In the wake of malfunctions and glitches in the city's 911 system, Tucson announced Tuesday that it will move the day-to-day management of the 911 center to the Fire Department.

The problems with the 911 system have roiled the city in the past two months and may have contributed to the death of a 10-year-old girl.

City Manager Mike Letcher said the decision to move oversight from the General Services Department to the Fire Department started last month. He did not, however, reference the problems with the system.

"While this management structure has been studied over the year at the city it was never implemented," Letcher said in a press release. "Last month I directed staff to again begin looking at a transfer of the 911 management to public safety and feel at this time the change is warranted."

City General Services Director Ron Lewis said he had one conversation about the move, which came on Monday. He said he understood Letcher's rationale for the move and referred questions about whether the 911 system's problems contributed to the move to Letcher.

He added he was "not really happy" about the transfer because he "would have liked to have been able to follow through and get things turned around."

The switch went into effect this morning.

In a related matter Tuesday, an appeal by a fired Tucson 911 operator was unanimously denied by the city's Civil Service Commission.

The operator was fired for accessing call information related to the death of a 10-year-old girl in June. In the incident, a call came from an urgent-care center in Marana about a 10-year-old girl who arrived unconscious after an asthma attack. After a series of human and technical errors, a dispatcher routed emergency crews to the wrong address near downtown. The right address did not show up on the dispatcher's screen.

After a third 911 call, the address was corrected and the girl was later flown to a hospital, where she died.

Michael LaFond was fired after he accessed computer assisted dispatch (CAD) reports about the June 1 incident two weeks after it occurred.

Commissioner Arnold Elias said LaFond "undertook some activities that were beyond the scope of his job description." Commissioners said they were suspicious that LaFond hid the identity of who printed out the reports.

City Prosecutor Gioia Sanderson repeatedly asked that specific information on the June 1 call be struck from the record or that participants refrain from talking about it.

Sanderson argued that although LaFond had access to the computer-assisted dispatch reports, he wasn't allowed to access the reports to do research on previous calls that contained confidential information.

Dispatchers are allowed to check those reports only to determine location and jurisdiction on active calls and to document where the computer-assisted dispatch had problems or issues with addresses or locations.

They are only to look at current incidents and not past incidents, Sanderson said. LaFond didn't work June 1, when the girl died, she said.

"He had no authority or business to conduct this type of research," Sanderson said, adding that his actions violated city protocols and state and federal laws.

LaFond said he had regular access to those reports and looking at them was part of his job. He said he had no plans to release any confidential information to anyone.

Lewis told LaFond he was worried he could potentially pass the information on to the Arizona Daily Star or to outside lawyers.

LaFond said he had warned his bosses of the same problems that occurred during the June 1 incident with the 10-year-old girl before the city switched the system over on May 25.

He added that the 911 operators had "no practical training for this switchover."

Once he heard of the girl's death, he said he had a concrete example of how someone could be harmed by the problems with the system, specifically the mixing up of addresses like what occurred on June 1.

Lewis said he had to terminate LaFond because he had a history of prior discipline, and previous suspensions did not correct problem behavior. He had previously received two separate 20-hour suspensions.

Contact reporter Rob O'Dell at 573-4346 or rodell@azstarnet.com