In the city, the only number to get an officer dispatched, even for something as trivial as a barking dog or other noise complaint is to call 911. In the burbs, whether you call 911 or a non-emergency 10-digit phone # you end up talking to the Exact. Same. Person.
Yes, I would. Maybe it’s not really an emergency, although in this case it appears to have been a theft in progress. I would rather contact 911 and let them tell me that it is not an emergency than not call them when it is.
And that someone might be me.
My neighbor down the street is retired. He was the developer for my subdivision. He still feels a sense of ownership, has too much time on his hands, and is not at all shy about keeping an eye on everything that goes on, good and bad alike. He knows, for instance, that I am the guy in the funny hat who walks his big black dog every day.
He is also the guy who called 911 when he thought people were breaking into mailboxes when they weren’t, exactly (they were distributing flyers and were supposed to put them in the box underneath and not open the mailbox itself).
He is also the guy who knew that my neighbor was on vacation and called 911 when a strange van was parked in their driveway, and as a result they caught the two burglars.
911 is for when you think you have an emergency. If it isn’t really an emergency, they will tell you. Of course I live in a similar neighborhood to Dinsdale - low-crime and high-boredom where the police (thank God) don’t have a whole lot to do. A lot of the reason is that the social contract is quite strong - we don’t bother the police because we don’t usually need to, and when we do need to, they are all over things, and leap at the chance to use up their cool cop equipment and catch the dastards who are illegally distributing flyers - or robbing houses.
Like I say, everybody knows the weird guy in the funny hat walking his dog every afternoon. So when I wave to the police, they tend to wave back. Because the police are not only the ones who gave me the ticket for illegally using the right turn lane to pass a stopped motorist - they are also the guys who bust the burglars.
YMMV.
Regards,
Shodan
At work, there was a car in my parking lot at the end of our work day. I called the police and they stopped and ran the plate. It wasn’t stolen. The cop asked if I wanted the car gone and I said yes. Twenty minutes later a tow truck arrived. No money from me was necessary. He said as long as the car was worth more money than the tow/impound fee, he was good. He said that the owner of the car would likely call the police, who would bring them up-to-date on where their car was towed.
I believe it would be towed to the impound lot, where ever that would be, and the owner - not the person having it towed - is on the hook for the towing fees. In this case, it was a stolen car - the owner would have to get the insurance company to reimburse him. IANAL.
Regards,
Shodan
I think that has been our experience. Wanna talk to a cop, call 911.
Re: towing - when the cop was 1st there, I said, “what are we going to do, because eventually we are going to need to get out of our garage?”
He said, “Oh, we’ll ticket it for being parked on private property and have it towed. That’s no problem.” Which was good to know.
Dunno how you would do it w/o involving the cops.
It is raining like the dickens. Hope it washes away some of the “skid marks” on our brick driveway from the tow! 
It happened to me once. I called our local security patrol (not actual cops, but quite helpful) and they sent a car around. I hadn’t thought to note the number; Quebec does not have front plates. But they ran the number and discovered it belonged to our neighbor across the street. They rang his door and a very embarrassed neighbor came out and said that for some reason he thought we were out of town and quickly moved it.
My driveway? I’d most likely steal the wheels off it, then drag it out in the desert with my Jeep.
The car would be (at least in my area) ticketed as being abandoned, or whatever the officer would use in that situation, and the two company will pick it up for free. After the owner clears up the ticket(s), they’ll also have to pay the impound lot to get it out.
The person reporting it doesn’t have to pay anything.
If you have no relationship with the tow company (ie they know you from picking up cars left in your business parking lot), I imagine they’ll ask for some proof that it’s either your car or your property it’s parked on. Not to say that every tow truck driver does that, but I’d imagine it’s the correct protocol.
As for an agreement, I assume that depends. When people ‘abandon’ cars in my parking lot, I certainly don’t get paid to have them towed, nor do I pay anyone for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if tow companies paid owners of apartments and the like to patrol their lot and pick up cars that aren’t supposed to be there.
When a car is towed, they let the local cops know. When the owner calls the police to report their car ‘stolen’, they’ll let them know what happened.
