Falling Babies

It must be my week.

I get a call for a man downtown who was talking to himself and yelling at the sky. I get down there and I see him running across Williamson Road toward the Wachovia building. For those of you who aren't from around here, the Wachovia building is the tallest building downtown, and it's visible from a good portion of the city. We're a couple blocks away and can only see the top half of the building.

The guy isn't wearing shoes and he is yelling and looking up at the tall building. He's stumbling and looks very upset, holding his hands to the side of his head like something horrible is happening and he can't stop it.

I stop the car and get out, asking him what's wrong. He says he's trying to catch the babies being thrown off the building. I double check just to make sure I'm not missing something. Nope. It's him.

I need to talk to him but he's obviously very distracted by the falling babies. I tell him that we're aware of the situation and helping the babies. He seemed relieved enough to talk to me. He's not suicidal and he's not drunk or anything else like that. Just crazy, and there's not much I can do about it.

While I'm checking him for warrants and writing down his information, he starts getting agitated again, looking at the building. I tell him the fire department is over there catching all the babies on one of those trampolines they have. I have no idea if the fire department actually has those things they show on TV to catch folks jumping out of buildings. But it seemed to calm my guy down enough to keep him from running off again to catch the babies himself.

I eventually tell him to go home and he starts walking off. Apparently he sees the babies falling again because he starts coming back. I tell him I need to go help catch the babies but can't until he leaves and goes home. That seems to do the trick and he leaves.

Later in the night he was back running around downtown, and I guess he was suicidal by then, because that officer took him to the hospital.

Later in the evening I get a call to check on the welfare of a young baby. (Not one of the babies thrown off the Wachovia building.) The landlord says his tenants are in the house smoking marijuana and getting drunk while watching an infant. When I get there, I learn the landlord is actually the boyfriend of one of the women living there. He's not the landlord, just an angry boyfriend. After an argument on the phone with his girlfriend here, he wants her and her friend (the baby's mother) gone from the house. He is out of town this week so all this arguing is long distance over the phone. He can't physically toss them out, so apparently outlandish accusations to the police will get us to kick them to the curb.

The house is immaculate and the baby was sleeping soundly in his crib, the women watching TV. No signs of drug use or wild orgies with baby killers. Shocking, I know.

We clear from the scene and have dispatch advise the guy everything is okay. This was not the answer he was looking for.

About midnight I get sent back to the house because the electric company is there. The guy called them and said he could smell smoke and wanted the power cut off. How he could smell smoke from 200 miles away, I don't know. Although I'll go out on a limb here and make a wild guess he lied to get the power shut off, to run the women and baby out in the middle of the night. Shortly before the electric company got there, the water company was there with instructions to cut off the water.

Luckily, the utility guys knew better than to cut off the water and power with a baby in the house and no legitimate reason. What a colossal waste of time for them and me. I talked to the angry boyfriend on the phone and told him that he was going to get himself in trouble cutting off the utilities when there's a baby in the house. Especially since the women have a legal right to be there. I explained the eviction process and he promised to try that.

As of the end of my shift I wasn't called back for the gas company.