As he continued to make his way up the street, I saw a MPD cruiser. I flagged it down and told the officers that there was a guy stumbling up the street, falling down in the snow. All I asked was if they could turn around and see if he was OK. My concerns were two-fold, one that he might get hit by a car, and two that he might pass out in the snow and get buried. I was met with total and complete disregard. They said "oh, so he's up and walking now, right?" to my response of "well, sort of, he keeps falling down in the street." I'm not asking for them to buy the guy a cup of coffee and make sure he gets home, just simply to go get him out of the street. Eventually the officer said, "well, we don't want traffic backing up the hill." He made U-turn, drove up the street a little bit, and then made another U-turn and drove away.
I don't want to gripe here, but this whole experience was very disappointing. To them, maybe someone stumbling in the street and falling down in a snowstorm isn't a big deal. It probably isn't. I wasn't asking for much. I would have been happy with a simple "Thanks for letting us know, we'll check it out." Instead, it was exactly what I feared, the whole, "you are wasting our time" attitude. I'm sure it's been a long couple of days. I'm not going to name names or file complaints, but I'm just saddened. I've reported my share of things to MPD before, and have generally always had a positive experience. Hopefully this was just an anomaly.
Dude, you should have called 911. That's recorded. It would also bring EMTs. It would also get the attention of more than one car. Why you didn't do that right away sort of boggles my mind.
ReplyDeleteAre you on the MPD listservs? The commanders are always instructing folks to call 911, even for suspicious stuff. Even if the operators give you the blow-off then at least you have a recording and an operator number to use when following up with the brass.
As a local blogger, you're kind of falling down on the job.
i did walk up the street to see if he was passed out in the snow or still in the street. i didn't see him. if i had seen him again, i would have called 911.
ReplyDeleteYou do realize this is the same police department whose officers in the past used to rob drug dealers, murder them and then cover up the crime scenes by staging it to look like a shootout between rival drug dealers had occurred.
ReplyDeleteDo you really think they are going to care about the fate of some random pedestrian?
I had a similar thing happen years ago. One rainy 4th of July, my friend and I helped a woman on an electric wheelchair to the metro station. we had to cross a busy intersection and the MPD officer 'directing' traffic shrugged us off when we asked for help crossing the few yards of the intersection. nice message -"it's not my job..." thing is, it wouldn't have happened anywhere else in this country. at least not in the places i've lived.
ReplyDeleteThat is pretty weak of the cop not to care, but, if you really cared, why didn't you help the guy out?
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your story. Sometimes police don't care. Sometimes they do. It's a tough call to get involved in things when police are trained to deal with these sort of situations. In their absence, I guess one has to look after oneself, and yet still try to be compassionate.
ReplyDeleteI've had very mixed results when I've approached police officers with issues/ situations on the street. This past summer, when I lived in Chinatown, I had a little run in with some cracked-out half-blind guy on H street (He got in my face for no reason yelling gibberish..I stomped, yelled, and generally played all mental for a minute to get him to step back, etc.. and then walked away)...Knowing that there are always cruisers on 7th street, I politely walked over to one of the officers there, told him about the half-blind crackhead on the loose and he immediately radioed over and had someone check it out. I thanked him. he thanked me for telling him, and a cruiser headed over there. All in all, not a bad outcome.
P.S. I've found it to be sometimes very useful to act temporarily insane with those who try to intimidate. It's much more fun than being afraid.
During the first storm I called 911 for help with getting a drunk homeless man to a shelter since the hypothermia vans weren't running, but luckily a nice police officer came to the scene, tracked the guy down and found out he was on his way to a shelter a block away. So there are a few good cops out there, not all, but some.
ReplyDeleteseriously?
ReplyDeleteThis is why I dislike the cities. I know it's snowing like crazy out but isn't there something else you could do than call the cops?
Your calling the cops over tells the world the following:
1. YOU are too busy/important/lazy/warm/whatever, to deal with it yourself. YOU could have gone and helped him or walked his ass home or gotten him a cup of coffee, couldn't you? What else were you going to do today? What ever happened to helping your fellow man?
2. You're a douche. You think the cops don't have better things to do today? There's no advantage to driving a cop car in the snow lemme tell ya. He was probably MUCH safer stumbling his ass down the middle of 495 than in that cop car.
Just sayin'
But hey, who am I. Just another white collar redneck from northwestern MD; wtf do I know? I just got done shoveling 4ft of snowdrifts from 4 of my neighbor's porches & driveways.
I probably should have called the cops to help with that... ;)
I've personally experienced this sort of thing before. A drunk guy was harassing people at the Red Derby last summer. I walked down to the cop who was sitting on his duff at 14th and Spring, a block away, and told him. He said, sorry - that's not my PSA (Spring Road is the border). He also said he would call someone, which he did not.
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell is the point of having cops "hang out" at hotspots if they don't actually do anything when they see trouble? Not only that - when someone ASKS them specifically to deal with a problem that's happening right then, a block away?
Being out of his PSA is such a bullshit excuse too - I am sure cops are allowed to walk a block outside their area to deal with a crime. Hell they can go to PG County now can't they?
In my mind this is the root of the problem with our PD. Unless there are guns blazing they don't care. Unfortunately, by not caring until guns are blazing, many incidents that could have been averted, are not. And it simply contributes to the sense of lawlessness in the city. If people thought there was any threat of police action they might not be so likely to be dumbasses.
Of course, when it comes to throwing snowballs, it's a totally different story...
Yeah but you and your pasty little friends were the ones who first started throwing the snowballs solely for the purpose of attracting attention towards yourselves.
ReplyDeleteNobody who is actually from this city wants to see your childish attention seeking behavior like snowball fighting and no pants wearing on the subay
Go play a game of urban kickball on the frozen Potomac you assholes.
Before you start playing just make sure you do plenty of warmup exercises such as jumping jacks and running in place as soon as you are out on the ice.