Have you ever had the police knock on your door?

[reecejackox]

I haven't personally.

 

[LittleMissMagic]

Yeah, my sister was having a sleepover as a kid, and they were hanging out in the basement where we have a wall-mounted rotary phone that very much works (actually was a new purchase from Pottery Barn). Well, I guess one of her friends had never seen a phone like that before and decided to make a play call by dialing 9-1-1 (guess she didn't recognize the dial tone.....). An operator picked up, and she immediately hung up the phone. Well, 10-15 minutes later, ring on the doorbell, and there's the police. "Someone here dialed 9-1-1." My parents took them down to the basement to give the girls a little scare (and probably also make sure that everyone was really okay). They learned that if you ever call 9-1-1, a police unit will be dispatched to that location, even if it was by mistake.

 

[fitgirl36]

Yes, they were looking for a neighbor. my husband wasn’t home, my daughter was probably 4 at the time and it was about 8:30 pm and dark. I was watching DWTS and there was a knock a the door. I ignored it and they wouldn’t go away. I’m a big scaredy cat so I went to the door and asked who it was because I couldn’t see through the peephole and when he said sheriff I freaked even more. I said through the door I had to disarm the alarm, went and did that and answered the door. He was looking for a neighbor who apparently had a warrant for his arrest. Awesome. I had no idea what the guy even looked like so I couldn’t help him.

 

[mrodgers]

Yup, detective looking for the previous owner 2 years after we bought the place. The next year we had cadaver dogs searching the property for the previous owner's missing since the 80's wife.

 

[firefly_ris]

Yes, I did a 911 hangup call, I was probably 10 or 11? What a dumb move.

 

[lynxstch]

Yes,,twice. Once in the daytime, they had a summons for # 12009 on our street..there is no # 12009, for some reason they skipped that # when they did the houses out here. He didn't believe me until I walked next door with him, showed him their # was 12007 and ours is 12011. Then he believed me. The second time, the girl next door got into a fight with her BF and he hit her. She grabbed both kids and came over here and asked to call the police. I made them stay here until the police arrived. They moved out shortly after that!

 

[fla4fun]

Yes, I was watching tv late one night when I saw red and blue lights reflecting through one of the front windows. They just wanted to let me know the garage door was open (I always check it before bed and hadn’t checked yet that night). They couldn’t see any inside lights through the front windows because of the window tint, so they knocked. I thought it was nice of them to check.

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

The police have never knocked on my door, but years ago I came home from the neighborhood pool with my little kids, and the police were searching my house! While we were gone, our security alarm went off. The police came, found no one home, so they suspected it was an attempted break in. They wouldn't let us in the house until they had checked everything. The whole thing freaked me out a little, but I felt safer after they gave the all clear.

 

[JimMIA]

Yep -- been on both sides of that question!

 

[RogueX]

Once when I was in middle school and the cop wanted to know if my father or mother was home to speak with them. I gave him a little soapbox speech that I would neither confirm nor deny their whereabouts and he would have to return later. Well, my father heard this and yeah, I got into trouble later, but atleast the cop had a sense of humor.

Probably the freakiest one happened to mother in-law when she was pregnant with my husband. She was living in Oakland, CA and it was the middle of the night and home alone. She hears a loud thump on the door and opened to find an officer with a gun pointing right at her. Apparently a serial killer was on the loose and was seen in that immediate area where she lived.

 

[cmrdgrs]

I had a similar situation as the PP. Back before it was popular, I worked from home from time to time. At the office I had to dial 9 to get an outside line, and then a 1 + the number I was dialing. When I would work at home sometimes from habit, I would dial 9 and 1 then realize that I wasn't in the office and hang up. Then I would pick up the phone and dial correctly. It always crossed my mind that one day I might make a mistake and call 9-1-1.

One day it happened -- but, I didn't realize that I called 911. I don't remember how, but somehow they called my husband who was not home with me at the time (maybe our home number was forwarded to him?). The 911 operator told my husband what had happened and asked if he wanted to send the police to our home because if there was a problem they didn't want to call the house and tip off a would be intruder. My husband sent the police and when I opened the door I told them it obviously was a mistake, and there was no problem. But, the police said that they had to come into the house and make sure no one was there hiding or making me make this statement against my will. They came in looked through the house and left.

