Considering the guy was on school property, I would think that would concern all students’ safety.
I’d say the principal definitely neglected his duty. Someone comes on school property and breaks into a student’s car – that’s not something you wanna ignore. Would it be any different if it were a teacher’s car? (I can imagine what his reaction would be if it were his car!)
The police officer himself said the principal should have called 911. You have someone on school grounds committing crimes? That’s not just a concern for one individual.
The principal doesn’t look good. It doesn’t sound like he had enough information to determine that it was something that could wait. He should have notified the police and followed their instructions. That would be his job. But when your daughter was told she’d have to wait an hour for a police officer to show up and make a report would she have agreed to do that?
This is a crime in progress. The perpetrator was still in the area, attempting his getaway. He may still have had in his possession anything that he may have taken from her car. In my corner of suburbia, this would have elicited a multi-car response.
<Bolding mine> Really, this was his argument for not calling 911? Does he not know that police are considered Emergency Services & that a large part of the job description entails responding to calls where/when they happen & not when it’s convenient? Does he not know that police cars have emergency lights so that they can get thru traffic?
I once called the non-emergency number for something similar - they told me to call 911, since it is 911 that can triage and dispatch according to need and numbers, not the people at an individual station. You can say “I just witnessed a crime, but the suspect is gone and there is no immediate emergency” and they may pass you to someone else, put you on hold, or get your info and call you back, or deal with it then and there, depending on demand. At least, that’s what I was explicitly told in various trainings by 911 people in both Hamilton and Montreal.
I think you’re incredibly naive for thinking that they were going to catch the guy. It’s not a crime in progress, it’s a crime already concluded. The point about the heavy traffic is that by the time they got there, the trail would be even colder.
There’s not a chance in hell the cops would have helped in this situation.
Someone in actual physical danger, or a crime actually in progress. This incident was over by the time the principal was notified. No one in danger, no crime in progress, no emergency. 911 should not have been called, but a call to the non-emergency police number would have been appropriate. However, if the student had decided to call 911 while the guy was in her car, that would have been ok. Once he ran away, it shifted into a non-emergency.
I’m waffling on this, but “real” police emergencies to me usually include break-in to a building, physical threats, weapons shown, people being held at weapon-point, injuries, that kind of thing.
If he carjacked her, forced his way into her car, pulled out a weapon when she confronted him, that kind of thing - definite emergency. In this case, calling the police non-emergency number right away would have been a good idea, rather than waiting.
(And yes, not blaming the victim here, but she shouldn’t leave anything in view in her car and should always lock up. High school parking = hours and hours of uninterrupted time for thieves to cruise cars looking for carelessly left-behind items/contraband that can’t be taken into school/etc.)
The first misstep to this is back when the 17 year old was a toddler. The OP expected waitstaff to keep the child away from hot dishes. It’s a slippery slope from there, pal.
Your hostility regarding the teenager in question is pretty amusing. I’m not sure what kind of projection you’ve got going here, but I don’t get the impression that the OP is a parent behaving in the way you’re painting him/her. The OP is simply relating a story and asking for opinions. Nothing in that story suggests that the OP sees their daughter as a precious one who needs taking care of. Remember how you got mad that people didn’t just let you vent about your dining experiences and wanted to argue instead? Yeah.
Back to the OP: I don’t think it’s unreasonable to question the principal although I don’t think 911 should have been called. I agree that the police non-emergency # should have been utilized instead. Expecting a 17 year old to automatically know that indicates that some folks don’t remember what it’s like to be a teenager whose decision making/reasoning skills aren’t fully formed.
You can’t win with some people. If you didn’t talk with the principal and these types of crimes continued and perhaps escalated (hiding in a car to attack a teen) then you’d be blamed (and the school) for not taking precautions. Question whether the administration handled it right (quite politely) and you’re accused of expecting too much from the school/police. I say just do what you think is in your child’s best interest.
That said, I agree with those who indicate that the police most likely would have only taken a report, but sometimes patterns need to be established in case this person continues to target the school.
I disagree. If I catch someone rummaging around in my car, I consider it an emergency. If the guy runs away, damn well I’ll call 911 while the police still have a good chance to catch him. I would do the same if I spotted someone breaking into a stranger’s car. If the guy’s running away, I don’t consider the incident over.
Also, where I live there could be different jurisdictions to consider. There is an incorporated city within our city’s boundaries with its own police force, town council, and city courts. Also outside of the city, the county sheriff’s office has jurisdiction. Am I supposed to remember three different non-emergency numbers, depending on where I witness a crime, when one call to 911 will bring an immediate response? That’s why we have an emergency number system in the first place.
I don’t think the police would necessarily tell you it isn’t an emergency and would scold you for calling 911 or anything, I guess I just consider 911 for something where a living thing is in immediate danger and needs assistance to be safe. It’s a judgment call, to be sure. I think this situation could go either way.
Well, if the guy just kind of scampered away, he could have scampered back to once the OP’s daughter drove off. And maybe the next encounter wouldn’t have been so non-confrontational.
The principal should have called the police to protect anyone else on the property. That seems to be the safer plan from a CYA perspective than not calling anyone at all and hoping the girl hadn’t just bumped into a future Jack the Ripper.
I would call 911 if I saw that little fucker rummaging around in my car, I would expect anyone to. They can redirect your call and there’s always a chance police are in the area. I don’t know what crime in your area is like though.
What happens if you call 911 and the Police decide it isn’t an emergency? Does the sky fall in or something?
