Bad cops.

[bara]

Linky

Guy gets trapped in cooler.
Guy trips alarm.
Police respond.

No lights, no unlocked doors cops go away.
Guy freezes to death.

Wow.

[Andara Bledin]

I don't blame the cops one little bit.

The release button was broken and not fixed.
The guy let the door close behind him.
The guy didn't have his phone on him.
There was no sign that there was anybody in the place when the cops arrive.
It's a fact that alarm signals misfire due to power surges (among other things).

It's sad and unfortunate that this guy died, but there was no reason why the cops should have thought he was trapped in his own freezer.

^-.-^

[KnitShoni]

Yeah, I'm not seeing how this is a "bad cop" scenario. If there are no unlocked doors, no signs anything was disturbed, and no noises to indicate there was anyone in the walk-in, why would they check it?

[bara]

My apologies, I meant that to be a question mark and not a period. I understand them not wanting to force a way in, but I do believe they should have had someone come out and check the building who had keys to get in.

[HYHYBT]

The cell phone likely wouldn't have been useful anyway inside a cooler.

It's sad, but this is why you don't ignore broken safety equipment. He's the owner, he didn't get the latch fixed, and he shut himself in an enclosed space with dry ice, which is unwise even when the door isn't locked.

[Canarr]

My apologies, I meant that to be a question mark and not a period. I understand them not wanting to force a way in, but I do believe they should have had someone come out and check the building who had keys to get in.

I'm uncertain whether or not that would've been a good idea. Locating someone with keys, getting them to come to the restaurant after having found them, all takes time. Now, I don't know how urgently those officers might have been needed elsewhere; but if false alarms due to power surges are really a common occurrence, as a citizen I'd prefer our police to be out on the streets, not standing around an empty building waiting for the owner every time there's a false alarm.

[Greenday]

Was expecting police brutality or something in this thread.

Honestly, I don't have any problems with what the cops did. They received an alarm, showed up, found no reason to think someone broke in, and peaced out.

[Shangri-laschild]

My friend's mom responds to alarm calls for a school as their on call person. She meets the police there if it's a call the police are dispatched to. If she didn't show and everything looked fine after walking around the outside, they probably wouldn't stay. I don't know if this alarm company had a similar set up but if no one from the store showed up, they may not have permission to go inside if everything looks fine and is locked up.

[Lillfilly]

Even if the police had located an employee with keys and informed them that everything looked secure, the employee might have deemed it unnecessary to come out. That's happened where I work. If an alarm sounds but everything is secure, the employees will usually just call the alarm company to reset the alarm and not worry about it. This was just a terrible accident.

One of my old coworkers got stuck in a room with a door that was known to malfunction and had been reported many times. Your phone and radio didn't work in there, he was claustrophobic, and he was stuck for about 3 hours before his relief went around looking for him and heard the pounding on the door.

[crashhelmet]

My issue with all of this is that they've should've checked the cooler and they didn't. Most modern alarm systems tell you where the alarm is tripped form. They've should've received that information and checked it out. Especially since the reason why the cooler has an alarm in it is employees are typically locked in there while the robbers loot the business.

[Greenday]

My issue with all of this is that they've should've checked the cooler

Why? For what reason would they have had for checking it?

[crashhelmet]

Why? For what reason would they have had for checking it?

Because that is the specific location where the alarm was tripped.

But sadly, this isn't unusual. There was a woman raped in her own home after calling 911 because the police didn't bother to check inside her house.

[Andara Bledin]

But this raises another question: Did the police know where the alarm had tripped?

We already know that the emergency release on the door was busted and had been for some time. What else in that place was broken and mickey-moused to work "well enough?"

Honestly, this entire story reads like a checklist of everything not to do with regards to freezers.

^-.-^

[crashhelmet]

The article said they have ADS as their alarm system and that's who notified the police. While I admit I'm making assumptions here, the company should have been able to pin point which alarm was tripped, they should have informed the police of it, and given the commonality of victims being locked in the coolers and/or freezers of restaurants, the police should have checked them. At the very least, they should have entered the premises.

[Andara Bledin]

The article says that the police were notified of an alarm; I would hope that somebody would ask if it was a freezer alarm and if the police were told that; I'm not sure what the fact of the lack of clarity means.

The article also states that the police spoke to the security guard at the site, and it seems that he was unaware of the man's presence on site.

It's also worth noting that he was probably dead before they even arrived.

Article at WMCTV

After an autopsy, the medical examiner said Tuesday that 47-year-old Jay Luther would have been overcome within just a few minutes of entering the Germantown Cafe East cooler Sunday night.

[eta]
Oh, and for the record, most alarm systems are automated; the alarm goes off and a call goes out to the appropriate agencies while the alarm company tries to contact the people on their list. If they get someone, then they cancel the roll out, but the agencies don't have any info beyond "X type of alarm at Y location."

^-.-^