Why did the police contact me?

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Of course they will take the report. Impersonating a police officer is a crime. Incidently, when I drive past a car accident where the people involved are not injured (I assume, since they are standing next to their cars), there is always a police officer taking their statements. I don't know where you live with such an unresponsive police force but I sure wouldn't want to live there. But it really is not the norm for police to just airily dismiss either suspicious phone calls or car accidents (even those not involving injury).

Now I'm curious where you live, too. Where I live, I doubt they would bother with that report. They do show up to car accidents when someone calls and asks for them, but I've lived in places where they wouldn't absent injury or a major safety threat - and where getting them to take a report on a stolen automobile was like pulling teeth.

^ Don't listen to this person.

If this was over-the-phone: Contact the police with your concerns. Use the local non-emergency number from your phone book/web and not 911 (which is reserved for real emergencies). The deputy who answers will take your statement and investigate the matter. It may have truly been a detective calling you trying to flush out someone who has "gone to ground". If not, then the police can trace your phone records (if so inclined) and find out who it was.

If they showed up in person: this is all moot.

I sure would like to know where you guys live that they don't respond, and how you know they don't do it... have you guys tried to contact them with these things, or are you just assuming they won't care because so and so claimed to have tried and it didn't work? ...and in the case of accidents-it can take them a really long time to get to the scene if other things are going on, so as long as everyone is okay, they are told to wait there until the officer can get there, as far as I know. I've seen people wait an hour, because they were dealing with other stuff, but it didn't mean the cops just were not coming at all... it meant they were dealing with more serious issues and since everyone was okay, they would get there AFTER. I think it's pretty standard that they have to show up and issue a report, unless both parties CHOOSE not to take this route. Because insurance companies can get pretty mad if you didn't bother to file a report.

A lot of people claim they've tried everything when they have NOT actually done so. They don't want to bother the police, or don't know how to word things, or any number of reasons prevent people from actually doing this, even if they claim to at times.

I've lived in some pretty small towns-towns where I've seen the cops throw a party with all the stuff they confiscated in drug busts even! (in Illinois, cannot remember town name, started with an A)
But even those guys would get right out there and check things out, even if it sounded just stupid.

They have to at least take note of things.

I've also seen towns where people will get restraining orders and stuff on others, and the cops refused, and the person wound up killed... but I don't think that is the police's fault. It is for not taking it super seriously, but unless they are with that person 24/7, they can't prevent the person from going nuts and doing something anyway. A piece of paper isn't gonna stop that... and when those happened, it was sparatic, in public places it took place.

But I've never seen officers just completely not do anything at all. No matter where I've lived, and I've lived in quite a few places.

He didn't say it was over the phone, he just said they contacted him.

Perhaps the difference is that we actually have tried it.

In my current location, police answer 911 calls promptly, but they normally don't even answer their nonemergency phone. This is based on multiple calls to each - I live one house from a busy intersection, so I've called in a lot of accidents, and unfortunately being near a college campus means that I've seen a few instances of vandalism over the 20 years I've been here.

In my previous location, I actually had a brand new car stolen and the police tried hard to get me not to file a report. I kept insisting and eventually they took the report after a few days, but it was clear they weren't planning to follow up on it. Auto theft was just not high enough on their list of priorities.

What are your experiences with making police reports? I take it they are rather different from mine?

Yeah he did, actually



I watch a lot of true crime shows too- they do call people all the time to find out where someone is. They will call the last known number for the person, which is the OP's number in this case.

I do agree that the Op should call the authorities with the name of the detective who called him and see if this was a legit call. I don't think anyone can be too cautious these days with so many nut-jobs out there.

That is soooo weird! Is it a small town where they just kind of have the run of things the way they want to?

One town I lived in, the cops were kind of like that. Like, they would just pull people over for nothing and issue tickets, and go look for party houses just because they were bored... One smacked into the front of my car once and drove off, lol. I was shocked, but it was always followed up by someone else. It was a small town where everyone knew everyone, of course, and most of the cops were from "big name families" in the town.

While I agree I've seen some shady cops from time to time, I'm glad I've never lived in a place (yet) where things have gone just ignored. Thank you for clarification, as I was just completely boggled from only having my own experiences to pull from.

Oh very. They call back a few times to make sure things are as they should be in the report. They also make sure I haven't remembered anything new, or found out names or anything like that.

I've never had to make a major one, but we had a kid running around just stealing CDs from people's cars. While that isn't a MAJOR deal, it was still enough to call them up. They said they'd had multiple calls from our neighborhood and were looking into it.

We have quite a bit of... well, crummy kids in our area, haha, and the cops-since that started happening, drive through our neighborhood at least once a night while they are out, just to make sure things are okay.

I appreciate all the responses. The police officer was actually a female and said she was calling from the Juneau Police Department. She gave a name, but I was so startled I didn't catch it. It sounded official, but this call is a little out of the blue. I live in Juneau, Alaska, the capital of the state of Alaska in the United States, with about 30,000 people

City of LA. Property damage accident (possibly minor injuries). The dispatcher explicitly said nobody would be coming. In Chicago my ex tried to file an identity theft report once and they wouldn't even take a report.

Then again, LA is the city where the emergency number is sometimes busy. The idea of reaching anyone through the nonemergency number is patently ridiculous.

Wow, lol, I've never been to any of the really big cities or very close to them though, either, so I can imagine those guys would be really really busy a lot of the time. Granted, all I have to go on from that is TV shows, lol.

Thanks for letting me know where you are at-I was really curious and just boggled, haha.

Curious-do you guys get a lot of cases where something really bad DOES happen, and the person has tried and tried and tried to contact the police? Like, in the news and such?

We get those occasionally, but as I mentioned before, it's usually over restraining order type things... either they don't get it or do, but it's always made into a huge deal when the other person goes nuts and does something. I am not sure why they make such a deal out of the restraining orders around here when stuff like that goes bad, because after all, it's only a piece of paper-not a magic bubble that appears to keep all bad things from happening to you. It gives right to call the cops if you see this person around your property and all, of course, but that isn't when the really bad things happen usually, and if the person wanted to bad enough, it wouldn't help anyway and they might not get there in time.

Last edited by anxiety25 on 10 Mar 2010, 8:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not in LA now, I'm in Toronto. I don't know anything about the cops here.

I actually got the NYPD to respond to an accident once where someone backed into me, but they took 3 hours and when they finally showed up, they were completely rastafarian. They were nice and did the report though.

Well, that's good at least-that they did show up. What is Rastafarian?

Dred locks... reggae music.

Oh I see, and lol-I'm not sure I could keep a straight face if I wasn't used to that.