Posted on Aug 23, 2018
Michigan mom says 911 refused to send help with 2-month-old trapped in hot car
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A Michigan police department is apologizing for failing to help a mother who accidentally locked her baby in a hot car. Lacey Guyton's 2-month-old daughter got trapped during a visit to her grandmother's home last Saturday. As Guyton tried to get inside, the grandmother called 911 twice. But the dispatcher refused to send help, saying the police and fire departments don't unlock vehicles.
Michigan mom says 911 refused to send help with 2-month-old trapped in hot car
Posted from cbsnews.comPosted in these groups: 
911 Dispatcher
911 Dispatcher
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 4
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This is different than all the other hot car cases - the car accidentally locked. The mom tried everything to bust in and luckily she did since the dispatcher was a moron. What part of "My kid is locked in the car and I don't have the keys" is hard to get? She's not asking to get her car open because "oh I locked my keys in." No she needs someone to help her bust in to get her baby!
What if they couldn't bust the back window? Yeah I'd be after that dispatcher too.
What if they couldn't bust the back window? Yeah I'd be after that dispatcher too.
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As a dispatcher, I’d recommend this course of action:
1) Get help on the way
2) Tell the caller to grab a rock or something and bust that window out (an officer is just going to use a baton to do the same thing anyway, so that window is doomed)
When we’re having late night debates over whether or not we should send on some calls, I invoke what I call the 20/20 standard- that you don’t want to be on that show with Diane Sawyer asking you why you didn’t do more to prevent a tragedy. It’s a little tongue in cheek, but callers aren’t trained communicators. You have to treat emergencies like a chess game and think a couple steps ahead. People under stress have a tendency to downplay even the worst scenario and it’s better to send too much and downgrade than delay a response.
1) Get help on the way
2) Tell the caller to grab a rock or something and bust that window out (an officer is just going to use a baton to do the same thing anyway, so that window is doomed)
When we’re having late night debates over whether or not we should send on some calls, I invoke what I call the 20/20 standard- that you don’t want to be on that show with Diane Sawyer asking you why you didn’t do more to prevent a tragedy. It’s a little tongue in cheek, but callers aren’t trained communicators. You have to treat emergencies like a chess game and think a couple steps ahead. People under stress have a tendency to downplay even the worst scenario and it’s better to send too much and downgrade than delay a response.
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SFC Kelly Fuerhoff
Someone did end up getting the back window busted open. They were trying while she was on the phone but they couldn't get any of the windows broken. I think this situation was obviously not a case of "I locked my keys in the car." It was "the car locked and my baby is in there and we can't get break the windows."
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