Friday, January 14, 2011
Discretion in Dialing
When we find ourselves in dangerous situations, we always like to rely on the better-safe-than-sorry philosophy. This is a good policy most of the time, but what if we aren't the ones in danger? Recently, as many of you know, there was a misunderstanding recently at Washbourne School where a woman in Winnetka believed her husband was being held hostage at the school. After the school was surrounded with SWAT vehicles and many police officers and both New Trier campuses had been locked down, they discovered there was no gunman and the whole situation was borne of a butt-dial that the woman thought was the sounds of her husband being held hostage. Although because the situation is in the past so we try to look at it as a training exercise we can learn from, really it should never have happened and the valuable time of many of our police and SWAT officers was wasted. This reminds me of a situation in my own life where myself and about 10 other kids were filming scenes for a movie one of them had written. We were dressed in camouflage and had props for the filming which was going to occur in the forest. by the time we got to the area we were going to film the scenes in, a police officer approached and led us out of the forest. There on the street we were surprised to see 4 police vehicles and numerous officers of the law. It turned out that they had received no less than 10 calls about suspicious activity. After the officers saw us teenagers walking out of the forest most of them drove away, and we were simply told we could not film in the forest preserve so not much police time was wasted, but the situation disturbs me nonetheless. 10 people who were driving by and saw teenagers walking into the forest believed that the situation was so dangerous that it actually warranted a call to the police. My point with these stories is that the police are there to help us and they do a terrific job of doing so, but it would be in all of our best interest to not waste their time by calling 911 unless we really understand the situation we are calling about.
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Ian- interesting post. While we can look back on events like the two you described and laugh now, at the time it was pretty scary. I was in school at the time that the Washburne crisis was happening, and we weren't allowed to leave our after school activities until the situation had been cleared up. While SWAT teams may have been an unnecessary part, I'm glad that I know the community can react so quickly had there been an actual shooting. Also, for your movie filming, a lot of people are paranoid and the sight probably scared them. Also, as bad as it sounds, the police probably didn't have a more pressing thing to do at the time either. I'd say that's pretty lucky, though. I'd rather have police who are able to take the time to investigate any situation, whether it's real or not, because public safety doesn't seem like a waste of time to me.
ReplyDeleteI think people shouldn't call the police unless they have reason to do so. Wasting their time or fooling them for purposes of entertainment, as people I knew in my previous school have done, is unacceptable in every way. Not only does it waste the police's time, it puts those who truly require their help in danger as they are unable to receive it. However, if someone alerts the police to activity they mistakenly thought was suspicious, I do not believe we can hold them accountable or place penalties on them as this would discourage people from calling the police when a real situation did arise.
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