Police have charged Elizabeth Miller, the manager of the Bed, Bath & Beyond in Lexington, Kentucky, who refused to let a couple use the store’s phone to call 911 to report a three-year-old locked in a van, and refused to make an announcement over the store’s PA system. The charge is “failure to report dependency, neglect and abuse, a Class B misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of 90 days and a maximum fine of $250.”
The county attorney quoted in the Kentucky Lexington Leader-Herald article points out that common decency should always trump any store policy, misinterpreted or not. In fact, it’s the law!
First Assistant Fayette County Attorney Brian Mattone told the Herald-Leader Thursday that under the duty-to-report statute, everyone has the duty to report dependency, neglect and abuse of a child if they have knowledge of it. Mattone said prosecutors thought that Miller, through witnesses, had knowledge of possible abuse or neglect. Moreover, there is language in the statute that says “nothing should relieve their obligation to report,” Mattone said.
The article also quotes another shopper who says she received a similar response from a different Bed, Bath & Beyond last summer when she saw a dog locked inside a car. Here’s hoping that the company’s “we’re ashamed this happened” response is authentic, and that their employees learn that it’s okay to offer help sometimes.
“Store clerk charged with failing to help child locked in van” [Herald-Leader] (Thanks to Michael and Donald!)
(Photo: Morton Fox)
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If a customer needs 911,you the employee simply dial it and hand the customer the phone.More than likely the customer will be on some type of surveillance camera/tape anyway.
So many companies manage by threat but many employees don’t realize that there is a difference between company policy and what is right or wrong.The company is not always right or even legal in many cases.Common Sense!!!
We had a BBQ joint burn to the ground one night. 2 people called and the dispatcher said they were probably smoking meat.
The worst thing is that it was half a block from a fire station.
AFAIK, every state has a child-abuse reporting law. You–and that means everybody, no matter what your position is–are obligated to report suspected child abuse even if you are a 3rd party, for instance, if you only heard about a child being abused. The laws are typically written that, given a situation where there is a group of people all of whom know about the abuse, a single person can be designated to make the report, but you better be sure that it gets done, because if down the road, you learn that the report wasn’t made and the authorities learn that you were aware of abuse and didn’t report it, you are liable.
It is expressly against the law to refuse or to fail to make a report for any reason whatsoever. This means that there are no permissible excuses for not making a report. There is no problem with people making multiple reports over the same event, so don’t concern yourself with that. This law means that the store manager who refused to help report the abuse has committed a crime, because she is a 3rd party who had suspicion because she was told about the child in the car. (Of course she went a face-palming step further and actually prevented others from making a report, and I think that’s why the authorities decided to press charges.)
The law doesn’t require that she personally verify the situation, although it would have only required a minute or two to do so, had she cared (and she didn’t). I have personally never known or even heard of a person charged with making a false police report when they sincerely believed that a crime was taking place (even if it wasn’t). Child welfare investigators respond to many false alarms and the occasional malicious report. That’s the reality, and they’d rather deal with false alarms than the alternative.
Why do we have such laws at all? Because many people are considerably chickens**t, and when confronted with a situation that they find emotionally or physically threatening, they will go to considerable lengths to avoid having to deal with the people or circumstances involved, even if it means that a child gets beaten or raped or baked in a car. People’s powers of denial are strong, and these laws requiring that one report crimes and render aid are designed to make it clear that it is socially and legally unacceptable to witness another in danger without trying to help.
Unfortunately I doubt if this charge will stick. I’m not sure how the text of the law reads, but having personal knowledge of a fact (abuse in this case) is not the same as having hearsay knowledge of an unproven fact (someone said there was abuse happening). The manager can easily say she thought it was a joke or she thought someone was jerking her around and that she didn’t have actual personal knowledge of the abuse since she did not witness anything herself. That would be my defense anyway.
@Canino:
The Kentucky law is pretty simple: “Any person who knows or has reasonable cause to believe that a child is dependent, neglected, or abused shall immediately report.”
So if the local crazy bag woman who sniffs light bulbs in aisle 6 comes in ranting, you’re probably safe to ignore her. But if a normal seeming person tells you there’s a kid locked in a car outside (an unfortunately common enough ocurrence), it would seem like you would have reasonable cause to believe it.
