MADISON, Wis. -- A dispatcher working Monday night at the Dane County 911 Center said another dispatcher did make a "mistake" by not upgrading a disturbance call to a more serious level the night a man was fatally beaten at a city park.

VIDEO: Watch The Report | VIDEO: Audit: 911 Call Center Needs More Staff | READ: Dane County Executive's New Directives To 911 Center Director (PDF)

The dispatcher, who spoke to WISC-TV on the condition of anonymity, said that while a mistake was made, Madison Police Department policy was also a factor in police not being dispatched to the scene earlier.

The dispatcher said police likely would have been sent to scene 90 minutes earlier, but officers were in the middle of a shift change and another dispatcher made an error.

The dispatcher said the call should have been upgraded from a "white" low-priority call to a "yellow" medium-priority call, which would have prompted Madison police being sent to the scene of what turned out to be a fatal beating.

Mark Johnson, 37, was found dead of massive head and chest trauma at Lake Edge Park Monday night. Another man is being held in connection with the slaying.

Monday night's first two calls to 911 non-emergency lines requesting police check on some homeless people fighting at the park came during what's known as the "golden hour" -- shift change -- for city squads.

At night, shift change begins at 9 p.m. and runs until 10 p.m. as squads head back to their districts to file reports and squads on the new shifts begin to take over.

During that shift change, the dispatcher told WISC-TV that police do not take any low-priority calls and unit availability gets drastically cut.

The first non-emergency call for a police response at the park came in at 9:18 p.m. Monday. But 16 minutes later with no police squad car, a second call was placed about a growing disturbance.

But police weren't dispatched until a third call. That third call came from a cell phone about 90 minutes after the second call, WISC-TV reported. Responders found Johnson dead from trauma at the park.

Earlier this week, Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said that the 911 center violated policy when it failed to send officers to respond to two complaints it received about men fighting in Lake Edge Park on Monday night. On Thursday, Wray said he is not commenting until the county releases its internal investigation Friday.

The dispatcher said workers were very busy Monday night and that overall, the dispatchers are under "horrible stress" and "extremely short-staffed" ever since Zimmermann's call was not returned in April.

In the wake of the Zimmermann incident, the 911 board recently clarified dispatch policies, saying noise complaints shouldn't be disregarded if multiple calls are received about the same problem.

The center's top official resigned earlier this year after a dispatcher was accused of mishandling a 911 call from a Brittany Zimmermann's cell phone. Zimmermann, a University of Wisconsin-Madison student, was later found slain in her campus area apartment.

Eileen Bruskewitz, a district 25 Dane County Board supervisor, said things need to change at the 911 Center.

"It's appalling to me, quite honestly, that a county like this that has all of these good departments that are working so hard, that you can have these kinds of mistakes, and two of them in less than a year is a really big problem," Bruskewitz said.

Bruskewitz said she is not pointing any fingers and said she thinks the dispatchers are being hung out to dry. But she said the county needs to take emergency action to fix the problem. She accused the Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk of dragging out the search for a 911 director and said that should be a top priority. The last 911 Center director resigned in September.

Concerns at the county 911 Call Center are not new. The Zimmermann 911 call created a similar question and investigation in protocol. That led to an audit to find what is working and what isn't. The results of the audit will be unveiled at the Dane County Board meeting Thursday night.

The audit has two parts. The first part, an analysis of the 911 Center's space and staffing, will be released Thursday night by the California-based consulting firm that was hired to conduct the audit.

Audit: 911 Call Center Needs More Staff

Concerns at the county 911 Call Center are not new. The Zimmermann 911 call created a similar question and investigation in protocol. That led to an audit to find what is working and what isn't.

The results of the audit were unveiled at the Dane County Board meeting Thursday night.

The audit, conducted by the California-based Matrix Consulting, said that to provide optimum service the center needs to add nine more call takers to its staff.

The audit said that the increased staff would better facilitate round-the-clock staffing and reduce overtime costs and worker stress related to long hours.

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk is already asking for six additional positions in the coming budget year. Falk also wants a dispatch software system, called "police priority dispatch," to help eliminate the confusion dispatchers face now when juggling different protocols for the 85 jurisdictions they handle.

"That's very complicated, confusing and takes some time. With police priority dispatch, which is what I'd like the county to go to and why I put it in next year's budget, there's a uniform, consistent set of questions that the operators ask so they don't have to apply discretion on what to send," Falk said.

The audit also found that calls are answered in a timely fashion, but city leaders present Thursday to hear the report said that was never a problem.

"If they're saying (dispatchers are) picking up the calls in a timely manner and not directing them in the proper way, then we have a problem," said Larry Palm, a 15th District Council member.

"You're relying on dispatchers who are handling hundreds of calls a day to remember how to do things which may vary from agency to agency; they may vary from day to day; they may vary based on weather conditions, and that's an issue that we'll be looking at in Phase 2," said Travis Miller, of Matrix Consulting Group.

Phase 2 is due out in January. It closely examines the 911 Call Center's operations and how it is managed.

The audit also examined the 911 Call Center's space, which it determined to be adequate. Because new technology is smaller, when upgrades are completed, there will actually be room for more dispatch consoles, WISC-TV reported.

Meanwhile, Falk said that pending the release of the internal review Friday of what might have gone wrong on Monday night, she plans to issue immediate new directives.