As for signage, I’m not sure how that works. Where I am, all I have to do is report the car to the police as abandoned and they’ll put a ticket on it. As soon as I see the ticket, I call the a towing company to come get it.
It used to be that we’d have to put a note on the windshield stating that it would be ticketed and towed if it was still there in 24 hours, but the last time I asked a cop about it, they said we no longer have to do that.
This is true. I had the experience of calling in a nuisance complaint to the non-emergency number. When I called 911 later to call in a domestic dispute with battery in the street, the same person answered.
What is an “innocent” reason?
The way that you find out where to pick up your car is that you call the police to say that your car is missing and they tell you that it has been towed. That’s one of the risks when you park your car in a less-than-authorized space, it might not be there when you return. You are basically taking the gamble you’ll be gone before the car is noticed and the tow company arrives.
Sometimes, you lose that bet.
Protip: It’s easier to drag it to the desert then steal the wheels.
Pizza guy parked in the wrong driveway by accident.
Someone is at the neighbor’s house and didn’t realize this wasn’t their driveway.
Some houses are arranged in such a way that it’s not always obvious which driveway belongs to which house.
The Pizza Guy will be gone before the tow truck gets there (unless he’s a pizza guy in a porn video, where he might be delayed a bit.)
In the other case, it would likely be a frequent occurrence and the neighbors will likely check with each other before calling for a tow (or the visited neighbor will point out to their visitor where to park). But yes, that kind of mistake could happen and when the person calls to report a stolen car, they’ll find out it has been towed.
If you’re in the Chicago area, then you’ve likely heard of the teen who was shot and killed in Lake County while allegedly trying to steal a car with several teenaged companions.
A homeowner heard a commotion in his driveway, confronted the teens, and shot and killed one in what he claimed was self-defense (he claimed one of the teens approached him with a knife).
So, be careful out there. Calling 911 is not unwarranted.
Yeah - crazy that they charged the accomplices w/ felony murder, but ASAIR, the homeowner w/ nothing.
But after, there was an article in the paper about how many idiot homeowners leave their expensive cars in the driveways, doors unlocked, fob in the key. So inner city thieves just cruise pricey neighborhoods, seeing what they can pick up. :rolleyes:
In this case, absolutely. There are a lot of scenarios (like, apparently the one that happened in this case) where a strange car in your driveway in the middle of the night is part of an emergency, and you just don’t know what it is yet.
I’d call 911 if a stranger knocked on my door in the middle of the night, too. They might just have broken down and their cell phone was dead, but there are a lot of cases where something bad is going down. I’m going to let the police figure out which it is.
Police would rather answer a call that turned out to be no big deal than let something slide that potentially is.
Unexpected, yes, but it happens. There was a story from years ago about someone robbing a jewelry store. During the commission of the crime, the security guard shot and killed him. The security guard wasn’t charged with anything, however, the people in the getaway car were charged with murder.
Whenever people say “I live in one of those nice neighborhoods where people don’t even lock their doors” I usually reply with “and if I was a burglar, that’s the neighborhood I’d be robbing”
We came home after a weekend away to find a Buick parked neatly at the top of my drive. It was parked nicely but it made it difficult to get both cars into the garage. I checked with our neighbors and nobody said it was theirs but one neighbor knew it had been there since Saturday morning. Finally called the police and they came out to take a look. They ran the plates and it was not listed as stolen. It was from a very rural area in the northern part of the state that is mostly farmland. The cop called the number they had and said it sounded like an older woman and it went to an answering machine.
He asked if I wanted it removed and I told him it would be nice so we could use the garage. He used a jimmy bar and unlocked the door. There was a woman’s purse inside but no wallet or ID. Tow truck came by and took it away.
The next weekend I saw an airport taxi driving very slowly up and down our court.
My guess is someone asked a friend/relative if they could leave their car there and take a taxi to the airport and parked in the wrong driveway.
We’re the second house on a private road. And when I went out and found a car abandoned in the driveway one Sunday morning, parked badly enough to prevent me from leaving, we did call the cops. The cops had apparently been chasing them the night before due to a suspected DUI, and somehow lost them. The person was finally apprehended later in the day, and the cops had the car was towed away.
Hopefully Marvin Lewis…