Mother at Baltimore hearing says CAD outage delayed ambulance before her son died; advocates demand accountability

A mother who said her son died while the city’s dispatch system was down told Baltimore City council members on Thursday that the CAD outage prevented an ambulance from arriving and demanded accountability and systemic change.

"My name is Alicia Good, and I am the mother of Dante Melton Junior," she told the Legislative Investigations Committee during public testimony. She said the incident occurred on June 24 during extreme heat and that her son was restrained, without weapons or threat, for nearly 50 minutes while he begged for help. "Because of that failure, the ambulance never came," Good said. She described officers on video joking as her son suffered and urged lawmakers to ensure CAD never goes dark again and to adopt crisis-response training that prioritizes care over punishment.

Kanisha Daley of the People's Power Assembly pressed the council to couple CAD upgrades with broader investments in public schools, health care and overdose-prevention centers and called for accountability for officers seen as responsible for harm. "There is no amount of training that'll make law enforcement equipped to handle these issues," Daley said, arguing the problem is systemic and urging alternatives to expanding policing.

Council President Zeke Koon and other committee members acknowledged the testimony and said the administration and council must move quickly to modernize CAD and integrate non-police crisis response capabilities. The hearing did not adjudicate criminal or administrative responsibility for the events described; no formal action or finding was announced at the meeting.

The committee recessed after closing remarks and committed to receiving procurement updates as the RFP moves forward.