Nothing terrible, but a situation that I always knew had the potential to happen!

 

[AnnaS]

Once. Not long after we moved into our home. Police were looking for previous owners.

Police came to my mom's house to notify her of my dad's accident at work (I was working/she was watching my two little ones at the time).

 

[Kae]

yup

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

Yes, in high school. My dog got out when someone tried breaking into our apartment and a neighbor who was scared of him called the cops. The officer who showed up about 20 minutes after I got home and brought my dog in told me he would shoot him the next time he got out. I still glare at him every time I see him, I hate living in a small town! Everyone knows everyone here and he had a grudge against me because he caught me and his son being stupid on the dock by his house. But still, who threatens to shoot a kid's dog?!

 

[billlaurie]

Once in the middle of the night they knocked on the door because our garage door was left open. They also were shining a bright light through the windows. They thought someone had broken into the house but we just forgot to close the garage door.

 

[KayMichigan]

Not at home, but once my sister and I were staying at a hotel and we woke up in the middle of the night to some ruckus in the hallway. My sister opened the door to find several cops in the hallway and one of them told her very firmly to "Shut your door!" Which she did. Turns out some kids up the hallway had been making a lot of noise and someone had called the cops on them. This was during a citywide blackout and we, like many people, had gone to a hotel because our apartment had no electricity.

The next morning we complained to the front desk about the disturbance and either got the night for free or at a big discount.

 

[FigmentSpark]

Yes. We used to have a two storey house with a hall window with a protective overhang. One year, we were having an "infestation" of these giant spiders (which was caused by the infestation of their favorite food source - mosquitoes). Anyway, this one spider had built quite an elaborate web over that window (which didn't open). One night, around 2am, I came home from a party and I noticed that the spider was actively building his web, so I turned off all the lights and got out my flashlight to watch. So, naturally, I was moving the flashlight around to get a good view. Next thing I knew, there were some knocks on the window to the ledge below and sounds like someone was trying to open the door. I got scared and called the police. They checked it out and it turned out my "intruder" was, in fact, the police checking on the mysterious flashlight the neighbors had seen at 2am. So, I opened the door and told them about the spider. The one police officer replied, "oh, that's what attacked me". So I guess he'd crawled up there to see what was going on.

Anyway, it reminded me that the police are there to help when needed.

The other time was when we'd had a power outage and one of our contacts for our window alarm had gone off. They showed up at my door, surprising me, because the alarm actually hadn't gone off in the house and I hadn't actually set it, but it had been the power glitch. They had to check my id to make sure I wasn't an intruder with the "real" homeowner tied up in the basement. Then they offered to take a look around and make sure the property really was secure and it had been a mistake, which was nice.

 

[texaslover]

Yeah - they brought home my then 8th grade son and his 3 friends that were spending the night. They had left the house at 2:00 am while I was asleep and walked to Whataburger. Unfortunately for them the cops were eating there and saw them walking up. We have a curfew and they were obviously under 16 and not going to work.

I yelled at them about abusing my hospitality and told them to get the hell upstairs. They scurried up and the police laughed and went on their way.

 

[Breezy_Carol]

When I was doing home care and was at a patients house, I heard gunshots related to a shooting by my patient's brother. So twice I had a sheriff knock on my door at home to serve a summons to appear in court to testify to what I heard. Luckily it never went to trial.

When my son was applying to the Secret Service, an agent came to our neighborhood and went door to door asking the neighbors about my son. I am sure they got a shock when the agent knocked on their door.

 

[SamFaniam]

A number of years ago we were living in a duplex where the front doors faced each other across a little porch area. The police showed up about midnight on a Friday and forcefully opened our neighbors door, and were there for several hours searching the place and carrying things out. After they had been there for half an hour or so there was a knock on our door. The officer said we didn’t need to be concerned about anything they just wanted to let us know there wasn’t any danger. Our neighbors weren’t home at the time, and we actually never saw them again because they went to jail!