A mom in Denver took it upon herself on Monday to recover her stolen SUV after police said there wasn’t anyone on duty to help, according to The Post Millennial.
The mother, Holly Kaufman, walked out of work on Monday and found her car gone. When she called 911 to report her car had been stolen, the dispatcher told her that there were no officers available at the moment to help her.
Denver mom finds her own stolen car after dispatch says there isn't "anyone on duty to help"https://t.co/CpPrXZBK4rhttps://t.co/CpPrXZBK4r
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) March 29, 2024
Kaufman was able to locate her red Mazda SUV through the car company’s vehicle tracker on the mobile app. The tracker gives users the ability to shut off the vehicle’s engine and signal the vehicle’s emergency alarms. That’s what Kaufman did. It took her about 15 minutes.
“I kept setting the alarm off and stopping the car on the person, and then it has GPS where you can see where your car is, and it was in a Safeway parking lot, so we started going there,” Kaufman told Fox KDVR.
After recruiting someone she knew to drive her to the Safeway, Kaufman got on the phone with a 911 dispatcher.
The dispatcher reportedly cautioned Kaufman against taking back what was rightfully hers on her own. Kaufman wasn’t having it. She said she didn’t want to risk waiting because her car had been stolen before and she knew the hassle that would come along with getting it back.
“In the past, I’ve had a vehicle stolen and they rip out your whole car, tear everything up, try to live in it and put drugs in it,” Kaufman said.
“She (the dispatcher) is like, ‘Ma’am, you are going to put yourself in danger,'” Kaufman said. “She said they don’t have anyone on duty to help me right now, so I said, ‘OK, this is the address I’m going to be at, I’m going to be there in five minutes and you can either meet me or I’ll be getting my car.'”
Upon recovering the stolen Mazda, Kaufman found beer, a pipe, and Target receipts for returned merchandise inside the SUV.
“I’m a working mom and it’s hard nowadays to make car payments,” Kaufman explained. “This is a car that I carry my 4-year-old son in, so I’m like, ‘This not happening in my car.'”
“I just feel super violated,” Kaufman said, “and at that point in time, there is nothing that was going to change my mind, I was getting my car, I knew they didn’t have time, so I just got it myself. I’m not advising people to do what I did, but at some point, something needs to change.”
The Denver Police Department advises against confronting criminals alone as it may be risky to your health.
Instead, police want citizens to register their vehicles with the DenverTrack program. If a GPS tracker was enabled, vehicles registered with the program would help law enforcement find the stolen vehicles more quickly.
The department did not say what to do if there were no officers on duty to help victims of vehicle theft. Kaufmann is right. Something needs to change.
