Ever call the cops on your neighbors because they are being obnoxious, loud, or something just doesn’t seem right? Cops of Reddit share stores of just that sort of thing – and the craziness they can lead to.
1. Unreasonable
A neighbor called me saying that they heard endless screaming coming from their neighbor’s residence. I got there, knocked on the door and was completely shocked to see a pair of dismembered testicles on the ground. I was quickly withdrew my handcuffs and asked what was going on.
It turns out that the wife found the husband on the list of members on Ashley Madison. Witnesses outside the home said they heard screams such as “Oh no! Get away from me! Please! Stop unreasonably castrating me!” Still one of the strangest calls I’ve ever been dispatched on.
2. Smithereens
Got a call for a noise complaint at a frequent flyer’s house so we cruised out figuring the guy was drunk and we’d pick him up on a parole violation. We got to his house and he had literally blown off half of his garage and half of his arm trying to make dabs. Turns out the guy thought he just had to burn a bunch of weed and it would melt down into oil so he gathered up a dozen propane tanks and somehow managed to turn his garage into a bomb. The best part was he swore up and down (while he’s screaming in pain) that we only came out to “steal his stuff”
3. Overkill
Ex cop, NSW Australia
Got sent to a street out the back of our sleepy little town. Someone was using a chainsaw at 2am. Not unusual because the properties are really big but this was being done next to another house (in a garage).
Turned out to be a lady chasing her husband around the room trying to jab him in the penis with the chainsaw.
4. “…hugging it like Tom Hanks hugged Wilson”
I got dispatched to loud music one night at an apartment complex. I arrived and could clearly hear Snoop Dog being played while I was standing in the parking lot. I banged on the door for well over a minute to no avail. I open the door to find two stoners high out of their minds. Guy was laying on the couch while his friend was laying on the floor. I see clear as day a pound of weed on the floor next to the guy. He was hugging it like Tom Hanks hugged Wilson. He looks up at me with a look of pure disgust and says “No, don’t take the cush”. Alright pal.
5. Lady Gaga
Received a noise complaint at 230 AM. We went to make contact with the individual and when we arrived, the house was shaking to music that was so loud, you couldn’t understand the lyrics. We knock repeatedly with no response. After shining our flashlights into the window, he sees our lights and walks past the front door into the garage. At this point, we are concerned for our safety because we have no idea why, or what, he went into the garage for. He opens the door slowly, steps into the door way revealing this 60ish yr old man in nothing but his tighty whities looking like Walter White. He begins to apologize and follows up with “the Lady Gaga program is almost over anyways.” Myself and the other officer can’t control our laughter, we ask him to turn it down and leave in tears.
6. A lot of overtime
Cop for over twenty years in one of the largest cities in the U.S. Neighbor called to report loud music and yelling in the apartment above his. The tweaker inside shot at us through the door then shot himself in the head. He blew his jaw into pieces and the bullet went through the roof of his mouth and took out his eye before going through the ceiling. He survived. I got paid a lot of of overtime.
7. Serial complainer
I’m a cop, and a musician. There’s a nearby town with a few bars on the edge of town. It’s a great area for live music venues because it’s out in the sticks and not many houses to bother. However, there’s this ONE prick citizen who drives around to all the venues on weekend nights with a sound meter and checks the level at the property line and calls the cops if it’s 1db over the limit. The local PD usually doesn’t respond, but it’s still a nuisance. When I’ve played there, the owners/managers warn our sound engineer to check levels. It’s just a jerk move… you could have a gunfight in one of these places and it wouldn’t drown out the TV in the nearest house.
8. SWAT
I went to a noise complaint recently, it ended in a double homicide.
Guy heard his mom accidentally shatter the oven door and snapped, shot her like 10 times with a FN 5.7. Neighbors called in a noise complaint and thought it sounded like gunshots. Guy talks to them in a fake British accent, then get super agitated when they ask him about the noises. Guy leaves the house and goes to a different county, where he stabs a guy about 20 times and steals his car. Guy comes back to his house the next day and neighbors let us know, and the SWAT team surprises him as he steps out back for a smoke. Guy confessed the whole thing.
