45 Silliest Reasons Police Officers Had To Respond To A Call: “All I Could Do Was Stare”

Best friend of mine is a State Trooper. They have this little old lonely lady that calls and tells the dispatcher that there are aliens/demons in her house and needs help. When the Troopers respond they check the house and sometimes yell that what ever is there has to leave. For this service she gives them a huge box of cookies. They bicker with each other as to who gets to go that day. This happens at least twice a month.

My friend had to respond to a "noise complaint" of some "young suspicious African Americans" playing Basketball in their cul-de-sac, they were staying out of trouble and just enjoying themselves. It was like 5pm, he showed up with his partner and they ended up playing a pickup game in full uniform with the boys. It made the local news.

When I was a little kid, my dad called he police on "a man with a gun outside our house.

We lived in the middle-of-nowhere, Georgia and he was off deployment (Navy, if anyone's curious.) and it was pretty late, so the sun had died down and it was pitch-black.

My dad went into the kitchen and took his glasses off to clean them (very important, my dad is nearly blind). He looked out of the kitchen window towards the neighbor's house and saw the shadow of a "man" with a shotgun standing in front of his barn.

Instead of assessing the situation for a moment or putting his glasses on to verify, he immediately calls 9-1-1 and proceeds to tell them about the "mystery shotgun man" at the neighbor's house.

They pull up and he sees them walk around to the back of the barn, turn around and go into the neighbor's house and come back outside. He see's them handcuff the man and they proceed to walk towards our house instead of their cars.

At this point, he puts his glasses on and goes to the door. The police knock and he opens the door with the biggest s**t-eating grin I've ever seen in my life. In a split second it changed from happy to sad to confused to annoyed back to confused as he stares at two police officers and a scarecrow in handcuffs.

The officers had quickly discovered the "man was a scarecrow, went to the neighbor's house, explained the situation and asked if they could borrow the scarecrow and put cuffs on it.

The only words from the officers were

"No need to worry anymore sir, this man's goin away for a long time".

Frequent caller, older woman. