Butt dial mistaken for workplace violence; SWAT responds
January 7, 2011 by Fred HosierPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Stupid human safety tricks, workplace violence
PDF They may call them “smart phones,” but sometimes the users end up being dummies.
Thirty SWAT team members responded to a school in Winnetka, IL, all because a district employee butt dialed his phone.
(For the unfamiliar, butt dialing occurs when someone puts a cell phone in a back pants pocket, sits on it, triggers the re-dial button and makes a phone call.)
Authorities thought they had a serious case of workplace violence on their hands.
The butt call reached the employee’s wife. She heard disturbing, garbled noise coming from the phone, which turned out to be hip-hop music her husband was playing on the car radio with “gangster-like lyrics,” according to a police account of the incident.
The wife called 9-1-1, thinking her husband was being held hostage at the Carleton Washburne School where he works.
Armed with automatic weapons and wearing bulletproof vests, a SWAT team circled the school and then proceeded to search it, room by room.
Three hours later the search was called off when police found the employee at home.
There were no students in the school at the time, but a closed-door school board meeting was being held inside.
At one point, three TV-news choppers hovered over the school.
A school district official said the employee was embarrassed at the commotion he caused and didn’t want to comment.
Winnetka Police Chief Joseph De Lopez looked on the bright side: The SWAT team got some real-world training. “It was good practice,” De Lopez said.
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Tags: butt dial, SWAT team, workplace violence
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January 11th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Why would someone sit on their phone?
January 18th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
I’ve had that happen to me. I’d just get off the phone with someone and a few minutes later, after they’d put the phone in their purse, I’d get called again. I’d hear them talking about something but they couldn’t hear me yelling in the phone. I told them about it the next day and she’d had the phone do that to her before.
He stuck it in his back pocket. Probably figured it wouldn’t hurt since it was a car seat. At least he wasn’t talking on it while driving. Maybe that’s his way of keeping it unavailable for talking on while driving.
You’re a safety Guy, you should appreciate that.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:27 am
Seems to me if you have a phone where the keys are exposed (not covered like some), it makes good sense to not place that phone where the keys could unknowingly be pressed. Read the story. Enough said.