9. Outnumbered
Responded to a house for a complaint of loud music around 11pm. My back up gets there right before me and as i’m getting out of the car, gunshots are heard from the back yard. We called for more units and made our way to the back of the house where we had to look through a 6 foot wooden fence to the back yard. We didn’t find anything or anyone once we got back there. So we circle around a few more houses just to make sure someone didn’t get shot in the area. Once we get back to the front of the original house, the back ups had arrived and we made contact with an older guy on the front screened in porch. He was sitting in a chair with his arm up on a small table to his side. We notice that right next to his arm is a loaded 44 magnum revolver. We draw on him and start giving him commands, and he throws obscenities at us. We can’t get to him because he’s inside of this porch. He gets up and walks inside of his house. We all retreat to cover positions. About 20 seconds later, he opens the door with a rifle in his hand and shoots at one of us. You can probably fill in the rest. There were 8 of us there.
10. Party Brawl
Forth of July a few years back, we get a noise complaint call. Big crackdown on fireworks at the time so we had to respond to every one of these calls. Get there and find a family having a party and setting off fireworks in the street. Give them a warning and leave. Call comes in again within an hour, go back and give another warning. This happens again before, on the fourth call, a supervisor comes too. He gets to the door prepared to give the homeowner a summons. Instead, the wife slams the door on his leg. That’s when all hell breaks loose. He calls for the wife and husband to be taken in but before anyone gets cuffed, the entire party (over 40 people) start streaming out of the house and a full brawl ensues. Someone calls 10-13 (radio code for all units) and the entire precinct responds. It takes almost an hour to wrangle everyone up and 30 people got locked up.
11. Still smoldering
Called in to the location station about a alarm going off on the apartment next door. Cops said if it was fire the fire trucks would arrive. It was going off for 2 hours so I went and checked it out. It was a pump alarm so I was an annoying person and kept calling the police station until some one came out.
Cops make the fire people come. Turns out a small electrical fire that taken the whole system off line and was still smouldering.
The building had serious wiring and fire suppression issues.
I’d hate to think what would of happened if I wasn’t a pain in the neck.
12. ‘Screamings’
I usually don’t work on a night shift, but when I had to, of course I’m the one dealing with some creepy things. Some old lady reported that ‘weird noises’ can be heard from her neighbor’s house and she sounded desperate so we went there with my colleague.
We showed up and it was completely silent on the street. The old lady met us on the street in her dressing-gown and she told us that she heard screamings coming from her next door neighbor’s house. It was weird, because she didn’t mention any “screamings” in the call – in other way, we would be there much faster.
So we’re knocking, knocking… no one answers. My colleague consulted the case with our supervisor and he allowed us to go in, he also sent the reinforcements. OK, so we force the doors and go in. It’s dark and quiet. We were searching the house only with our flashlights and we found nothing.
We go to the floor and searching room by room. No one. The house is empty. My colleague is calling supervisor again… and suddenly I hear him screaming like a little girl. He jumped back to me with true fear in his eyes. His hand went for the gun and then I saw it too…
The old lady was in the home and she started charging at us with evil grin and making some scary hissing noises. My colleague was ready to shoot her, but fortunately the fear paralyzed him. The old lady got to us, screaming and beating us… but she was so weak that we barely felt anything.
Turned out that she suffered from schizophrenia. I have no idea how it was possible that she was diagnosed so late, but good thing that it happened – we checked her house next and she was living in terrible conditions, even if the house was nice from the outside.
The owners of the house weren’t really pleased after they heard what happened.
13. Shots fired
We had a noise complaint coming from a small community saying there was a party out in one of the arroyos down this long private drive. Like 3 or 4 calls saying there was a huge bonfire and music.
Three of us are on shift and start cruising out there. It’s like 10 miles away, so we’re driving fast but not running code. About four miles out we hear the ambulance get dispatched for a shots fired call in the same area and thy are told to stage for Law Enforcement. We always get the med calls a few minutes after Central so we keep cruising.
The call from our Dispatch catches up a couple minutes later telling us to expedite as the shots are coming from the same area we’re headed to.
We run code, get there, and see about 15 cars coming down the private drive. People start jumping out of passenger seats and back seats and running into the night. We squeeze by the line of cars. We pull up to the bonfire and get down with our rifles.
One guy is laying on the ground shot, his girl is screaming and laying over him. There’s still about 15 more abandoned cars and people are running everywhere. The guy ended up getting shot above is right nipple with a 9mm. He survived but wouldn’t tell us who shot him. He and his girl both stated they didn’t know anyone at the party even though it was four miles off the main road.
14. Lovable loser
Loud music complaint at this residence around 2000 hours on a weekday, which is odd, both because of the day and time. The city ordinance states that loud music is not allowed after 2200 hours on any day but any time it causes a “breach of the peace”, we have to respond because a citizen calling to complain is technically a “breach of the peace.”
