Among the many heartbreaks that will forever be associated with the killing of three Pittsburgh police officers on Saturday, the fact that a 911 worker failed to pass on crucial information to the police dispatcher that weapons were present in the Poplawski home is one of the most devastating.

The 911 call-taker answered when Richard Poplawski's mother called, requesting that police remove him from her Stanton Heights home. When the call-taker, who has not been identified, asked Ms. Poplawski if her son had any weapons, she was told that he did and that they were all legal.

It is not clear why the call-taker typed "no weapons" into the system the police dispatcher used to convey information to Officers Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo II, who responded to the domestic call. Officer Eric Kelly, who was off-duty, heard the same call and decided to back up his colleagues. All three were ambushed by a conspiracy theorist wielding an AK-47 and other arms. A morning-long siege of the neighborhood followed.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and Allegheny County Councilman James Burn Jr. have called for a systematic review and, if necessary, overhaul of Allegheny County's 911 procedures. Given the seriousness of the procedural breakdown Saturday morning, hearings into what went wrong and how to prevent its recurrence is simply wise governance.

Still, an inquiry into what went wrong shouldn't be used as an opportunity to scapegoat a distraught call-taker as if she bears ultimate responsibility for the officers' deaths.

The blame for the deaths of three brave Pittsburgh police officers lies squarely on the shoulders of the 22-year-old shooter who was arrested after the standoff. While it might have been to the advantage of the three officers to know that weapons were present in the home, we don't know that even that knowledge would have made a difference.

What we know for sure is that Richard Poplawski alone has been charged with firing the shots that killed three Pittsburgh police officers. They weren't killed by the negligence of an inattentive call-taker. All three men would be here today if a gun-toting coward hadn't decided that a perverse exercise of his Second Amendment rights was the appropriate response to their desire to answer a citizen's call for help.