Have you ever had the police knock on your door?

[Kathryn Merteuil]

Yes, some nitwit did something stupid then came to my house immediately afterwards.

 

[Prince John Robin Hood]

Twice that I recall clearly and both were when I was young. The first time was due to a neighbour across the street firing a pellet into our window (it stuck between the panes of glass). The second wasn't at my home but at a friends where I was sleeping over. There was a domestic disturbance unfortunately and the police arrived.

 

[C&Jx2]

Yes, actually about three times a year For some reason our address is associated with a phone number that makes hangup 911 calls. They’re always like, “Did you call?” Nope. Explain the whole spiel... They even investigated it and know the phone number and person who used to have that number, but can’t do anything about it. Fun times.

 

[C&Jx2]

Our story also involves 911, but we weren't calling. After moving into our current home, we had cops banging on the door in the middle of the night. I had to wake DH up to go to the door. They said they'd received a 911 call from our landline. We didn't even have a landline, but they wouldn't believe him. I had to get up & put on clothes to show them I was okay. DH called AT&T. They said they looked into it & couldn't find a problem.

A couple weeks later cops showed up late at night. Once again, they made DH get me up to tell them I was okay. He called AT&T a second time. They were not helpful, so he cut the phone lines from the pole to the house. That didn't solve our problem.

We got a third visit, during the day on a Sunday. At this point, we're getting really annoyed. I'm sure our neighbors were wondering what kind of horrible family had moved into their neighborhood. I saw one neighbor peaking out their window, when I was outside reassuring the cops that I was still fine. That was embarrassing. It didn't help that the cops don't normally have a lot to do in our town, so it was always 2 to 3 cars.

It just so happened that DH ran into one of the cops that was here the first time, when he was at a store. The cop asked, if everything had been sorted out. DH told him about the 2nd & 3rd visit. He wrote down the details & DH's phone number & said he would look into it. A couple weeks later he called to let us know the number that 911 had assigned to our address had actually been given to someone who lived a few blocks from us. He said the problem had been fixed, but that was the only information he could share.

FWIW, we realize the cops were doing there job. It wasn't their fault, but stuff like this shouldn't happen. It was embarrassing for us, but could have been life threatening for the people who actually had that number.

See! It’s not just us!

 

[jackers]

Yes, once. We live in a small rural town where everyone knows everyone. My BIL drank too much at the bars one night and wandered the streets til he fell asleep on somebody’s porch. I’m not sure if the owners called the police or they were just out doing their rounds and saw him. Anyway, they recognized him, knew we lived close and dropped him off at our house at about 3 am to sleep it off.

He was lucky they didn’t take him to the station which was just 2 blocks from our house. He was properly ashamed of his behavior when DH drove him home the next morning.

 

[wildride]

Couple times a week, especially when we grill out on the patio. I work with cops, FF & emt's

 

[LovesTimone]

Sure have... a bunch of times... oh and military police tooo ....


My brother was a MP, and the Deputy sheriff for 20 years... so he would show up in uniform and give the look loo's in the neighborhood something to gander at... LOL

 

[FlightlessDuck]

When my son was a toddler he got ahold of the phone and dialed 911. I think they knew that but came over anyway to double-check.

 

[lovesmurfs]

Yes. About 10 years ago. We were cleaning the house on a Saturday morning and had our cocker spaniel outside so that we could wash the floors. It was a hot day, but he had recently been groomed very short, had shelter under trees and fresh water. Neighbor called the police, saying we were mistreating the dog by keeping him outside.

The officer walked away shaking his head.

ETA: We also had a bunch of police swarming our backyard (about 15 years ago) when a person had a seizure driving the street behind our house and drove through our wooden privacy fence, chain-link fence, swingset, brick garage, and shot my car (in the garage) completely sideways. She was only 25 years old and had a history of seizures. She'd just gotten her driver's license back after having it taken for a year because of them. She lied to get her license back. Brand new Honda Accord was completely totaled, and we had about $30,000 worth of damage to our property. Police weren't actually nice to her, because of her lying to get her license back. I'm sure she was hoping for the best, but she really could've killed someone -- she crossed three lanes of traffic, and I'd just parked the car in the garage about 10 minutes before. If it had been just a different angle, my daughter's room (she was in bed) would have been destroyed. It was a long time before she stopped asking if a car would drive through our house.

It's always funny watching a car chase in a movie -- they never show the clean-up. From time to time we still find pieces in our backyard.

 

[Simba's Mom]

Yes, and when I opened the door, she said sternly, "Is this your cat?" as our cat sat there. Since he wasn't the friendliest of cats, I was tempted to say "No, never seen him before." But it turns out, she was trying to catch a raccoon or possum (don't remember which), and whenever she'd see it, our cat would run after it. Her stern voice was just a normal police voice for her.

 

[JimMIA]

It works the other way too.

I was a SWAT team leader for 3+ years. One night I was preparing to go out for some night training. I was all dressed in black, gas mask on my leg, vest, gun, etc -- and the doorbell rang. It was my oldest daughter's friend coming to pick her up for their very first date.

