WINONA, Minn. – The initial review of what went wrong with emergency alerts to the public about a police operation Monday on the West End has found miscoded messages. Ben Klinger, the county emergency management coordinator, said automated Facebook messages were sent out incorrectly coded as weather alerts. Apparently somebody at the dispatch center operated by the sheriff’s office pressed the wrong button The miscoded alert went out to a wider area than intended. Klinger called rhe error a learning experience. A more serious error from another network reported falsely that a an “active shooter” was on the loose. That message, it appears, originated on an internal Winona State University network outside the official sheriff’s system.
Verbatim
Klinger: “We need to work on being more accurate. We know that but we were trying to do the best we could at the time for public safety, we will learn from it.”
Klinger. Winona County emergency management coordinator.