operator's horrible recommendation, that could have ended completely differently," she said.