Very late one night many years ago, the front rooms of my home were lit up by a bright light. The light disappeared after a few seconds only to reappear about 20 - 30 seconds later. This went on for a couple minutes and when I looked out my front window I noticed a car driving in circles in the park that was across the street from my home. Every time the car would make a circle its headlights would shine on my home for a couple seconds.
I dialed 911 and spoke to the operator while the car continuted to go round and round in the park. After a few minutes the driver got tired of doing circles and moved to the south end of the park, about 400 feet (120 meters) from my home, where he came to a stop. I relayed this information to the operator who told me they were sending out the cops.
Making sure my lights were off so my silhouette would not be seen from outside my home, I watched through the blinds as the police showed up, ordered the driver out of the car, handcuffed him and searched the car. Another police car showed up and hauled off the driver. Don’t know what the final outcome was for the crazy driver but I would guess he was on drugs or drunk.
Murder happening next door, found out later that a cop was already on scene supposed to be protecting the victim from the assailant (ex husband). 36 years ago now.
Dead body in dumpster enclosure at a store I was manager of (I was assistant manager but in charge at the time). 36 years ago.
Attempted break in to my parents’ home, where I was living. Fortunately I was in the basement from where he was trying to enter. Would be burglar/invader fled when I turned on the lights. Also 36 years ago.
In retrospect 1989 was a bad year.
Injury to my toddler daughter. Lots of blood, but no permanent damage, thankfully. Transported to ER by ambulance.
Bicycle rider on interstate highway at night, no lights.
Single car accident, hit a tree, billowing smoke in engine. Didn’t stop at the scene, wasn’t a safe place to stop or walk on that winding road with no shoulder. In 1990s, cell phones were not common. 911 dispatcher was confused about why I couldn’t give an exact address where I was calling from, or wasn’t at my office which was I don’t know how cell phones were routed back then.
Motor vehicle crash, car in front of me at an intersection smashed into by a stop sign runner at high speed. Severe injuries. Amazingly, I never heard from anyone after my statement was taken. As far as I know I was the only uninvolved witness.
After the Sally experience, I’ll be better prepared next time. I’ll use the Tides and Currents web page to do my own forecasting. The blond honey with big tits running stock videos on TV is useless.
Same for the Sheriffs department who claimed they were protecting the area from looting. They had a car by the entrance to the area until the water went down. Then their guy went back to the donut shop and the looters moved in.
Reminds me of one I missed on the list I posted earlier. At the gym (big place, hundreds of cars in the lot) I called 911 because a group of teens were vandalizing cars. I went inside to start my workout. The cops showed up, caught the kids in the act. They then went around the gym with my name on a card looking for me. Then took me outside to identify the youths (I couldn’t, it was dark). When I came out after my workout, the youths were still there, the cops were gone, and I was up for some Grievous Bodily Harm. I called 911 again, no one showed up. Eventually some large young men from the local college football team escorted me to my car.
I asked our local police chief about this later (the incident was in another jurisdiction) and he said that if they were using washable paint to tag the cars the charges were not worth pursuing, so at most they’d get a summons. But he said that if they were juveniles (I think they were under 18) they should have been held in situ if not in the police station until their parents came to get them.
I was maybe ten or so, it was after school (or maybe Summer break) and I was at the bank my mom worked at, waiting for her to finish some stuff up before we left. She parked me at someone’s empty desk and I got out my book (I was the sort of kid who always had a book with him) to read until she was done.
While I read the book with one hand holding it flat on the desk, my other hand, under the desk, brushed against a small, maybe 1" x 2" box bolted to the underside of the desk. with two buttons on opposite sides. Distracted by the book, I absently fiddled with the box without really thinking about what I was doing, pushing first one button, then the other, then both at the same time, until I suddenly stopped and thought, “Why are there buttons under this bank desk?” And immediately figured out the obvious answer.
Right at that moment, my mom walked up and said, “Ready to go?” I said nothing, just grabbed my book and backpack, and hustled myself right out the back of the bank and into my mom’s car.
The next day, she mentioned that the cops had shown up at the bank about five minutes after we left, although they left without incident when it was determined to be a false alarm.
I didn’t tell my mom my role in the story until I was in my mid-20s.
When my sister was young, she was bored during the passover seder and found the “panic button" attached to the burglar alarm at my grandparents house. So she pushed it to see what it did. It didn’t do anything.
A few minutes later, we went to open the door for Elijah, and a couple of cops were standing there, about to ring the doorbell. Hilarity ensued.
I came very close to calling 911, or having it called for me, a couple hours ago. I was driving home from my volunteer job, and a woman in a truck was trying to cross 2 lanes of traffic and obviously not watching the road. I leaned on the horn, and nobody was hit, but it was awfully close, both me getting T-boned and rear-ended as well.