I just don’t get those who say not to call 911 in this situation. She disturbed the person who broke in, who then fled the scene. It’s not like she just found her car ransacked with no clue when it had happened.
That may be a great rule for all of Utah, but when you get down to individual counties or cities it can be very different…
That’s how it is around here as well. If I call 911 in my city I get a few cars showing up, usually with a minute or two (and this is a suburb of Milwaukee, not some little hick town where they have ‘nothing better to do’). A few years ago there was a dog in the road, I grabbed it, but the dog got weird, and I couldn’t get him from the middle of a busy road to the side, I had some one call the cops so I could get some help…4 cops, lights and sirens. I remember looking at all of them and saying “ummmm, I just needed someone that’s good with dogs to help me scoot this guy out of the road and then deal with him” one of them told me they put out an APB to help me out. Maybe there was a miscommunication. But it’s not the first time I’ve had multiple cars come and help me and I’ve NEVER EVER been chastised for using 911 for things that may or may not be deemed an emergency. I’ve used it plenty of times for people I needed removed from my store and even one time for someone that I believed was “about to cause a problem”. He was trying to pick a fight, but the guy he was doing it with was pretty cool under pressure so he wasn’t getting anywhere.
The only time I ever got ‘in trouble’ for using 911 was when my alarm was going off and they asked me who would be responding to the call. I told her I wasn’t sure yet, but I’d call back in a few minutes when I knew who it would be (so the cops know which car to expect to see pulling into the parking lot). I called her back via 911 (wait for it), she snapped at me and said I should have used the Non-emergency number, I responded “I did call that first, but I got the city hall answering machine like I always do when I call after 5. Don’t get mad at me because the voice mail is set to automatically pick up after hours”.
About 25 years ago, a friend and I had a little lemonade stand, some high school kids came and started picking on us, we sort of brushed it off but were a bit shook up since they were saying some pretty nasty stuff. About 15 minutes later a cop came and bought some lemonade from us and we told him about it…5 minutes after that he rolled around the corner and said “Are these the guys?” Why he picked them up, I’ll never know, even at the time, we just wanted him to go and yell at them or something, but it just goes to show what can happen if you give the cops a good description and point them in the right direction. The OP’s daughter even mentioned that she knew where he might be hiding. It’s responses like this that make people stop reporting things because “Whatever, the cops won’t even come out, I’m not even going to call them.” Call them, let them come out, at the very least let them pretend to try and find the guy, but I’ll bet $100 if they had called 911 right then and there and explained what had happened, the responding cop, at the very least, would have driven around the area for a few minutes before he came to take the report and possibly relayed some info to another cop as he got it from her if there was one in the area so they could take a quick drive past. At least, that’s what they do around me and I’ve called in, maybe, 30 shoplifters in the last 15 years…911 every time if it’s soon enough that I know they’re still in the area. Non-emergency if it’s an hour later (for example, if I wasn’t sure and I’ve been reviewing security tapes), but at my PD the same person answers both phones, so it’s a bit moot.
Let’s also not forget, this is a day and age where if a ‘stranger’ enters the school, it goes on lockdown, if someone tries to lure a kid into a car, it makes the local news. I’m not suggesting this is newsworthy or that the police should be called every time a skeevy 60 year old cuts 3 minutes off his walk by darting through the parking lot, but how you don’t see someone rifling though a car as not worth calling the police right then and there, I don’t know.
Since the OP mentioned that the cop himself said they should have called 911, it seems like there shouldn’t even be a discussion about it. It’s been discussed here and in other threads, every community is different. In the OP’s community, your car being robbed clearly warrants a 911 call.
My suggestion to the OP, if you want to pursue it, would be to have someone from the PD come to the school and give them a little lesson that basically amounts to “If something isn’t right, call 911, period.” Let the dispatcher and officers decide what warrants an emergency not the principal. They might even have already made signs with this kind of stuff on it. They might have a media [del]whore[/del] rep/liaison that can slip into an already scheduled assembly and talk for 5 minutes about how important it is to just call them when there’s anything that seems like the police should be involved and remind them that they 'aren’t bothering us".
There was a similar incident where I coach a few days ago. Homeless man seen looking in car windows in the student(back) parking lot.
Police were called and it was an “all hands on deck” with teachers, office staff and coaches as there are a number of students on campus after school(after school tutoring/homework help, sports teams and such) and the response was to ensure no group of students was left unattended.
He should have called just to go through the motions even if the real world chances of catching the guy were effectively nil. He made a very practical decision based on the real world threat level, but not one that was emotionally satisfying to the daughter of the OP and the OP.
Even if it’s going through the motions with little practical consequence part of the job of being a professional is doing the Kabuki dance and going through the motions when necessary to make people happy. The Principal was being jaded and unprofessional in this context.
Realistically, the police are not going to do anything. They don’t have teleportation devices, and by the time they got anywhere near, the perp would be long gone. Outside of very small towns, car break ins are so common that they are not investigable. And while there is some small possibility that the thief happens to also be an evil serial killer, in reality he’s almost certainly a kid looking for a quick and easy buck and was halfway across town the moment she came up. As soon as he took off running, filing a police report became a matter of formality for insurance purposes.
If your daughter wanted to call 911 or the non-emergency number for whatever reason, I don’t think it’d be that bad. But I don’t see why it’d be the principal’s job to make what is surely a futile symbolic gesture.
Getting your car burgled is scary and feels like a violation, but unfortunately it’s a pretty common human experience.