Cop Viral After Telling Off Mother Who Left Her Children Locked in Hot Car While Shopping
You need to run in to the store and the thought of lugging your 3-year-old and 6-year-old with you isn’t all that appealing at the moment.
It’s 68 degrees out, not too hot, so you turn to your kids, tell them to behave while you get some groceries and leave them in the car.
Even if you haven’t left your kids in the car yourself, the thought has probably crossed your mind. It would be so much easier — you can pop in and pop out and have all the shopping done in the time it would take one child to get through one shopping-induced meltdown.
But in the summer, that’s risky. One mom in Vancouver will not easily forget the lesson she was given.
The unnamed mother left her two kids in her Lexus with the windows rolled up. She was gone for around 20 minutes.
At some point during that time, the car alarm began to go off. Passersby noticed the kids inside and said they were “distressed.”
Several shoppers called the police to inform them of the situation, and it wasn’t long before police cars, a fire truck and an ambulance arrived.
The children were removed from the car, which was described as “hot.” Closed vehicles can easily reach triple-digit temperatures in the sun.
When the mom made it back out to the car, she was met with a turbulent scene. Despite all the ruckus, she didn’t seem to grasp the severity of the situation.
So one cop approached her and made it very clear that her decision to leave her kids in the car was unacceptable.
“What’s your problem?” he asked the woman, who leaned away with crossed arms. “Do you understand what you’ve done? Your children could have died!”
She tried to say something, but he wouldn’t hear it. “You don’t seem to understand the danger you put these children in,” he said.
“Listen to me! You’re talking when you should be listening. Your children could have died. The windows were up, it’s hot out! It takes two or three minutes…”
But the mom wasn’t done defending herself yet, so the cop continued to make his point. “Why are you arguing? Do you want me to seize your kids, and (you’ll) never see them again? Is that your problem? That is your problem! You don’t seem to understand what you’ve done.”
“You have a fire truck, an ambulance and two police cars here because you left your kids in there and you think it’s fine! You wonder why I’m upset?”
His tone of voice and line of questioning indicated that he was concerned for the lives of the children in the car — perhaps more concerned than their own mother had been.
The video clip from last year has had several viral streaks. Many people are applauding the officer’s tenacity and sincerity.
Chief Adam Palmer with the Vancouver Police knows the cop in question and explained that he got very heated because he was so worried.
“I know that he has children of his own and you have to remember that police officers are just people,” Palmer said.
“We’re all human beings and everyone may react slightly differently to every set of circumstances and he was trying to convey to the woman the seriousness of what she’d done to the children,” he added.
This is a good reminder in these hot summer months to keep an eye out when you’re in parking lots. You could be the reason a child or a pet lives to see another day!
Submit your story here, and subscribe to our best uplifting stories here.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
