Yeah, if it were me, I wouldn’t pester the cops about it, as long as it wasn’t causing other issues, like huge piles of trash around the vehicle or if the person was harassing folks. But that’s just my opinion.
Um, ok. So you (or whoever) had armed men harass someone who wasn’t doing anything illegal?
I rest my case.
Me? What the fuck are you talking about? I’m just relating the story and I clearly said upthread that that wasn’t how I would handle it. What case?
Figure of speech. And, shockingly, no, I am not following every single post in *this thread trying to make sure I piece together who is referring to whose random fucking anecdote about how they threw a fucking hissy fit and called people with guns to confront someone who wasn’t doing anything wrong.
*ETA: Or rather, some completely different fucking thread.
OK, well maybe read the linked thread before going off about it. And you can read my post in this thread where I said what I would do in the situation. You were out of line there.
Come for the Naivety! Stay for the Hypocracy!
Hypocrisy
And nitpicking about spelling
A minor thank you to the last 30 or so posts and their posters for at least taking it out of the original thread and into the Pit.
Speaking only of what happened in this thread, and general impressions though, I think that @hajario has been unfairly accused.
They were too polite to quote themselves directly in their own defense, but I have no such qualms:
Not participating much in the other thread, and hearing the complaints, don’t want to, so I won’t comment on the posts there.
Thank you and you aren’t missing much over there.
@mjmartin’s point is a good one and it’s unfortunate that it got lost in arguments about the race of the specific car-sitter, and unfortunate that mjmartin was a jerk about it. Wolfpup probably didn’t even see the race of the person if it was dark and down the block.
But stepping back from that specific incident: what is perceived as “suspicious” is highly correlated with race (even in the perfect land of Canada), and calling the cops on someone can lead to bad outcomes (even in the perfect land of Canada). So it’s worthwhile considering if you’re actually at risk before taking that step.
Never Trust a Fart or Autocorrect
The only thing missing was the race part.
It’s worth saying that even if you’re not a racist and you’re not doing it for racist reasons, there’s no guarantee that the cops responding won’t be.
Correct. It was dark out, all I could see was a vague silhouette of a figure in the car, and trust me, the colour that their skin might have been was not something that had even remotely occurred to me. In the case of the kids invading my second-floor balcony, both kids were white.
One can have a reasonable discussion about whether or not I overreacted in either situation. The police didn’t think so and felt I did the right and reasonable thing. But one cannot have a reasonable discussion when mjmartin brings his toxic racist preconceptions into it completely without basis. Which makes him a shitty bigot for prejudging others.
I’ve seen a pascel of YouTube videos about people pecking on car windows and either asking the car driver what they’re doing or if they would leave. Then escalation, cursing, racist remarks along the lines of “go back where you come from”.
Pretty awful.
You might say. I’ve decided about 95% are AI, set up bait things or pure play acting.
If this poster is getting fed this through their TikTok they may be not thinking clearly on it.
Just sayin’
Wolfpup, I apologize. I assumed you were a racist, because you behaved in exactly the way racists frequently do. It instead appears you are simply a craven, terrified of everyday, mundane situations. I am truly glad you survived such a harrowing ordeal and that the police were able to protect you from the man territorizing you with his naps.
Yup. Tiktok… and not the hundreds of such real life events that have ended in tragedy.
You’re being way too sweeping here. I am a short middle-aged glasses-wearing American white woman, the least stereotypically threatening-looking person you could imagine (unless I’m actually swinging an axe or something: I’m quite strong and tools-competent for my age and size, but you wouldn’t know it to look at me). And even I have had the cops called on me once when I was sitting for an hour or more in a rental car in a strange neighborhood. (Infrequent driver, long trip, misjudged trip duration, arrived way too early while hosts were out, sat.)
Is it likely that the cops who came by treated me with much more courtesy and trust than they probably would have shown to, say, a large Black man in the same situation? Absofuckinglutely. Does that make you correct in asserting that white people are automatically exempt from the tendency of some nervous-nellies to call the cops on unfamiliar parkers? No. Racism is not the only factor in such behavior.
Yeah, that was my first thought. Someone sitting on a car one night might be scoping the territory for burglary. Someone night after night is sleeping in the car, because he doesn’t have a better place to sleep.
If someone is spending night after night sitting in their car in front of my house, that means I have a new neighbor. Eventually, I’m going to be compelled to knock on their door and introduce myself.