@TinyBug: However surely that law criminalises anyone who had a mobile phone on them or walked past the car too?
@abigsmurf: However surely that law criminalises anyone who had a mobile phone on them or walked past the car too?
It would certainly seem to apply to anyone who walked past the car AND saw the kids inside, regardless of whether or not they had a cell phone. Frankly, I think anyone who sees a child locked inside a hot car and doesn’t do anything about it should be charged with a felony.
Laws like this are pretty common. People who see children being abused, neglected or endangered have a legal obligation to report it to the authorities. People who have reasonable cause to suspect abuse or neglect have different levels of legal obligation depending on what state they live in and what their occupation is.
The Kentucky law doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.
@abigsmurf: “However surely that law criminalises anyone who had a mobile phone on them or walked past the car too?”
In fact it does, unfortunately we will never know who may have walked by, saw the child in danger and did nothing.
I’ve been pissed off since I first read this. This outcome is like a hug from Jesus. Eat it, BB&B! This makes me SO happy.
Oh, SNAP!! I _soo_ wish I could prosecute this case, mostly because I really like winning
Why is the store manager any more responsible than anyone else who didn’t make the call? Would the guy who asked them to report the incident (then did it himself) have been charged with this crime had the store called the police? Afterall he was capable of going to his phone and calling the police straight away but chose not to.
I’m not defending the store not calling but stepping back and looking at what happened, these charges seem incredibly stupid.
@abigsmurf:She is responsible because she knew about the situation and refused to help. The guy was trying to help, see the difference? Who knows how far the gentleman would have had to go to get to “his” phone. What if he lived 30 minutes away? And saying he “chose” not to go to “his” phone makes no sense at all. He “chose” to help by running to the store to use a phone! There was a child locked in a hot car dude!
Bottom line, the store had a phone a 15 second walk away from the situation and the manager was completely heartless and stupid for refusing to help.
I would rather lose any job I had than to not stop to help a child in danger. These charges are completely valid and I hope she is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Think before you speak man.
“I would rather lose any job I had than to not stop to help a child in danger.”
But that’s not a choice that is either fair or right and it should never be used to condemn someone. There should never be a lose/lose situation like what these laws create. Why should, no matter what someone does, wether they make a moral choice or a selfish one, have their life ruined, especially when the actual criminal was someone else? Who’s to say losing his job and income won’t cause far more harm to his own family’s wellbeing?
The manager had to balance his responsibility to help an endangered child with the possiblity that the police would find him responsible for wasting police time or worse, appearing on the news and consumerist with the headline “I went into the store for 5 minutes and find BBB manager had the window of my car smashed, terrifying my children”. He made a bad call in retrospect but he was in a tough position.
Laws punishing non-malicious inaction can be dubious at the best of times.
@abigsmurf:”Laws punishing non-malicious inaction can be dubious at the best of times.”
100% wrong. Simply because this was MALICIOUS inaction. The manager knew a child was in danger and refused to help, morally, legally, HUMANLY inexcusable. I don’t know if you are trying to make a “government stay out of my business” point, but you are way way off base here.
“The manager had to balance his responsibility to help an endangered child with the possiblity that the police would find him responsible for wasting police time or worse, appearing on the news and consumerist with the headline “I went into the store for 5 minutes and find BBB manager had the window of my car smashed, terrifying my children”. He made a bad call in retrospect but he was in a tough position.”
The wrongness of this is staggering, this was not her call to make! It is up to the police to make this call, not a store manager who I am sure couldn’t even be bothered to go outside and see for herself. In this situation you ALWAYS err on the side of caution. There is NO WAY the cops would have been upset at her! Ask any cop and they will tell you they would rather have 100 false alarms then 1 dead child. This was a no brainer from the beginning. Think man!
@TinyBug: Great, you probably have 10-20 people who probably walked past the car with the kids inside who’ve get charged with felonies, most of the people in the queue in earshot of the conversation in the store and most of the cashiers, all being charged felonies that could cost them their livlihoods.
These laws do exist but they’re designed to close a loophole in child abuse laws. Someone could quite easily go “sure I knew my wife hit my son but I never did it myself and just stood by” and get off because it would be incredibly difficult to prove he took part.