We arrive (two of us) and walk up to the house. We can hear what sounds like a karaoke party going on in there. This guy is like shouting and carrying on (very poorly) to some hillbilly rock. We knock for a long time without a response. We can’t tell if the singing is live or not. Your mind starts racing. Now we’re wondering if it isn’t loud music being played to conceal some other type of disturbance. After about five more minutes of knocking, we’re now surrounding the house, knocking on windows, shining flashlights etc. The music comes to a dead stop. We announce ourselves (“police” etc.).
The door creaks open and it’s like this lovable loser, 60-something-ish year old man with thick glasses and white hair holding a microphone. We ask him what’s going on and tell him someone complained. He tells us he was “practicing” because he has a performance coming up and he’s completely alone. He then adds, “I do this every night!”
We told him to practice a little more quietly.
15. Cat Scratched
Worked in Harlem 8 years (have since moved over to Jamaica, Queens…) but I was driving my Sgt that night and we were at the corner of 145 & 8th Ave. There’s a Popeyes in that corner but above it is 5 stories of apartments.
We’re stopped at the light heading westbound and all the sudden we start hearing a loud screaming coming from one of the windows above Popeyes. It was the summer and our windows were open so my Sergeant looks up and says, “Holy crap” so I immediately leaned down and look out the windshield and see a white lady in her 40s hanging out the window screaming at the top of her lungs. She’s covered in blood her hair is a mess and she’s screaming for help.
I quickly pull the car over and ask for an additional while we go up the stairs to the apartment. When we exit out of the stairwell there’s smeared blood all over the walls leading into the apartment, which has its door cracked open. We head in slowly, guns drawn, and we see a man step out from the bathroom who doesn’t have a single scratch on him. We scream at him to get on the ground and quickly cuff him up while the screaming continues in the back room. As we get him up off the floor our additional shows up and we quickly pass him off to them and head to the back of the apartment, guns still drawn towards the screams. As we round the corner into the living room we see a woman in a torn undershirt covered in blood and scratches and she has a cat on her back and she’s whipping her body around trying to get it off her.
She slams herself into the wall and the cat finally let’s go and falls to the ground. It looks at us and heads back towards the lady when all of a sudden she kicks it like a football (and I mean like Sebastian Janikowski type kick) and it flies through the air and almost hit the ceiling as it bounced off the wall and scurried behind couch.
I asked her what is going on and if her boyfriend did this to her and she screams at us, “NO THIS CAT IS TRYING TO KILL ME!!!” Needless to say, we quickly get the guy out of cuffs and have to call ESU to come catch this psychotic cat.
That’s one that will stay with me til retirement…
16. The floor did it to me
We once got a noise complaint about loud noise from the upstairs apartment. It was about 3am and caller told dispatch it sounded like the upstairs neighbor was moving furniture and dropping stuff. Fair enough. 3am is no time to be moving furniture and disturbing neighbors.
I get there, get to hallway where the apartment is and immediately hear arguing and screaming. Call for another unit. Proceed down the hallway, and find the apartment door almost completely shattered in the frame. I yell, “Police, Coming In,” and go inside, since this seems like someone is in danger.
Sure enough I get in there, girl’s face is completely beaten in, the apartment is in complete disarray. Woman said, she fell and that is why her face was injured. Says they just moved in, which explains the mess. Says her husband is out of town on business (he had actually gone out the fire escape when I yelled out “Police.”) We took her statement, and still wound up charging the guy with Domestic Violence. Case got dismissed when the wife came to court and continued her, I fell down and the floor punched me in the face 30 times story.
For a more light hearted story, we kept getting fireworks complaints from this one lady on 4th of July, so we finally went over and talked to her. She made some good points about fireworks are illegal, and they are shooting them off over her house. We tried making the point it’s the 4th of July if we responded to every fireworks complaint we couldn’t respond to any thing else but would go talk to the neighbors. Went over and said, “Hey, look, just be a good a neighbor, cut it out, I don’t want to write fireworks tickets, but if this continues to be a problem we will.” Left feeling like we were all on the same page. As I was walking back to my squad car when the idiots come running around the other side of their house and start firing roman candles at me, and others decided to set some other fireworks off underneath my squad car. That is one way to go from getting a verbal warning to multiple felonies. Which wound up not even getting indicted because the prosecutor didn’t think it was that big of a deal, and they were just having fun on the 4th of July.
(h/t knowable)
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