Work Officer Was Doing On Tower Undetermined

Pubdate: Thu, 09 Aug 2001
Source: Winston-Salem Journal (NC)
Copyright: 2001 Piedmont Publishing Co. Inc.
Contact: http://www.journalnow.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/504
Author: Victoria Cherrie

WORK OFFICER WAS DOING ON TOWER UNDETERMINED

Autopsy information to be released later

The death of a Greensboro police officer on a cellular-phone tower has
shaken his friends and co-workers in the law-enforcement community.

It also has raised questions about what the officer, Detective David
Taylor, was doing on the tower.

The cause of Taylor's death has not been determined.

Colleagues said that Taylor, 35, was a highly trained technical officer and
had climbed communications towers before. He was on the tower with an agent
for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

The Greensboro Police Department and the DEA have declined to elaborate on
the work the two were doing or their training.

Alltel Corp. owns the tower near Jamestown, and Karen Hern, a spokeswoman
for the communications company said that this was not the first time that
Alltel had granted law-enforcement ag-ents access to its towers.

"It is rare," Hern said. "But we work very closely with law-enforcement
officials and cooperate with their requests."

Greensboro police asked to use the tower to "test communications equipment"
early Tuesday morning, Hern said. Verbal permission was given to the
department, which was working with the DEA and other area law-enforcement
agencies.

The accident happened shortly after noon, and investigators are still not
sure what happened. Taylor fell several feet before a safety harness
stopped him. The DEA agent on the tower tried to revive Taylor, whose body
dangled for several hours as rescue crews worked to release him. The DEA
agent, whose name was not released, was treated for heat exhaustion.

An autopsy was performed on Taylor at the Office of the Chief Medical
Examiner in Chapel Hill yesterday. A cause of death has not been
determined, and it will be at least a week before more information is
released, said Dr. Thomas Clark III, a state medical examiner.

The death is one of eight on communications towers in North Carolina during
the past three years, said Greg Cook, a spokesman for the N.C. Department
of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Division.

The Alltel tower works serves an area of up to three-quarters of a square mile.

Bill Woessner, the DEA resident agent-in-charge of the Greensboro area,
said that his agents don't climb towers often. "But they wouldn't be up
there unless they were trained to handle the work," he said.

Many law-enforcement ag-encies have officers who specialize in setting up
and operating audio and video surveillance equipment in high places. The
level of training varies among agencies.

Narcotics officers at the Winston-Salem Police Department and Forsyth
County Sheriff's Office are not trained to climb communications towers.

"If we did need something done, for example on a telephone pole, we would
contract the work to the company or others specialized in that area," said
Sheriff Ron Barker of Forsyth County.

Work and repairs made to Alltel's cellular towers also are contracted to
specialized companies, Hern said.

Although workers must be certified to work on the towers, there are no
standards for the safety training, which became an issue in 1999 when three
workers died in Rowan County after falling 1,000 feet from a communications
tower they were painting.

The lack of training standards nationwide also gave birth to ComTrain Inc.,
a Monroe, Wis., company that provides certified training for tower work.
The company's clients include police and sheriff's departments, city and
state transportation departments, the DEA and the N.C. Forestry Service.

"Less than 10 percent of people involved in tower climbing have any formal
training, and less than 30 percent have any kind of safety equipment," said
Winton Wilcox Jr., the company's president. ComTrain is one of many
companies working with N.C. officials to create a set of certified training
standards, which the Labor Department hopes to put in place by 2003.

Taylor had 11 years on the force, including seven in the narcotics
division. His colleagues said that he was a master of gadgets who was
well-trained and worked hard to get the best and the latest technology for
his department. He thrived on undercover work and passed up chances for
promotions in exchange for the reward of arresting drug dealers, said Capt.
Al Stewart, the commander of the Greensboro Police Department's narcotics
division.

"This is hard," Stewart said. "We will have to do the best we can and go
back to work."

Taylor's funeral will be 2 p.m. Saturday at Finch Auditorium in his
hometown of Thomasville.

. Victoria Cherrie can be reached at 727-7283 or at officer was doing on tower undetermined Autopsy
information to be released later

By Victoria Cherrie JOURNAL REPORTER

The death of a Greensboro police officer on a cellular-phone tower has
shaken his friends and co-workers in the law-enforcement community.

It also hasr aised questions about what the officer, Detective David
Taylor, was doing on the tower.