What this manager is being charged with is not what these laws were intended for. It’s a case of “lets find a law for him to have broken because the public want us to do something”.
@BoomerFive: It was not malicious, he wasn’t sure what to do and took what he felt would be the lesser of two evils. Poor judgment is not the same as maliciously trying to harm the child.
It was the manager’s call to make, they were (effectively) his phones. Ultimately the courts will decide if his call was legal or not (I suspect the charges will be quietly dropped because it’ll set a pretty bad precedent).
There’s no way the cops would’ve been mad at her? Even if the cops arrive 5 minutes later to find the car had left because the mother had only left her kids for 2 minutes? Rubbish, the cops would be pretty annoyed at having their time wasted. Cops would not rather have 100 false alarms because those 100 times could’ve been spent responding to actual emergencies. Wasting the time of emergency services costs lives.
Again, the manager made a pretty bad decision but it’s not worth jail over, especially as a precedent will create a cast iron lose-lose sitation for a number of managers who will now be expected to have a near psychic knowledge of if something is a real emergency or not.
@abigsmurf: Seriously, could you please think about your responses? You are making a simple issue a very complicated one. “I saw a child locked in a hot car but I was afraid to waste a cop’s time” is ludicrous. And “near psychic knowledge”? She didnt have to be a psychic because the guy was standing right there BEGGING to use the phone! ALL HE WANTED TO DO WAS USE THE PHONE! He wasn’t even asking the manager to call, he JUST WANTED TO USE THE PHONE.
You are saying that this can cause store managers to be sued or prosecuted if a child dies in their parking lot, even if they didnt know the child was locked in a car? Is that your argument? That’s totally ridiculous.
And I guarantee that the cops would rather be called and find out the kid was safe than show up to collect a dead body. Any police officers that comment on this site disagree?
@abigsmurf:
Melodramatic much? Simply walking past or hearing about have nothing to do with what I said. What I said is “I think anyone who sees a child locked inside a hot car and doesn’t do anything about it should be charged with a felony.”. And yes, if 10-20 people walked past, and saw those children locked in a hot car and did nothing about it, then yes, every single one of them should be charged with a felony.
No, they’re designed to protect children by not allowing selfish assholes to get away with “I didn’t want to get involved” or “It’s no big deal, really” or “It’s not my problem” when they see children who are being, or have been, abused.
“Far more credible emergencies?”
-2 Children Left in Hot Vehicle Die
-4-year-old boy dies in locked car
-Idaho toddler dies after being locked in hot car
-Infant Found Dead in Cincinnati Christian University Dr. Jodie Edwards Van
-3-month-old Locked in Car Dies
-Baby dies in locked car
Allow me to amend my remark above: No, they’re designed to protect children by not allowing selfish assholes like you to get away with “I didn’t want to get involved” or “It’s no big deal, really” or “It’s not my problem” when they see children who are being, or have been, abused.
@TinyBug: As I said earlier, a child locked in a hot car is a major emergency. I feel that this manager SHOULD be charged with a felony. She will probably loose her job because of the bad publicity and it would be doubtful that she would ever be able to work in retail management again.
@TinyBug: Well, what if you DON’T want to get involved? If you’re a government employee, health care worker, teacher, employed at a mall where you see child abuse, YES, but I am staunchly against mandated reporter laws that bind ordinary citizens
@abigsmurf: “I went into the store for 5 minutes and find BBB manager had the window of my car smashed, terrifying my children”.
Time away from the vehicle is a moot point. The point is you are away from your car sans children. Unacceptable for any length of time.
@abigsmurf: Anybody who can seriously put their job as a higher priority than the life of a child in danger not only deserves to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, as I’ve said before, they need to see a psychiatrist.
It is, by the very definition of the word, sociopathic to worry more about one’s job than a child locked in a stifling car. Are you seriously arguing that it would be worse for you to lose your job than for a child to die?
Excellent. They need to be made an example of here.
I wonder if BB&B is going to pick up the tab for the manager’s legal fees for following company policy. How does the manager not have the moral fiber to report the situation to the police? The manager and BB&B deserve everything they have coming to them. I hope the bad press and legal charges get them to open their eyes.
