Then that wouldn’t be considered “suspicious”, would it?
So your definition of suspicious is: unusual. Not possibly illegal, dangerous, or up to no good. Just unusual. Like a black realtor showing a house in a predominantly white neighborhood.
Or a family leaving the door open to let some air in.
I might consider that unusual, depending on the circumstances, but it’s not sufficiently suggestive of actual wrongdoing for me to call it suspicious.
“Suspicious”, to me, implies behavior like sneaking up on somebody’s porch to peer in their front window, while glancing around as though you’re afraid of being seen. Something like that. Merely sitting in a legally parked car minding one’s own business in a strange neighborhood doesn’t reach the “suspiciousness” threshold as far as I’m concerned.
ETA: ninja’d!
I live on a fairly busy street in a small city. On street parking is allowed (alternate side FWIW). I would likely not notice if someone was simply parked on the street outside my house, and would not find it suspicious at any hour of the day or night. So, in answer to the question, I guess I would do nothing. Difference between city and suburb in part I suppose.
There. Another data point heard from.
I might notice it. I might keep an eye on it. But unless I saw something actually illegal, I wouldn’t call the cops or approach them.
Now I have seen puzzled looking people stop at my corner- and I do ask them if they need directions.
If the “innocent person” is black and it’s a “white” neighbourhood I suspect they might follow up to see if there’s “harassment” involved and the caller is looked it for possible charges.
So this happened the other day which made me think of this thread:
My wife and I are out in our country home talking to our neighbor when an SUV pulls over and just sits there. Much like we have been talking about here. We didn’t think much of it at first. The house across the street is for sale we assumed they might be looking at that.
After a few minutes, I notice they haven’t moved. Thinking of this thread, I decide to walk over and say hi or see if they need help or whatever.
So the SUV then pulls off before I get close and turns down the next street. A bit later, I notice the car still parked down the side street, after which it then moves again.
I then see the same SUV parked a couple houses down in my in-laws driveway.
So this seemed pretty freakin weird.
From the way you described the situation they were casin’ the joint.
Numerous legitimate reasons have been given for why someone would park on a random street for a lengthy amount of time. Another couple I can think of would be an Uber/Lyft driver just brought someone home to the suburbs from the bars downtown, and they’re hoping to find a fare close by that’s going back to roughly where they started. That’s unfortunately pretty unlikely, but waiting a half hour or so to see if something comes up is better than deadheading 20 miles. Someone could also be “casing” the neighborhood in the sense that they’re planning to buy the house that’s for sale down the street and they want to see if it’s a decent street without a bunch of noise or irritating neighbors. If someone is just killing time waiting for an appointment, or after a fight with a significant other, they may not want to bother waiting at a gas station or convenience store where they could just as well be hassled by employees or nosy customers. Like if you just want to play on your phone for a half hour, do you want to be distracted by every person that walks next to your car, of which there will be many more at such establishments?
When I’ve checked out the neighborhood because there was a house I was interested in potentially buying, I’ve parked, gotten out of the car and knocked on doors to see what the neighbors have to say about the area (checking them out at the same time).
You won’t learn anything parked in your car that you wouldn’t get cruising by on the street at a few times during the day (I hear that you can hack people’s WiFI networks either way).
That’s what I was thinking when I read it. I’ll even go so far as to say that if I was just killing time and I saw someone walking up to my car, there’s decent chance I’d drive away too.
In fact there’s plenty of times where I’m making a delivery and I’ll be way too early. In those cases I’ll often park half a block away kill a few minutes since I don’t want to show up early, but I also don’t want the recipients to see me sitting in my car for 20 minutes. If I saw someone approaching, I might decide that enough time has been killed (or maybe I should go wait somewhere else).
I think that’s way more likely to cause suspicion and actually give some validity to people that may call the police. I’m not saying it’s not a perfectly benign thing to do, but from an onlooker’s POV, now you’re more than just ‘someone sitting in their car’.
I can’t blame someone for being nervous when they see a stranger going door to door asking about the neighborhood.
Maybe I just have a reassuringly benevolent demeanor*, but I’ve never had neighbors refuse to talk to me, much less call the police. They’ve always been happy to answer questions and chat about neighborhood doings.
Their dogs haven’t always been quite as friendly…
*I may be underestimating my con artist skills.
Yeah, that would definitely be seen as odd by my neighbors, I would think. Hell, my neighborhood board gets all fired up when politicians collecting signatures come around during election season: “did you see this person going house-to-house on your block? is he casing the neighborhood checking to see whose home during day? who is he?” May be because I live in Chicago (though you’d think neighbors would be well enough aware of this ritual.) Now if somebody went door-to-door asking about the neighbors or neighborhood, you’d likely get a “get the fuck off my property!” and a call to 911.
That you know of. If you do this with any regularity, I’d be willing to bet there’s facebook/Nextdoor posts about ‘someone going door to door asking about the neighborhood’. Doesn’t mean anything will happen, but I regularly see those posts on facebook. Usually phrased in a slightly accusatory way (ie 'he’s up to something, I just don’t know what). You can go to just about any facebook ‘town hall’ group and search for ‘door to door’ and see how many people make a whole big thing out of it.
The first one I found was multiple people ‘warning’ the rest of the group about some teens going door to door with, and I quote, “a flat box”. They were selling candy bars for their HS basketball team. But even then, a good chunk of the people commenting still thought that was a cover for…something.
I live in a bad area and see so much suspicious behavior from my neighbors that seeing a stranger wouldn’t alarm me.
I got a guy who sits on a folding chair on the sidewalk in front of his house at all daylight hours just staring at people. I should also mention he’s literally on the sex offender list for raping a 12 year old girl. Obviously that guys up to no good but I got no reason to call the cops on him so I don’t.
So what did your in-laws say about it? Did any of you call the police? Upthread you seemed on the pro call police side if you saw something suspicious.
Also, who in their right mind buys a house next door to their in-laws? 
My in laws? Someone pulled into their driveway to turn around and we didn’t stop hearing about it for weeks.
I actually did report it to the police because I thought it was strange how the driver seemed so intent on avoiding me.
My wife bought it. It’s a long story with a shitty ending.
No one here as mentioned what the police would think about being called for a car legally parked and Gladys Cravitz just has to report it.
The house across the street from my parents’ house was for sale when we were house hunting. My parents said they would subsidize our purchase of it. We bought a different house.
What did the police say when you did?