Good Samaritans struggle to get Seattle police to scene of possible DUI

This past Mother’s Day, Jen and her husband, Jeremy, were driving down Yesler in Seattle, enjoying the day with their three small children, when they came upon a woman driving erratically.

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“My husband’s like, ‘Whoa! What’s up with that lady? She looks like she’s drunk,” Jen told KIRO Radio.

The woman was blowing through red lights and was all over the road. So, they decided to follow her as they called 911, gave a description of the car and the license plate number, and stayed with her for several miles.

At 10th and Aloha, her vehicle abruptly stopped in the middle of the intersection.

“So we pull over. My husband gets out and calls 911. She seems to be passed out or incapacitated in some way. She’s slumped over in the seat and she’s backing up all the traffic on 10th Avenue.”

That’s when Azra and her husband were driving by and noticed the commotion.

“Oh my gosh, there’s a lady and she is slumped over the steering wheel, and there are 10 cars behind her and nobody’s really doing anything,” described Azra. “So he stopped in the middle of the road and ran to her. Then, I ran out and told him to get back in the car and pull away the car so he’s not in the road.”

Azra is a surgical nurse, and felt obligated to help in what she thought was a medical emergency.

“I said, ‘Hey are you okay?'” she continued. “I just shook her because my first thing was I’m gonna do CPR, just by the way she looked. The she kinda dazed and confused put her head up and looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, I’m fine, I’m just resting. I was sleepy, I just had a baby and my husband is waiting for me and so I said, ‘Look take the keys out of the ignition.'”

Azra says Jen and Jeremy were still behind the woman’s vehicle. Jeremy had already called 911 multiple times. Azra called 911 too, and was shocked by the dispatcher’s response.

“I told them what was happening and they said they were dealing with something more important and more emergent,” said Azra. “So I said, ‘Well, I’m in the middle of the road trying to talk this lady out of driving off because she was so drunk — I mean she fell asleep in the middle of the road.’ And they said, ‘Well, you just need to wait.'”

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So she waited, putting herself in danger to do so.

“I have all these motorists passing me by, flipping me off, screaming and yelling at me. Buses coming, probably about, not even 12 inches close to hitting me, because they don’t understand what’s happening: She’s in the middle of the road and she’s blocking traffic, and she’s not moving, and we can’t let her drive off because we didn’t get any directions from the police.”

After 40 minutes, she called the police again.

“They said, ‘Well, we are still dealing with the emergency and you have to wait. We’ll send somebody out when we can.’ I said, ‘What would you like me to do in the interim because I am getting really dangerously close to other traffic, and people are yelling at me, and she’s starting to get really antsy and wanting to drive off and they said to me?'”

“‘We can’t give you any advice as to what to do,'” the dispatcher answered.

Azra turned away from the woman and the car for a moment to talk about next steps with the other Good Samaritans, when the woman drove off.

“I just felt that not only was the public safety in danger, my safety was in danger,” said Azra. “I was put in a bad predicament, because I felt like if we drove off and didn’t do anything, that I would have felt horrible. At the same time, I stood there and kind of put my life on the line standing there and being close to the cars, and trying to talk to her and talk her out of driving off for nothing, basically.

“The police never showed up and I never got a phone call; nothing,” she added.

Jen says she and Jeremy felt let down, too.

“Nobody ever came,” said Jen. “Nobody gave us any instructions on how we were supposed to handle the situation or make it more safe for her or other pedestrians on the road. And, I mean, while I understand the police are backed up, they could have sent a fire truck; they could have sent a paramedic. I’m assuming there was somebody, somewhere that could have maybe been more experienced than we were: Random citizens with families trying to handle a situation which never actually got handled.”

I reached out to Sean Whitcomb with Seattle Police Department, who said they were prioritizing two suicides and a burglary at the time.

“The DUI call was described as a DUI driver, a woman passed out in a car who then wanted to drive away,” said Whitcomb. “Now that certainly has the potential to be a life and death situation, but at that moment it is not. At that moment, when someone is trying to commit suicide, that is more likely to result in the loss of life.”

He says the reality is they don’t have enough officers to deal with call volumes.

“But at the end of the day it’s been a challenge,” said Whitcomb. “We don’t have the amount of officers that we want. We don’t have the amount of officers that we are seeking to hire, so that’s why it remains a work in progress.”

I asked Whitcomb what it says about the SPD if they aren’t prepared to deal with calls on a regular day in Seattle.

“Chief Best has been saying it, Mayor Durkan’s been saying it: Right now we are working incredibly hard on hiring new employees, recruiting laterals from other agencies, retaining the employees that we have so they don’t lateral themselves to other agencies, and just employee morale.”

Speaking of morale, recently, some exit interviews from cops who have left SPD were made public, that had scathing feedback about how police are treated by Seattle City Council, and higher-ups within the department.

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“I will say this about the exit interviews,” Whitcomb said. “Those were very candid and honest answers from men and women who worked here and moved on to other things, and we couldn’t be more grateful for their perspective and point of view. But as far as the actual details, that’s above my pay grade to speak to.”

But, Whitcomb said that if you find yourself in a situation like the Good Samaritans in our story, don’t put yourself in danger.

“Don’t get in front of that car. Don’t reach into the car. Don’t put yourself in danger. Naturally, the best advice we give is to be a good witness, get the license plate, get a description.”

Whitcomb says the information was helpful, but driving under the influence is a crime that needs to occur in an officer’s presence in order for to develop probable cause.