Lesson Learned
If ever you happen to see a moving car smack into a parked car and then drive right off again, and you happen to see the license plate and think it a good idea to write it down, you might guess that the proper thing to do would be to call the police and tell them what you saw. You would be wrong. The proper thing to do is write down what you saw and leave it on the damaged car and be done with it. Now you know.
posted by Josh Fuller @ 8:14 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Why?
At least in Minneapolis, the owner of the damaged car is the only one who can file a report. Anyone else having information on it can't do a thing unless the owner reports the incident first.
Haha, that had the feel of "Deep Thought" by Jack Handy. But that sucks for the one who got hit...
I can understand the idea behind filing a REPORT because you need to have standing. That is, you need to be one of the people involved in the accident itself. BUT that doesn't mean you can't report a crime as a witness and have the police come out to take the report, detour traffic if needed, call an ambulance, etc. What if the accident caused sufficient enough injuries that those in the cars affected couldn't call the police themselves? Or if it happened on a highway tying up traffic for miles?
Better yet, what if person A is mugged and then shot dead? Person A obviously can't call the police. And Person B, the mugger, probably isn't going to call the police. And if Person B "did the job right" there won't be any witnesses. So Person A will just rot there because they can't call the police themselves and no one that finds them can call the police because they aren't person A or Person B?
Sounds like Josh was given the runaround by the Person on the phone. At a minimum, a patrol car could have been sent, the owner tracked down by the license plate, etc. And THEN a report could have been filed. But it sounds like someone was lazy.
Your talent for irrelevant hypothetical questions is admirable, Anonymous, but I can at least assure you that several different people gave me similar answers. Each of them though someone else might be able to help me, but me not being an interested party was always a sticking point. Of course, if it was a crime or an injury accident, I'm sure the rules would be completely different, but I do see how a parked car being sideswiped isn't quite as big a deal.
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