Dane County officials on Thursday countered statements from the 911 operator who answered the call from Brittany Zimmermann's cell phone, saying her claims about faulty equipment were never raised in three interviews following the incident.

Rita Gahagan sent an e-mail to former 911 director Joe Norwick on May 3 listing problems with 911 center equipment.

"Maybe you could mention the failings of the new telephone system and the cheap headsets and the 20-year-old connections they plug into," Gahagan wrote.

Gahagan sent the e-mail after Norwick responded to a newspaper story revealing that the center had received a call from Zimmermann's phone around the time she was killed April 2 in her West Doty Street apartment.

Gahagan had transferred to another county job by that time, though Norwick had made it seem during his news conference that she was still on the job.

On Thursday, the county released a statement reiterating that the center installed a new half-million dollar phone system in 2006 and replaced the connections in the consoles in 2002.

"After careful examination in April, neither was determined to have affected the call-taker's performance with the incident," the statement said.

The statement added that center employees can select from six models of headsets that can cost nearly $250 each. They are replaced when a communicator asks. The center is not aware of any requests from Gahagan to have her headset replaced.

Gahagan's union did not respond to a request for comment on her statements or the county's response.

Robert Kaelin, a Seattle-based consultant who wrote a strategic plan for the Dane County 911 center in 2004, said an equipment glitch could explain why the operator didn't hear a scream on the call.

Glitches are more likely with older equipment and can happen if any of the wiring is grounded by a loose connection. It's possible the operator could have bumped something with her knee that may have been fixed before center staff reviewed the equipment, he said.

"Unless someone goes in and actually technically reviews the equipment to make sure everything is working right, independent of the 911 center, there's no way to know."

He noted those glitches wouldn't be captured on the audio recording, because the call gets recorded in the system before it reaches the line that goes into the operator's headset.

A Dane County Circuit Judge who ordered the release of Gahagan's e-mail, may rule today on whether the 911 recording should be released to the public.