Mom Accidentally Locks Baby In Car, Idiot Dispatcher Won’t Send Help
A mom in Florida is probably wondering why she decided to live there this morning after the terrifying experience she had Saturday when she accidentally locked her 10-month-old son in the car. Despite calling 911, the dispatcher refused to send help, leaving her to panic in a CVS parking lot.
The set-up to this story sounds so familiar that it really could have been any parent; according to ABC News, Shana Dees had just strapped her son, Jack, into his car seat and shut the door when she realized that her son still had his keys in her hands. He ended up locking her out because everyone knows that babies plus buttons equals mayhem.
I’m trying to imagine what her reaction was when she realized that her keys, baby, and cell phone were all locked inside the car. Probably something like this:
Dees then called 911, which is perfectly reasonable, only to be told that the dispatcher could not send an officer: ”They won’t be able to try to gain access [to the] car unless the child is in some kind of distress, and, well, by that point they may just smash your windows.”.
If that sounds like bullshit, that’s because it is. Dees thought this was pretty stupid, but it wasn’t like she could reach through the phone and slap the man, so instead she just got more and more frantic until an off-duty police officer happened by. At this point, Jack had been in the car for about ten minutes and was starting to get all red and sweaty, which was probably horrifying to watch.
Fortunately an off-duty cop wandered by and called 911 himself and this time he got someone that wasn’t presumably named Dumbbutt McGee. When the officer told his cool dispatcher that Dees had been told no one would be able to help, she was all like, “Wha? No way!” and sent someone to the scene. In the meantime, someone else smashed a window with a wrench to get baby Jack out.
According to ABC, Dispatcher Dumbbutt is on administrative leave and his boss is none too happy.
”He is going to be disciplined,” Andrea Davis, a police spokesperson, told ABC News. ”He should have been more aggressive and asked location.”
Davis pointed out that the dispatcher did not refuse to send an officer to the scene. Dees ended the call, she said.
I’m kind of annoyed at that last bit there. As someone who has locked her child in a car, I can tell you how shitty it feels to call the cops for help. You know it’s the right thing to do, but there’s an overwhelming amount of shame and terror that runs through you when you have to do it.
Dees seems pretty soft spoken, like me, which means when someone told her nope, can’t help you, she probably was all thank yous and I’m sorries before she hung up the phone, wondering what she was supposed to do now that she’d been turned away. The politeness is so ingrained that even while you freak out and rage inside, you’re nothing but raised pinkies and the Queen’s English outside.
Fortunately, Jack is fine, and Dees is fine, and pretty much the only thing that isn’t fine is her car window, but that’s nothing compared to her son’s life. Also the dispatcher might not be fine, but if he keeps his job lets hope he writes a post-it note and sticks it somewhere visible:
WE ALWAYS SEND HELP TO GET THE BABIES OUT OF THE CARS
(Image: Ruta Production/Shutterstock)
