When do you get involved?

[Timsup2nothin]

Only a sith speaks in absolutes.....

Though do you really think cops make everything worse?

My bad. I usually say "can't make it worse", not "won't make it worse".

Not always worse, but can you describe a situation they can absolutely be counted on to make better?

Something gets stolen from my girlfriend's house, I know half a dozen dope dealers who sometimes can't say no to an idiot with stuff instead of cash. I check with them and maybe I get her stuff back or more likely I won't...but calling the cops isn't going to get her stuff back ever, and is going to be a pain in the ass.

Somebody gets beat up, they need medical attention, not interrogation.

Somebody gets killed, call the cops and they are still dead. Family members may think that a badge wearing thug in their face as a promise of "justice" will make them feel better, but I've never met anyone who has experienced it who says they actually did feel better.

Drunk driver picking their way home is dangerous. Drunk driver leading a high speed chase is worse.

Kid popping off a few rounds into the air on the fourth of July is stupid. Cops arriving after he is probably out of ammo and shooting him dead in the street does not change where the bullets came down, and is bad for property values. (yeah, that just happened)

 

[Farm Boy]

If that one guy in the subdivision can't stop firing off mortar fireworks in the middle of an August drought, tells people to f-off when they ask him to(then decides it's better to launch them over dead fields of grass at 2AM instead of 6PM), then yes, I'm going to call and send a couple of my friends with brass badges his way.

 

[Formaldehyde]

One might tender that regular drug use happens in most apartment buildings?

I probably could have called the cops at least a couple hundred times already after smelling pot smoke in the dorms and apartment buildings where I lived. Nowadays, I would certainly hope they laughed at me if I tried to do so.

Back in the early 70s, Georgia Tech even had a rule where cops couldn't directly investigate any such complaint. They had to first contact the security office which then informed the people living in that room they would be getting a visit.

If that one guy in the subdivision can't stop firing off mortar fireworks in the middle of an August drought, tells people to f-off when they ask him to(then decides it's better to launch them over dead fields of grass at 2AM instead of 6PM), then yes, I'm going to call and send a couple of my friends with brass badges his way.

Mortar fireworks were still going off at 2 AM on the 5th of July here. When it first moved here 11 years ago it was frequently gunshots.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

So... nobody here would bother to call the police to report a murder in progress, somebody about to jump off a bridge or a building, domestic violence, a rape, an accident, or a robbery...?

A murder in progress? Unless by "call them" you are referring to some sort of summoning spell which will instantly materialize them they aren't going to stop a murder in progress. You might, just by shouting.

Someone about to jump off a bridge? Talk to them. Maybe you talk them out of it. Maybe they convince you they are doing the best thing for them so you don't feel bad about the outcome. Worst that can happen is they don't convince you and they jump anyway and you feel no worse than you would have in the first place. What are cops gonna do? Shoot them? Arrest the corpse?

Domestic violence? If you are the victim...MOVE OUT! If someone else is the victim, suggest to them that they move out. What they do with your suggestion is up to them.

Rape? Again, most crimes can be stopped with a shout. If the victim wants to be interrogated, that is their choice, not something I am inflicting on them if they would rather avoid it.

An accident? If people are hurt, call for an ambulance. If there's a fire, call the fire department. If the people involved want to file a police report for insurance purposes, that's their choice. If they don't, that is also their choice...until someone who isn't involved calls the cops for some inexplicable reason.

A robbery? Once again, a shout and the robber most likely bugs out. If the victim wants to be further victimized by an interrogation, let them use your phone, but there's no reason to make that choice for them.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If that one guy in the subdivision can't stop firing off mortar fireworks in the middle of an August drought, tells people to f-off when they ask him to(then decides it's better to launch them over dead fields of grass at 2AM instead of 6PM), then yes, I'm going to call and send a couple of my friends with brass badges his way.

I'm going to bring a couple of my friends who don't have brass badges and take buy his fireworks at a price such that I can make a profit on them.

 

[The_J]

What about a large scale street fight, e.g. hooligan escalation after a sports game?



Never been in a really problematic situation, hope I'll never be, and I'd probably not know what to do.
Worst things which happened to me were being nearly in a bar fight, nearly getting attacked on a street by some nazis, and overhearing something which sounded like trouble in an environment where there was probably trouble, but also people who were used to deal with it.
And I seriously hope that nothing worse than that will happen.

