No, they do not. Cite?
I truly hope that was a poor choice of scare quotes.
Do they though? If I’m parked in a driveway, maybe I’m a contractor writing up a job for the homeowner, do you have any right to come and ask me what I’m doing? And to add to that, what if I then called the police on you because I’m of the opinion that your behavior was suspicious. Where I live, people don’t just march up to you and demand you tell them what you’re doing.
Does it make a difference if this all takes place on the street?
If a random civilian has the “right to perform a reasonable level of inquiry”, is the person they’re talking to required to answer them? And what is a “reasonable level of inquiry”? Can you demand my name? Can you ask for my driver’s license? Can you request my SSN or phone number? Can you ask where I came from or where I’m going? What’s reasonable, what isn’t?
Who determines what is out of character, and what does a reasonable level of inquiry entail? If an officer comes by and interviews the person in question and determines they are not engaged in any criminal misconduct, then what?
They were quotes for emphasis. They weren’t intended as scare quotes or to be ironic.
To answer the last couple of posts:
What is reasonable?
I don’t know. What do typical traffic patterns look like where you live? Let’s take a typical suburban neighborhood like where I grew up. Typically you would see people coming and going. Mostly in the morning and evening as people go to and from work or taking kids to and from school. Even the odd car stopping in front of someone’s house wouldn’t be taken as unusual.
But a situation like the OP described, where a strange car pulls up around midnight and the driver just sits there lingering for an hour? Yeah, that’s pretty odd. I might be inclined to call the police and tell them “hey, this guy has been sitting in front of our house for the past hour and here’s the license number” and then let them deal with it. I would advise against approaching the car yourself as the OP did. The police have the training, equipment, and authority to deal with such situations.
And if they are not engaged in anything criminal, then that’s that. A contractor would be able to provide their work order. A normal person would be like “I’m here for my very legitimate purpose”.
I’m not saying that you need to be like my MIL who calls half the neighborhood when a deer triggers the motion-sensor activated driveway lights in our yard or some of my friend’s racist neighbors who call the police whenever they see the black housekeeper show up to work. All I’m saying is if you see something in your neighborhood that causes you enough of a potential concern that you start a thread asking what you should do, the “what you should do” is call the police and tell them your concerns.
And other posters are saying that maybe what you should do is think harder about your level of concern and decide whether you consciously consider it justified or whether it might be influenced by societal bias in some form. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive.
Interesting topic. I’ve pulled over to use my phone many times, but the cops have never been called.
Someone parking in front of my house would warrant a call to the cops, as the lane we live on is clearly marked “PRIVATE NO TRESPASSING”.
Two things. My question had nothing to do with what is reasonable about traffic patterns in the “typical” suburban neighborhood where you grew up. I very clearly asked what a reasonable level of inquiry was. Secondly, typical traffic patterns in and around the area you grew up in have nothing to do with anything. Maybe in the area I grew up in it’s very common for people to pull over and hang out in their car for a bit before getting back on the road.
I didn’t ask what someone would be able to do, I asked what they should be required to do. Sure a contractor would be able to provide some type of proof that they’re actually a contractor and actually working with a homeowner in the immediate area, but should they have to? I’ve never been a big fan of “you don’t have to worry if you’re not doing anything you shouldn’t be doing”. What if this contractor is running 45 minutes late because he had to prove to you and/or the police that he’s not here to rob a house and loses a job because of it?
That’s practically a summary of this entire thread. In one breath you said both that people should call the police if they’re concerned but then also listed two scenarios in which the police shouldn’t be called because the concern isn’t warranted (motion detector false alarm and black housekeeper). All people are saying is that maybe before calling the police for someone that is doing nothing but sitting in their car, maybe take a few minutes to decide if your concern is warranted and how you’d feel if the police showed up every time you sat in your car for more then a few minutes. Remember, that includes things like having the police show up while you wait outside someone’s house to pick them up, having the police show up if you pull over to read/reply to a text message. Having the police show up if you park on a side street to kill 10 minutes before you have to be somewhere etc.
Does that apply to a liquor store owner who sees a car with a couple of guys in it park across the street and sit there, as store traffic dwindles toward closing time? Maybe they’re just planning the rest of their evening.
Like what they want to buy before the store closes?
Yes, the liquor store owner should think about whether their concern is warranted, as Joey_P suggests. Nobody is saying that you should refrain from calling the police if you do decide your concern is warranted.
Why wouldn’t it? I run a store. There are lots of times when someone is hanging out in the parking lot when I think they shouldn’t be. I don’t call the police on them, but sometimes I’ll make a note of their license plate so if something does happen after hours, I have something to work with.
If I’m at home at checking the cameras and see someone in the lot, I’ll keep an eye on them, but that’s about it. If I think things may escalate, I’ll drive over (it’s just a few minutes away from where I live). IME, if someone is hanging out in the parking lot late at night and someone shows up and makes eye contact with them as they enter the building, the people will, more often then not, leave soon after that.
If they were on the street, on public property, at most I’d keep an eye out. In fact, I do that quite a bit. There’s some items we have outside that get stolen during the night. If I’m leaving and see a pick up truck parked close by, I’ll go around the block once or twice or drive away and swing back 5 minutes later to see if it’s something I need to worry about.
Like Kimstu said, if I was truly concerned these people were going to rob/burglarize us, I’d call the police. But it would have to be more than ‘someone is sitting in their car’.
Yes, they’re probably debating the best vintage of Bordeaux to serve with their tripes a la mode de Caen.
Sure, because there’s absolutely no middle ground between being an effete wine-snobby gourmet and being a criminal planning a liquor-store holdup.
Suggesting that two guys sitting in a parked car across from a liquor store near closing time might not necessarily be the latter is exactly the same as implying that they’re the former.
If someone is sitting in front of your house looking suspicious, it’s fine to note details, to lock your doors and windows, turn lights on, or do whatever it is you need to do inside your home to feel comfortable. You can go outside and look at the person until they see you and know their presense has been noted.
It’s over the line to harass them, tell them to move, or call the cops on them. They are on public property and you haven’t the right.
How would you feel if you called the cops on an innocent person and they wound up getting shot by an anxious cop as they were reaching for their documents in a glove box when they saw him walking up behind their car?
You may be overestimating the empathy that many Americans feel for other people getting unjustifiably shot, especially people whose appearance they find threatening in some way.
If they appeared to be affluent white people they wouldn’t get the cops called on them.
That’s not that. They might be hassled , or arrested even if not doing anything criminal as their skin was the wrong color, or they vaguely resembled a BOLO, or they talked back to the cop.
You people need to lighten up. Just go out to the car and check, it may be the long lost love of your life.
What does “looking suspicious” look like?
I need details, as I’ve always lived in safe places, and don’t have a good danger sense.
For context, this is a suburban neighborhood. The street I live on is not a through street; you’d only drive on it to get someplace in the neighborhood, but it is not a dead-end or cul-de-sac either, so it does get traffic not destined for one of the houses nearby.
Like someone you’ve never seen before sitting in a vehicle in the cul-de-sac for an hour.