Close Call

I think I may have prevented a rape, or something worse today. I am ashamed to say I was really annoyed with the call before we knew what actually happened. I took a call from a male I'll call Jack. He said his friend Jill had called him on his cell and said someone was in her house. Great. He has absolutely no information. Immediately I get annoyed. WHY do people call their family and friends when they are in trouble and not the police - the ones that can actually help them? It is beyond frustrating to be talking to Aunt Suzy in Wisconsin about a domestic assault in progress in our city. Relatives don't have answers to the questions that are imperative to our response to the situation. Grrrrrr. Call 911, THEN your friends people! But I will soon eat my words,,, keep reading.

He informed me that he was going over there to see if she was ok. I asked him what he planned to do if he found someone in the house and he said he didn't know. Well, maybe you should wait outside and let the police handle it, I suggested. (Another pet peeve: Joe Citizen thinking he is the Lone Ranger. So instead of one person in danger, now we have 2 to rescue, or they get in a fight with the suspect or end up antagonizing the suspect and making it worse.) I asked that he stay in his car, and we would send officers over. At least he knew her address, so I put a burglary in progress call for service in and we would send someone out to check on her.

I hung up with him and called the house number that Jack had for Jill. No answer. I was about to hang up, and thought.. she is probably home and she doesn't want to answer the phone for whatever reason, so I will leave her a message telling her that the police were notified and if she was ok and got freaked out by a cat or something maybe she would call us back and say she was ok... and I could cancel the call out. So I did, I left a message, more out of annoyance I am ashamed to say, rather than actual concern for her. "This is ** police department, if you are there Jill pick up the phone. [pause] If you don't answer we will send police to your house to check on you to make sure you are ok."

I called Jack back, tell him there is no answer. THEN he tells me that she was actually calling from a cell phone. I try that number too, no answer, left same message. Meanwhile, we had a burglary just occurred in a not-so-nice part of town. The loss- 6 guns. The caller said she heard her back door slam when she came in the front door. So yes, some yahoo is running down the street in a bad neighborhood carrying 6 loaded weapons. Due to manpower issues ( a whole post in itself) officers responded to that call before my damsel in distress call.

Ten minutes go by, amid answering other 911 calls, and I try to call Jill back. This time she answers, crying. Crap. I told her it was the police and asked what was going on. She stated that as she was getting out of the shower a male came up behind her, took her towel and wrapped it around her head and neck. He drug her backwards into the living room with the towel and threw her on the ground. At that precise moment, my voice was audible on the answering machine saying that we were going to send police to the house since she didn't answer the phone. He took that as his cue to leave, and bailed out the back door. Her dog apparently got a good piece of him because there was a blood trail leading to the back fence. 2 points for Fido. As I'm trying to get a description of the suspect I hear a voice in the background. Oh yes, Sir Jack is trying to ask her the same thing so that he can go hunt him down himself. Fantastic. Needless to say, officers were diverted from the burglary to this call, but she had only a generic description of the suspect.

Yes, he got away. Could it have been a lot worse? Absolutely, but that doesn't make me feel any better. I didn't believe her. I was so hung up on not being able to have contact with her/the actual victim and get to ask all the routine questions we are trained to ask and make my call neat and detailed, that I completely missed the point that she might actually be in real trouble. Sure, I followed protocol and everything was done 'by the book', but my conscience pricked me. We get so used to people crying wolf over the silliest little things that when an actual crime occurs, it's hard to believe them. Scary. That was a wake up call. Lot of good it does me now that I'm leaving, but maybe someone can learn from it!

Btw, we puzzled over the time frame for awhile. Apparently she grabbed her cell of a table as she was being dragged, hit send, and it called the last person she talked to... Jack. All she had time to say was that someone was in her house, before the suspect hung up the phone. Egg on my face.