I Saw Some "Suspicious" Activity; Should I Have Called the Police?

I saw some activity that, now that we’re on Red Alert, seemed “suspicious.”

Yesterday I saw two guys fiddling with a manhole cover. Neither of them were wearing utility uniforms (or uniforms of any kind) and there were no city or utility trucks for miles around.

However, they were doing this in broad daylight at a busy intersection.

I told Mrs. HeyHomie about this and she was appalled that I didn’t call the police. However, for all I know these guys might have had a legitimate reason to be fiddling with a manhole cover (although I don’t know what that could be). If they were up to no good, the worst they could have done is find a city water main, which they would need a jackhammer or explosives to break open, and then they’d just get wet…

Does anyone agree with Mrs. HeyHomie that I should have called the police?

The broad daylight/busy intersection thing has me thinking that whatever they were doing was probably legit.

Or not. In this “new normal” it’s just impossible to know.

I will say, however, that I had a brief stint with an engineering firm and one of my tasks was to take our digital camera and photograph all sorts of water reservoirs for pictures on our brochure covers. This was after 9/11. I was out taking pictures one day, and it occurred to me how suspicious it might look to passersby (I would have thought I was suspicious had I seen me).

I think it’s just really hard to know or guess what’s worthy of a call.

The best crimes are committed in broad daylight, in such a non-chalant manner that they go completely unnoticed.

Worked for me! :wink:


Fagjunk Theology: Not just for sodomite propagandists anymore.

Call it in. Let the police decide if there was something funny goin on. Its not up to you to determine all of the facts. Thats the cop’s job. If its nothing, then everyone will feel better. If it was something, then youre a minor hero.

I’m just glad you aren’t my neighbor.

I keep wondering when someone will turn me in for something dumb I’m doing.

Last week I was painting over some graffiti on the phone pole outside my apartment. Then I thought, what the heck, I’ve go out the can, so I painted over the graffiti on the dumpster. Then I went down the street painting all the phone polls (they same kid was busy marking territory like a dog). At last, someone shouted to me to cut that out, and I realized they couldn’t see that I wasn’t adding new mess. So I scrammed.

Then, last night, my car was in an auto accident and got towed to the shop. My house key was on the same ring and when I walked home I was locked out. But recalling I had left a window a little open I slit the screen and pulled it out and dove headfirst through my front window. Then noticed people walking on the other side of the street. I spent the next half hour waiting for someone to pound on the door, but they never came.

Whew.

In your case, I’ll bet they lost something in a nearby grate and hoped to work their way back to it.

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by gatopescado *
Worked for me! :wink:

:eek:

I just recalled a great story.

My lawyer friend was in Prague during the cold war. There were a lot of really twisty narrow old streets with giant mirrors so cars could look around the corners. He thought that would be something to show people back home so he took a picture and was immediately arrested. And being a US lawyer, he refused to tell them anything until they told him what he was being held for.
When the embassy guy arrived the next day he found out he had taken a photo of the “post office”. When he said he was a tourist and took a photo of the mirror they believed him, and just confiscated his film. Later the embassy guy said the post office was their homeland spy headquarters.

I called the police recently about an incessant loud beeping noise in the neighborhood. It was around midnight & I couldn’t sleep. I could not pinpoint the exact location of the beeps. The noise stopped within 20 minutes. I don’t know if the police stopped it, or it died out. They never knocked on my door, and I had identified myself and location. The noise was not a car alarm or house alarm. It was so different. So I figured if the station attendant thought I was an idiot, it didn’t matter. It could have been a timer for a bomb. Expect the unexpected. Be :dubious: I might have gone up to the manhole cover duo and asked, “Lose something?”

In October after the WTC attacks, I was driving home along the 403 into Hamilton, and noticed someone standing on the side of the highway, on the OTHER side of the concrete blocks, meaning that he was standing on the ledge (which to me appears to be about 1.5 feet wide) long the bridge that goes over the canal that is there. The highway is pretty high up, and a fall from that place could have been deadly. The person wasn’t moving, and so wasn’t just walking along to get across the canal (though I don’t know what his destination could have been even if he WAS walking along it!) I immediately got suspicious and scared, especially less than a month after 9/11. I suppose an added fear (as unfounded as it is, really) was because the man appeared to be of middle eastern descent, and what with all the fears of Al Quaeda, and the fact that he was somewhere where he really shouldn’t be…well. like I said, I got scared.

So I drive the rest of the way home (5 mins) and call the local police, and tell them that there is a suspicious person standing just off the highway at the canal between the York and Main East exits. You know what the local cop says?

“If it’s the highway, call the OPP. We don’t handle that”. And she hung up on me.

So I called the OPP, and explained to them what I’d seen. The person on the other end of the line tells me:

“Well, if he’s OFF the highway, then its the local cop’s duty to look into it.”

At this point, I’m beginning to think that this guy has already jumped/set a bomb/launched a missle/whatever, and by the time cops get there, it’ll be too late. So I quite bluntly (but not rudely) told the OPP that I didn’t really care whose jurisdiction it was, but to just get someone, ANYONE out there to have a look.

They told me they’d handle it from there, then took my name and number and before hanging up told me it was probably just a hiker since part of the preserves there runs up to the highway.

I look at that spot every day, and there is NO WAY a sane hiker would be on that ledge - theres just nothing to cross over too, and its DANGEROUS! A lot of trucks go by there, and just a bit of a wind blast…well, unfortunately the SDMB knows as well as anyone that a blast off a truck can knock someone over, and it can be deadly.

I don’t know if the cops ever actually did investigate. I still think about it, and I am convinced that the guy intended to jump - whether he did or not, though, I don’t know. AFAIK, no body was found, so I guess thats good news. The Al Quaeda fears were, I believe, just a result of an imagination gone haywire, since the highway is still there in all of its pot-holed glory (though some of those holes could be a missle blast, I suppose!)

Still, despite all the bullshit the cops dragged me through, I would report it again in a heartbeat. Just in case.

Was I the ONLY one here that IMMEDIATELY looked at HeyHomie’s location after reading his post?! :stuck_out_tongue:

Whew!

:slight_smile:

Was I the only one who thought of Ghostbusters II?

Depends where you live. I’m not in a prime target type area so I might not–but then again I might because even if they’re not terrorists, people still shouldn’t be fucking with your city’s infrastructure. Regardless, central dispatch will have a non-emergency number in the phone book. Just say “This ain’t an emergency and I wasn’t sure if I should let somebody know…” and then let them decide. So I guess I agree with the Mrs.

As a cop, I say you should have called. We can’t be everywhere, so we need people to tell us when they see something suspicious. An officer can check it out and see if it is really something.