I also remember calling 911 late one night/early one morning when I was awakened by the dulcet tones of Motley Crue’s “Girls, Girls, Girls.” I lived in a 2nd floor apartment with no a/c, and it was summertime, so my bedroom window was open. The operator asked me, “Are you in the 800 block of XYZ Street?” “No, I’m in the 900 block!” The music stopped before the song was over.
So, I also happened to work with a guy who lived in a house on the 800 block of XYZ, and I asked if it was them. He said no, it was the next door neighbors. I believed him, then and now.
More recently, a higher-end car (I forget what make or model) was parked in the YARD at my apartment complex, with its blinkers on, for a couple hours before I decided to do the “see something, say something” thing and called. The operator asked me if I was on ABC street, and I told them that I was. Shortly afterwards, a man and a woman, who was herself hauling a baby in a carseat, came out of an adjoining apartment building, jumped the creek between the building and the street, got in the car, and drove away. Never found out what that was all about.
Don’t know where that number went. It was 67. It usually goes up much better than that-- it would normally get up to about 92, then settle at 85, which is where it sits most of the time.
Thing is, I started feeling low-sugary again in another 10 or 15 minutes, and it was in the 20s. I ate ice cream, and it finally got up in the 80s, but then dropped again into the 30s-- or something-- don’t really remember details at this point. I ate a tablespoon of pure sugar, then poured a glass of milk with some 1/2 & 1/2 in it, and started drinking it while I called 911.
When the ambulance got there, it was above 100, but not by a lot-- 120, or something-- my memory is less clear at this point, but I showed them my glucometer readings, which are time-marked.
They took my temperature, and it was elevated a little, which I hadn’t realized, and took my sugar again after 5 minutes, It wasn’t in the danger zone, but it was already below 100, and so they decided to take me to the hospital. They started an IV, with a little dextrose, and my sugar was still below 80 on arrival.
The hospital gave me juice to drink, and also IV dextrose in a bigger dose-- then my sugar was 182! record high!
I’ve called 911 a couple of times to report fires. Both times they were on the side of the road apparently caused by someone tossing a cigarette out their window.
I didn’t call 911, because it was before cell phones, but I saw a fire start that way once-- hot day, dry grass on the median, and probably some paper trash, too. Was just hoping that since the median was small and narrow, it would be contained, or else a trucker with a CB would pass it and radio it in-- otherwise, a cop would. There wasn’t a pay phone for miles.
Also, once on a hot day with the AC kaput in an old car, and the windows down, someone threw out a cigarette that hit the hood of my car with lots of orange cinders bouncing up. Fraction of a second later, and it would have come in my passenger window. Didn’t have a passenger, but did have cloth seats. That really pissed me off.
911 first came out on landlines as early as the late 60s. My grandmother was one of the first to use it in the Los Angeles area (like in the first 2 weeks, not like she was #3) and that had to be the '80s.
I think the poster was saying they weren’t able to call 911 because they were out in their car when the fire happened and they didn’t have the ability to call 911 because they did not have a cell phone and no landlines were convenient.
We were on the highway, and yes, 911 had been around since my childhood, but I was in a car, and it was a very long stretch of road with no stops, no exit signs coming up. Had there been one, I would have pulled off and used a payphone-- 911 calls were free from payphones.
But no such luck.
And we weren’t carrying any jugs of water, or we might have tried to put it out.
This is somewhat stale guidance, but as we are trying to get away from misogynistic language like this and it bothered a poster enough to flag it, I’m going to remind you to avoid using such terminology.
Several times to report traffic accidents and such while driving.
When we were newlyweds, and living in an apartment, there was a stretch of time when the woman who rented the apartment below ours had an abusive boyfriend. We had to call 911 several times, always late at night, to report loud fights between the two of them, in which we could clearly hear him threatening to injure or kill her.
There is a bar located across the street from our house (note: it wasn’t there when we moved in – it was, at that time, a cigar store. The owner converted it into a martini bar, to our enduring dismay). We’ve had to call 911 a few times when fights broke out on the sidewalk in front of the bar, or in the parking lot. And, once, about a year and a half ago, when we were awakened at 5 a.m. to the sound of someone kicking in the front door of the bar, in order to break into the ATM that was inside.
Hah! Once in college, I was going down the dorm stairs, and saw that they had what looked like a speaker cable looped to some pipe valve and plugged in. Nothing else around it- just a cable looped through the valve wheel, and plugged into a jack.
So being the dumb-ass 19 year old I was, I yanked it out. My buddy goes “NO! That’s part of the fire system!” So we tore down the rest of the stairs, and then very casually just sort of turned, walked down the hallway, and barged into a friend’s room.
Apparently that cable was hooked up to the automatic fire system, and a couple of fire trucks and a swarm of other people showed up. We wandered out a few minutes later, and asked “What’s going on?” as innocently as possible.