 

[Farm Boy]

You see, I'm looking for the course of action that minimizes petty ass feuds where people get miserable and people sometimes get hurt. This is small towny out here. You have to be a major sustained pain in the butt before the cops will actually roll for a call about fireworks.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

What about a large scale street fight, e.g. hooligan escalation after a sports game?

Cops come...maybe hooligans disperse a little faster than they would have on their own. Maybe cops become focus of hooliganism and confrontation escalates into dead hooligans. Not being terribly interested in turning hooliganism into a no trial capital crime I'm not calling the cops, though in this case whether I call them or not is not likely to make any difference.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You see, I'm looking for the course of action that minimizes petty ass feuds where people get miserable and people sometimes get hurt. This is small towny out here. You have to be a major sustained pain in the butt before the cops will actually roll for a call about fireworks.

Oddly enough I generally manage to confront people without stirring up petty feuds, whereas the local idiot who gets the cops called on him will usually wind up in some random number of petty feuds with the people he suspects are the one who called the cops.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I've called the cops a total of 4 times over non-accident related incidents.

The first time was over a harassing next door neighbor over a long term problem.

The second time was when I witnessed a person driving away who had just emptied his handgun into someone right below my apartment window in Manhattan. I told them the color, make, and model of the car, as well as the direction he was heading that meant he had to be going north on 1st Avenue. They eventually caught him, and the victim lived despite being shot 3 times out of 6 bullets fired.

The third time was when I saw a hit and run accident at a restaurant near my condo. The guy in a jeep drove right past my balcony, so I noted his license number and called them.

The fourth time was about neighbors that live across the channel from me. They liked to frequently party outdoors until even 4 AM while intentionally making noise to harass another neighbor who lived nearby. It immediately ended after I did so and never happened again. What is odd is that it was probably bothering 20 other neighbors as well. But nobody did a thing until I finally did after the 11th or 12th occurrence.

I probably should have called a 5th time to report police misconduct. But I didn't. A burglar broke into a fur wholesaler across the street from where I was living. The cops didn't want to have to go into the business because he might have been armed. So after demanding the perp come out with his hands up and didn't, one of them shot into the business to show him they would probably kill him if he resisted anymore. The guy came out with his hands up and they beat him senseless.

 

[Farm Boy]

Oh, he knew that everyone outside of 3 or 4 of his idiot friends was tired of him. When it finally got super dry enough that half a yard burned deputy Barney actually started responding on his own without calls and moron boy finally cut it the F out until it rained for a while. Here's the trick, moron boy is going to keep getting stupider until he either kills himself or the community puts the breaks on him. If you wait for him to kill himself he might take somebody else out with him. So, ultimately, Barney is a decent way of going about that here in this instance. Everyone knows Chief Barney. He shows up to all the community events.

 

[downtown]

I can't speak for hypotheticals or the experiences of others, but I have never regretted calling the police, and faced with similar circumstances, I would do it again.

 

[Zelig]

There is no situation so bad that bringing in the cops won't make it worse.

Have you considered moving to Somalia?

Generally speaking a friendly "Hey, watcha doin'?" puts a stop to just about any crime in progress.

Doesn't work very well with cops, lawyers, bankers, politicians, etc.

Drunk driver picking their way home is dangerous. Drunk driver leading a high speed chase is worse.

That's why cops in sane jurisdictions don't do high speed chases.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Someone about to jump off a bridge? Talk to them. Maybe you talk them out of it. Maybe they convince you they are doing the best thing for them so you don't feel bad about the outcome. Worst that can happen is they don't convince you and they jump anyway and you feel no worse than you would have in the first place. What are cops gonna do? Shoot them? Arrest the corpse?

First, I'm not trained to deal with potential suicides. Unless it was somebody truly evil - Paul Bernardo, for instance - there's no way I'd just shrug and let them get on with it.

Calling the cops would at least provide a chance that someone trained to deal with such people would get there in time.

Domestic violence? If you are the victim...MOVE OUT! If someone else is the victim, suggest to them that they move out. What they do with your suggestion is up to them.

Yeah... going up to someone who's being beaten to death by her husband and saying, "Y'know, you should really move out so he doesn't do this to you" is REALLY going to help.

It not only wouldn't help her, it could get me hurt or killed, as well. Therefore, calling the cops is the only sane thing to do.

