Carjacking witness says 911 operator told her police wouldn’t be responding

MILWAUKEE (WISN) - A Milwaukee woman says she called 911 to report her neighbor was being carjacked, only to be told that police wouldn’t be responding.

It was a shocking sight for one woman in a quiet Milwaukee neighborhood when her 64-year-old neighbor was carjacked in her own driveway.

“All of a sudden, they’re ripping her out of her car, throwing her on the ground. I thought, ‘Nope,’ and I went and grabbed the phone and called 911,” said the woman, who didn’t want to be identified.

But as shocking as the crime was, she says it got worse when the 911 operator answered.

“I’m telling him what’s going on, as it’s happening, and he goes, ‘Oh, we don’t send anybody out for that,’” the woman said.

The woman insists she made it clear the carjacking was happening as she was calling.

“I said, ‘They’re carjacking her car. They just threw her on the ground,’” she said.

Court documents support the woman’s account. A criminal complaint against the accused robber indicates the 911 caller was told police don’t respond to car thefts, even though this was clearly a carjacking, which police do respond to.

The woman says she was outraged by the 911 operator’s response to her call.

“I said, ‘What the [expletive] are you talking about? They just ripped her out of her car, threw her on the ground.’ And he goes, ‘Well, we don’t send anybody out for that.’ I said, ‘Well, what the hell do we pay you for?’” she said.

She says she hung up on the operator and helped the victim herself, driving her to a nearby police station to make the report.

“They couldn’t believe that 911 didn’t send anybody,” the woman said.

Police found the car abandoned and damaged not far away and arrested the 16-year-old suspect.

The carjacking victim says she injured her wrist when she was thrown to the ground and is still feeling pain two weeks later. She adds the incident has left her anxious and scared, even though the suspect is under arrest.

The woman who called 911 says there has been no follow-up or explanation about why the operator didn’t send police to the scene.

“The police apologized 8 million times but, you know, what are they going to do? If they’re not notified, they can’t come out,” she said.

Police say they’re “looking into” what happened.

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