No Boomer, I’m saying it means they have to waste Police time because they will HAVE to dial 911 no matter how credible the risk is as they won’t be able to risk the reprecusions of not calling the police. They’re still up for the same fines but at least companies won’t find their managers jailed.
Now imagine this happening nationwide, stores, malls, public areas without their own onsite security/ambulances… That’s a lot of emergency services potentially being diverted from far more credible emergencies. Ultimately nanny state policies like this, hurt the general public.
Of course cops would rather find out a kid was safe then find a body. But cops also would rather they didn’t arrive at a scene 5 minutes after someone got shot because they had been responding to a trivial callout.
There’s a reason forces around the world spend a lot of money on campaigns teaching people to only call the emergency services for real emergencies.
Again I’m not saying the manager did the right thing. Only that the prospect of jail time for it is wrong.
Has Bed, Bath, & Beyond released a statement yet? Saying that they are going to use jail as a training opprotunity?
Citing an incident with a dog to show a pattern is pretty weak. People leave dogs in cars all the time.
As to the child, it’s one of those things you have to see before it becomes your responsibility. A third party telling a manager of a store about a possible crime better not constitute knowledge of a crime. This case is going to come down to knowledge.
“everyone has the duty to report dependency, neglect and abuse of a child if they have knowledge of it.”
Legally, a 3rd party telling you about something they saw cannot be considered knowledge. Otherwise anyone that heard this woman’s story that day is automatically a criminal for not dropping everything and helping her get a phone based on only her story while having no idea if it is true or not. Which is pretty scary to think about.
Maybe with good behavior, the manager can get 20% off of her sentence..wakka wakka.
First of all, a child locked in a car in hot weather IS AN EMERGENCY! And it is a 911 emergency. I answered two such calls when I was a cop. In the first, it was pure negligence and the mother was arrested. In the second, a 3 yr old closed the door, locking keys and baby inside. No charges were filed in that one. I had to break a window in this one to get the child out.
Now, I work as a district manager for a retail chain in Texas and I can tell you from personal experience that good managers are getting very hard to find. A manager’s first responsibility is to take care of the company’s needs. All companies have policies to help GUIDE the manager in doing this. I have always taught my managers that policies are JUST GUIDELINES to help them. The corporate leadership can’t be in the store to hold the manager by the hand and tell them what to do. Not allowing a 911 call IS NOT PROTECTING THE COMPANY OR ITS INTERESTS.
Now, the manager has been arrested and I will bet a c-note that BB&B also gets fined by the state because of the actions of this “manager.”
Don’t be so sure the manager won’t see jail time (if it’s possible under the statute). You have a DA that bent to public pressure to bring the charges in the first place, and a somewhat high-profile case. The Plus, I’d hazard a guess that if any of you were the judge or jury in this case, you’d probably vote for her to get SOME time in the city jail, right? The manager put a child’s life at risk from their callousness–that’s got to count for something…
How about “common sense” trumps store policy…
Why don’t the couple break the window to rescue their child? The couple should be charged for not doing the right thing to save their kids. These are irresponsible parents who value the cost of window over the cost of their child’s life. If this was my kid, I will break my window no matter how expensive my car is to save my kid.
I don’t see why calling the cops will help. All they do is come 4 hours later to see a dead child in the car.
As a retail manager myself in a company that has its fair share of crazy incidents, lawsuits, and everything else mentioned in this thread, I can tell you what I would have done:
Simply walked with the customers out to the car to make sure a child was actually locked in the car. If I found one, I would have called 911 on my cell phone and let the police handle the matter.
If the car was too distant to walk, I would have allowed the customers to call 911 and take care of the situation themselves with the police.
Company might receive bad press if it was in our parking lot, but no one in their right mind would fire or demerit a manager for calling the police about a toddler locked in their car unattended.
Common sense is your friend. This store manager will be kicking themself for the rest of their life after they’re fired for making such a stupid decision.
To this, I say “fantastic”. The manager needs to be an example to the rest of the corporate world that turning a blind eye to a crime is not OK. I was horrified to have read Consumerist’s first post about the story, but I am glad to see that the person responsible is being held accountable.