It sounds like you're doing some victim-blaming here. And it's the kind of thing that some white emergency services dispatchers have been known to say to aboriginal women who call for help. One case where the woman called, begging for help, the dispatcher literally told her, "You should move out of there," and hung up. The aboriginal woman ended up dead, because of the dispatcher's racist attitude.

Rape? Again, most crimes can be stopped with a shout. If the victim wants to be interrogated, that is their choice, not something I am inflicting on them if they would rather avoid it.

An accident? If people are hurt, call for an ambulance. If there's a fire, call the fire department. If the people involved want to file a police report for insurance purposes, that's their choice. If they don't, that is also their choice...until someone who isn't involved calls the cops for some inexplicable reason.

A robbery? Once again, a shout and the robber most likely bugs out. If the victim wants to be further victimized by an interrogation, let them use your phone, but there's no reason to make that choice for them.

...

I assume that if you yourself were in any of these situations, you'd be just fine with passersby shrugging, saying, "meh, not my problem" and walking away, right?

That's why cops in sane jurisdictions don't do high speed chases.

Cops get away with killing civilian motorists and their passengers with depressing regularity in Edmonton.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I assume that if you yourself were in any of these situations, you'd be just fine with passersby shrugging, saying, "meh, not my problem" and walking away, right?

Nope, and I'm also not "just fine" with them peering through a tiny gap in their curtains and calling the cops while letting my assailant think they are totally unobserved and can just get away with doing whatever they are doing. Step out your door and shriek! That will make a difference LONG before the cops can arrive...and when there is still a difference to be made.

Or, what works better for me, which is not to say it is best for everyone, really is just a friendly tone question about what they are doing. I am a criminal, so I can talk to criminals. While they are talking, they aren't committing. They are also considering..."kill the witness?" and no one really wants to do that...especially if I can get across the realistic point that while I am big and dumb and wandered over here to see what's going on, there are probably a dozen people up and down the street who just guessed and are probably calling the cops.

If they are beating their wife, I'm more than willing to share my experience from jail...where I met LOTS of wife beaters...and NO wives. If they can't figure out from that that they need to get scarce before the cops turn up because the cops are ALWAYS going to bust him not her then I am failing to communicate. And I don't blame the victim, but if she wants to stay and wait for dude to come back that really is her business and not mine. I'll tell her I think that seems like a bad idea to me, but also that I don't know her circumstances so I can't judge. If she says that she needs a little road money I'll give it to her if I've got it. If she wants to call the cops after I leave she can do that too. That whole thing really is none of my business...and it isn't necessarily the cops' business either.

 

[azzaman333]

If it doesn't directly affect me, I'm very unlikely to get involved.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Well, if you're a witness, depending on how severity of the crime, it might affect you rather dearly, especially in kneecapped knees.

 

[azzaman333]

Well, if you're a witness, depending on how severity of the crime, it might affect you rather dearly, especially in kneecapped knees.

Odds are I'm not going to witness a serious crime, but if I do I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

 

[warpus]

A cold compress is more effective for treating bruises than a badge.

I've generally had decent interactions with the police. I don't distrust them, generally speaking. Two of my friends are married to cops, which probably sways my opinion to some degree, but they aren't close friends..

I don't feel the same "never call the cops! ever! don't talk to them! don't look at them! don't even smell them! just stay the F away if you know what's good for you" point of view that I hear from a lot of Americans.

One of the positive cop interactions I had was with an American state trooper. We hit a deer outside of DC, and the cop who showed up was awesome. We were rattled, he took good care of us. Protect and serve in that case - indeed.

So of course I'm a white guy, so I haven't been clocked in the head by a cop before.. or whatever. I'm "entitled" or what have you, I'm a male, I have a handsome upper body physique that cops secretly wish for, I'm heterosexual.. All the check boxes are checked - I'm a walking human entitlement. Nice shoes, no hoodie, respectful Anglo-Saxon-like tone of voice, addictive smile, no turban on my head, no face covering, no tattoos, no ear piercings, no face piercings, no missing eyes. So - yes, I admit, I have only had good interactions with the police, but I have many advantages that allow me to sit here and be able to say that. Not that any of my non-handsome or black or whatever friends have ever been clocked in the head by a cop either, but it's an admission that needed to be said.

 

[Nares]

So... nobody here would bother to call the police to report a murder in progress, somebody about to jump off a bridge or a building, domestic violence, a rape, an accident, or a robbery...?

And risk being sued for not taking a more active response?

Meh.