I opened the door and I though the poor boy was going to faint! I never had to worry about that one!

 

[kimmar067]

I got a phone call yesterday at 6:45AM yesterday from the L*di Police Dept. I was in a deep sleep when it suddenly woke me. I jumped out of bed to answer it.....turns out it was a pre-recorded message saying that the municipality of L*di was still without power because of the [recent] storm....like I really care if they have power or not and, I don't even LIVE in L*di! Scared me half to death!

 

[kimmar067]

OH! I remember another story....We lived on the 2nd floor of our two-family house. When my oldest DS was around 3-1/2 [he's going to be 34 in August] a plain-clothes police detective and 2 officers came to my door. I went downstairs to answer it. They asked me if my nephew was in my house, to which I said "No." They wanted to know who the small child was upstairs[they were similar in age and description], whom they thought was my nephew. Apparently, they had surrounded my home; an officer was questioning my DS, who was peering out the kitchen window in the back. Turns out, my ex-Sister-in-Law, who was married to the boy's father and living outside Chicago, had come to NJ to be with her dying grandfather, and attend his subsequent funeral. As soon as she had left Illinois, her ex-husband accused her of kidnapping the boy. The ex-husband knew that I had been babysitting him while she was taking care of funeral arrangements and had notified the authorities that he could be at my house, which of course, he wasn't. It was like a SWAT team was surrounding my home....I had never been so scared in my life.

 

[MrsPete]

Yes, the came to the wrong address once -- only one house off -- and since they were responding to a domestic dispute call, they asked me to step out on the porch, where they asked me privately if I were in trouble.

And another 9-1-1 story: I was chaperoning a bunch of young girls who were "sleeping over" at a church camp -- all in a big fellowship hall type of building. One of them dialed 9-1-1. One of the adults chanced to walk out to the parking lot to her car at just the right moment, and she met the police on their way in. She assured them nothing was wrong, but she asked them to come in and explain to the girls why they should never do that again. The police were very grim and serious, and they talked about how they could've been pulled away from a real emergency. In the end the girls all understood that 9-1-1 is not a funny joke.

 

[wildride]

It works the other way too.

I was a SWAT team leader for 3+ years. One night I was preparing to go out for some night training. I was all dressed in black, gas mask on my leg, vest, gun, etc -- and the doorbell rang. It was my oldest daughter's friend coming to pick her up for their very first date.

I opened the door and I though the poor boy was going to faint! I never had to worry about that one!

similar experience here. Try flying with a gas mask, since I had to report to the DNC from vacation. You get some big side eye and lots of questions

 

[okeydokey]

Yes, for a couple of loud parties back in my College Days. We were warned to tone it down and they left.

 

[kimmar067]

similar experience here. Try flying with a gas mask, since I had to report to the DNC from vacation. You get some big side eye and lots of questions

...you could have explained that the people you'd been traveling with had been eating burritos.

 

[tinkerdorabelle]

Yes recently. A neighbor across street from us came to my door accusing me of calling police on her illegal tenant, yes she has apts in her one family house illegally, but it was not me, we never called on her, it was an elderly neighbor bc the guy was out late wandering around and she didn't recognize him and felt nervous. The neighbor came banging on my door first, yelling at us over it even tho we told her it was not us, went home and called the police, who came knocking on our door. Then we had to sit through a 25 minute lecture from a very nasty policewoman who had her hand on her gun the whole time, kept telling me to shut up and stop interrupting "you learn that in third grade", and then never put our side of the story in the police report like the important part of us NEVER having called on her or harrassed her in any way. We had to have the report amended with our side. I also felt like the police woman targeted me being small and petite and honestly felt like she wanted to take me down if I said one word. Even the building inspector who came by bc he had been trying to get into neighbor's house said something to us about it, "wow how could you be so calm when a cop talked to you like that, I don't think I could have, it's cops like that that get people shot". I can't even imagine what POC go through. Not saying all cops are bad, just that there are people that should not be cops. Needless to say the neighbor still has her two illegal apartments and tenants lol.

 

[FigmentSpark]

similar experience here. Try flying with a gas mask, since I had to report to the DNC from vacation. You get some big side eye and lots of questions

These days, you'd probably get people congratulating you on your effective mask and asking where they could get one for the flight, too.

 

[jaybirdsmommy]

Once, we had just moved into the house. Apparently the vacant house next door was going into foreclosure and they wanted to know if we knew where to find the owner so they could serve him some kind of papers. Of course we had no idea.

Not a knock on the door but a couple of Thanksgivings ago we left the kids (15 and 8) home by themselves while we ran to Wal-mart for some kind of black friday special. When we came back there were 4 police cars, 2 fire trucks and an ambulance in our driveway. Cue absolute panic until we realized they were actually at our neighbor's house and not ours. Never did find out what happened. The police officers spent about 30 minutes looking for something in the yard with flashlights. Neighbors were out going and coming the next day like normal.

I also called the non-emergency number one time to ask if they knew who to call to remove a venemous snake from our carport. They didn't knock on the door but we ended up with 4 police officers, all arguing over how best to handle it. It must have been a slow day.