WWJD?

The other day I was walking down the street and saw a car with the rear driver side window broken out. It was a white Saturn Ion with Michigan plates. Unfortunately, it's not an all that uncommon site in Chicago. It was mid-morning and the weather was nice, but that evening it was supposed to rain. WWJD? What Would Joe Do? What would you do?

Since it's happened to me (twice), I decided to see if I could track down the car owner and notify them of the problem. I started with 311, the non-emergency all purpose and police number. They patched me through to a cop fairly quickly and I told him what I knew. He said since the car was out of state, they probably wouldn't be able to track him down so the best thing to do was wait and hope the owner returned to the car fairly soon. Clearly this was a jaded cop who didn't want to help anymore than necessary. Would it be hard to track the owner down? Well getting the owner's name, home address and phone number would have taken the cop, at most, 5 minutes. They have a database for the plate info, which would have the address and with that info even I could get the phone number. Why not try? Because you're a probably fat-ass, lazy cop working the phone lines and are unhappy about it. Ugh.

Wanting to get SOME progress at least, I tried AAA. I figure a bunch of people are members and maybe this person is as well. AAA doesn't have the license plate info, though they directed me to the State of Michigan site where I could find who owns the car and they were right, but it would cost me $25-$95 . Ugh again.

That's as far as I got. Maybe trying a few insurance companies: State Farm, All State and Geico would have covered a bunch of people, but I ran out of time and I'm not sure they would have license plate info either, though I think they would have.

Anyway, the owner did not return that evening and it did indeed rain. The owner didn't come back the next day either. Or the next. Finally, over the weekend, the car was moved. Sorry driver....I tried!