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Toddlers seen playing on window ledge

VALLEJO, Calif. — Amateur video shows two children playing on a window ledge. Witnesses want to know why it took half an hour for officers to arrive.

Police admitted they made a mistake.

"Oh my God! Oh my God. Where are the police?" The urgency can be heard in Marianne Kearney-Brown's voice in video shared with KPIX. She recorded the video from the window of her downtown Vallejo office of a couple of toddlers in diapers standing outside the second-story window of a nearby loft.

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"And they were just out on the ledge and so I immediately grabbed my phone and called 911," said Kearney-Brown. "It seemed like help wasn't going to be on the way."

She says the dispatcher didn't seem to have much of a sense of urgency.

Five minutes ticked by, then 10. The children still precariously close to the edge.

Kearney-Brown says she was so concerned, she raced from her office over to the building where the child was still out on the ledge. She called police again and was told there was still no patrol car available.

"I was just kind of stunned... Something terrible could've happened," said Kearney-Brown.

After about 20 minutes, a fire truck arrived.  Kearney-Brown says that is only because one of the witnesses at the scene called her husband, who drove from Benicia and physically stopped by a fire station to ask someone to respond.

By then, the children had gone inside.

Police didn't arrive until a half hour after Kearney-Brown's first call. In a statement, Vallejo police said: "It appears the call was not prioritized. This type of call warrants an immediate response. We made some mistakes and we're going to fix it to make sure it doesn't happen again."

CNN/KPIX

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