The manager of that BBB is an idiot, no doubt.
I have a positive BBB experience to report, though: Last year I was followed to my car by a guy. I spotted him shadowing me a few rows over (while trying to hide behind cars) after I had come out of a mall. As soon as I saw him veer into a course which would have intercepted me before I had reached my car, I quickly trotted back to the nearest store with an outside exit, which happened to be a BBB. I explained the situation to the clerk behind the counter and asked if she could call mall security so that I could have an escort to my car. She picked up the phone right away. By then, the guy had followed me to BBB and after pacing back and forth in the foyer, entered the store and was idling behind a store display. The clerk called another clerk, both of them approached the guy and told him he had to step outside. The first clerk locked the store doors (this was about 15 minutes before the mall closed), allowing me to stay inside. The guy took off when a city police car rolled up: the clerk had called 911 rather than the mall rent-a-cops.
I’m quite grateful to the clerks at that BBB. They took me at my word (in a situation where it would had been very easy to dismiss my concern) and handled the situation proactively.
This was at the Eastridge Mall BBB, in San Jose CA.
YAYAYAYAY! I’m so excited to hear that this woman is getting charged. Store policy or not, c’mon folks, common sense. If she is found guilty, the punishment should be to lock her in a car for 3 hours in 100 degree heat. She’ll get to hear a live audio feed to the store’s front counter where a woman will run in to report that someone is locked inside of a hot car, but the a hired-actor-turned-store-manager will heartlessly say: “No can do, buck-o. Can’t let you call 911 on our phones. It’s store policy.”
Smartest thing this guy can do is is plead guilty w/o trying to strike a deal, pay the full fine, stand up in front of the court room and tell everyone there “I am sorry for what I did. It was wrong. I take full responsibility, and will accept the consequences.”
This manager catches me as the type of manager that believes that company was policy was carried down from Mt. Sinai by Moses along with the Ten Commandments. Managers like this never get above store level OR eventually get terminated because they are so anal retentive that the business suffers.
They can quote chapter and verse from the policy manual but don’t know a single thing about customer service.
This is a sick, sad thing that we’re talking about here. That some people have to be forced by law to report abuse is indicative of a moral failing of the highest order. That some here are justifying the “don’t want to get involved” argument is even sicker.
Regarding laws that mandate reporting of abuse: it seems simple to me. If you don’t have a conscience, if you can somehow justify in your mind what this lady did, if God forbid you are faced with this situation and choose to make the same decision she did, then you need to face the consequences. If you can’t understand an equation as simple as: a child’s life > a job, then you deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
@jasonhackwith: “Regarding laws that mandate reporting of abuse: it seems simple to me. If you don’t have a conscience, if you can somehow justify in your mind what this lady did, if God forbid you are faced with this situation and choose to make the same decision she did, then you need to face the consequences. If you can’t understand an equation as simple as: a child’s life > a job, then you deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
Entirely wrong. You display a frightening value judgment. It is not illegal to be a psychopath, and you cannot be prosecuted. Failing to act, perhaps, but sheesh what a way to phrase it.
@Darkwing_Duck: I’m displaying “a frightening value judgement?” Is anybody else seeing the irony here?
No, it isn’t illegal to be a psychopath, or a sociopath. It is, however, illegal in many states to act as this lady did regardless of your intentions… and yes, you can certainly be prosecuted for it. Whether she deserves jail time or mandated psychotherapy is another question entirely. Whether the higher-ups at BB&B were responsible and deserve prosecution as well is still another question. I haven’t seen enough information to answer either of those questions.
However, if this was the manager in question’s sole decision, it is sociopathic by definition because it displays a gross narcissism, a lack of conscience, a need for control, a lack of empathy… I could go on.
For my part, I can’t understand the “value judgements” of those here who are defending her, or her decision. Even if you take into account the possibility that she was acting on a “misunderstanding” of company policy, her actions display a gross indifference toward a child in danger. That is exactly why we have “failure to report” laws–because there are people out there who can’t make the value judgement that a child’s life is more important than their job… and because there are people who can’t understand what she did wrong.
Good. Hope he does some time instead of just getting fined.