We get stupid callers every day - all day. And basically I try to keep my patience on the surface and the anger in check. But when the stupidity and cruelness and laziness hurts or endangers a child, I really find it hard to not unload on these jerks.
Today one of my last calls on shift was a guy who was very very angry I wasn't sending an officer right out to the apartment his x-girlfriend has been living at because she has their mutual child. This is basically what happened:
Caller and his girlfriend had a lovely little girl. After awhiles apparently mom picked up a meth habit. After she lied and stole from everyone, she got kicked out of her house, her family disowned her, and caller finally got daughter moved in to his place. The mother moved in with a friend who also is dealing with their own meth addiction.
Three weeks later caller gives in to the mother's cries of missing their daughter. He meets her at a park so mother and daughter can have a little time together. Mother sneeks away with the child. Now caller trying to find the child and mother and demanding we take the child back and arrest the mother.
Here's the kicker. Has no clue where she and the child are located. Mother has no job. No family member will have anything to do with her. And she's not at the apartment she has been staying at for the last couple of weeks. And there is no custody order either. But apparently we are the bad guys for not locating the mother and child and taking the child away and give her back to caller.
There's the really rough call from yesterday. A 2 year old child is dead under suspicious circumstances. When the family members first called 9-1-1 there was a lot of confusion on what was happening. Then family members were moving the phone to person to person while conferring with the medical assistance.
One person would be calm and repeat/yell out instructions on how to provide CPR. One person would get on the phone and scream and cry (didn't sound true). Another person would get on the phone and act confused and bewildered (which did sound like a normal mental state).
They had all kinds of reasons why the child wasn't breathing. And the way the call was going, I wonder if they were really trying to even give CPR to the child. Officers arrived on scene and found suspicious marks on the child. Now under investigation.
Or the candiate for Mother-of-the-Year call for service that just happened. Fourteen year old daughter ran away. Mother reported the event to the police. Couple days later the daughter shows up at the local hospital emergency room early hours of the morn clearly having been beaten up. Hospital staff call the police to advise there is an assault victim in their emergency room who also admits to being a runaway.
Officers arrive to take a report. Girl is very frightened to share all that happened to her, the recent beating in addition to the reasons for running away. From what little I gleaned, the girl ran from an abusive home only to end up being beaten up by one of the people at the location she was hiding at.
The kicker to this event is the mother's reaction. The officer calls her to say daughter has been located, is at the hospital being treated for abrasions as the result of being beaten up, about to be released, so come on over and pick her up. Mom says nope, don't want her, arrest her and send her away and the hospital better not be sending her a bill for the medical assistance.
Calls for service that deal with children are the worst. When adults are being stupid with other adults and hurting themselves, I can laugh it off. But when their adult stupidity and selfishness and their own wants/desires actions take control of their behavior that injures or kills or puts a child in dangers way is just not acceptable.
The father calling in worried about his daughter failed her by not protecting her from a mother with a known drug addiction by being lazy and not filing for custody of the child and not keeping a close enough eye on them while at the park.
The parents of the toddler failed the child by not taking care of the gift they had.
The mother of the teen clearly can't be bothered with the needs of her child who is more willing to take on the outside world than to stay home under the abusive living conditions created by who knows what problems the mother has, real and/or not.
Wish I could figure out the way to solve this issue. Or at least have the freedom to kick their asses and subject them to the same lack of care and abuse they dished out to their children.
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