Government cops are here to protect you by hanging up on your 911 call without finding out what your emergency is, and then refusing to send an ambulance, because, in your panic over the fact that your father was on the ground shaking from a seizure, you happened to offend their delicate sensibilities with your vulgar tongue:

Adrianne Ledesma [while 911 is recording but handset is still ringing]: What the fuck?

Sergeant Robert McFarlan: 911.

Adrianne: I need an ambulance at [REDACTED]

Sergeant Robert McFarlan: Well, OK, first of all, you don’t need to swear over 911—

Adrianne: OK

Sergeant Robert McFarlan: —and slow down.

Adrianne: Send me a fucking ambulance!

[click]

At this point, Sergeant Robert McFarlan hung up the phone.

Adrianne dialed 911 again.

Sergeant Robert McFarlan: 911.

Adrianne: Um, are you going to give me an ambulance?

Sergeant Robert McFarlan: Are you going to swear again, you stupid ass [sic]?

Adrianne: Are we going to have a fucking problem?

Sergeant Robert McFarlan: No, you’re not going to get one!

Adrianne: Are we going to have a fucking problem? Do you want to fucking lose your job?

[click]

At this point, Sergeant Robert McFarlan hung up on her again.

After she called back a third time, and he hung up on her a third time, McFarlan sent a squad car, not an ambulance, down to the address she’d given him. After all, there was a filthy-mouthed girl on the loose. But Ledesma had already left the house go over to the police station in person in a desperate attempt to get some help, and to tell them what was going on. When she arrived at the police station, the cops proceeded to handcuff and arrest her for Disorderly Conduct and for Abusing 911. As it turns out, there is no such crime as Abusing 911 in Lincoln Park, but, hey, never mind.

The boss cop admits that McFarlan was completely in the wrong. The response to his behavior—which subjected an innocent young woman to a completely baseless arrest, and endangered a man’s life by denying him medical care in an emergency, and all for absolutely no reason other than to indulge this punk cop’s take-charge attitude, his finely-tuned sense of propriety, and his truly awesome sense of entitlement—the response, I say, was to give Sergeant Robert McFarlan a two-week vacation and call it discipline.

(Via Ace of Spades HQ 2009-05-04 and Balko 2009-05-04, via The Quick and the Dead 2009-05-05.)

See also:

• GT 2008-02-18: Cops are here to protect you.
• GT 2008-01-16: Well, thank God #8: Civil Tongue edition
• GT 2001-04-30: Cops more likely to arrest women on public disturbance infractions