I have to wonder how it was relayed from the initial call to the police responding. Did they get the call as a welfare check or possible prowler or break-in or what? I mean I know the neighbor who called the police said he wanted them to check into it because her front door had been open for hours, but did that get relayed to the police responding? If it had been a break-in, the fact that the door had been open for hours would be a clue that the perp(s) had probably left long ago.
I feel sorry for the man who made the call. He thought he was doing the right thing. Now he must feel that if he’d minded his own business, she’d still be alive.
From the Dallas Morning News:
“Lt. Brandon O’Neil, a Fort Worth police spokesman, said at a brief news conference Sunday afternoon that two officers had been dispatched to the home in the 1200 block of East Allen Avenue after a neighbor made a call early Saturday to the nonemergency police line. They arrived about 2:30 a.m. and walked into the backyard.”
“A neighbor, James Smith, said he had called a nonemergency line to ask police to do a welfare check when he noticed the front door was open at the home where Jefferson was.
In audio released Sunday, Smith told a dispatcher that it wasn’t normal for his neighbors to have “both doors open at this time of night.”
Smith said he didn’t know what happened inside the house after police arrived.
“All I know is my neighbor died unnecessarily at the hands of the Fort Worth Police Department,” he said.
There was no sign that anything violent was going on inside the house before the officers arrived, he said.
“All they had to do was announce who they were and if she heard them, she’d probably come to the door to see who was at her front door,” Smith said.”
Nonemergency line, welfare check, open structure. Cops had no need of stealthy approach.
Right now *I* have all my windows and doors open to let the smell of my burned bagel out of the house. Does that give the cops the right to shoot me?
I called the police because when I got to my Mom’s house her front door was wide open. This was at 10 in the morning and she was in the hospital. They told me don’t go inside just wait for us. When they got there they knocked on the doorjamb and said....anybody in there? They had their hand on their gun but it wasn’t drawn. The burglars were long gone. Pretty sure that’s the way it’s supposed to be done.