Karlyn and I were driving down the 290 today on our way home from some baby shopping. Not long after getting on the 290 we see a car in front of us, some sort of reddish-brown chevy rust bucket with it’s left blinker light on, moving erratically from one side of its lane to the other. After just a few moments, and a near accident later, we realized that this guy had to be intoxicated. So I then handed my cell phone to Karlyn and told her to call 911.
So Karlyn starts talking to the 911 operator, goes through the all of the information, where we are, what direction we are going, her name, etc… Mind you, at no point has the operator bothered to put out a dispatch call to the police. Then all of a sudden, because we are traveling down the 290, Karlyn is told she’s out of their jurisdiction, in this case Amherst, and she’ll have to be transfered. She then gets transfered to the State police 911 operator and has to go through the whole story all over again. In the mean time this guy has almost caused 2 more accidents.
At this point we are just about ready to pass the State trooper barracks located at the intersection of the 90 and the 33. I relay this information to Karlyn who relays it to the 911 operator. She then tells the operator that the car is turning west on the 33. In my mind I figure this is easy. The operator tells the State Trooper dispatchers and a car should be on the road in half a minute and they stop this guy from killing someone. Shows how much I know. Instead the 911 operator was abrupt and dismissive about the call and told Karlyn, “ok, we have the information. goodbye.” Karlyn says her tone was that of someone who didn’t care and didn’t think this was a big deal. All this time I’m still following the guy, from a good distance of course, and he has managed to almost hit 2 more cars in his swerving from lane to lane.
I’ll tell you, I am NOT impressed with the 911 performance in this situation. Karlyn and I managed to follow this guy all the way to Grider St., and then down Grider, with absolutely no sign of police anywhere. Even on are ride back home, which was back down the 33, there was not one cop; and the Trooper barracks looked like it still had the same number of parked cars in it.
So tell me, do we just not care about drunk drivers anymore? Do they have to kill someone or cause an accident before anyone feels like bothering?
Is there any communication between the police in this region? Seems to me that if you are travelling and trying to report something, it doesn’t make sense to keep transfering you when you could be passing through several town. I probably passed through 3 different jurisdictions during this incident.
This all just happened about 45 minutes ago, and I’m pretty mad about it. I think I might see if 2 on Your Side is interested in this story.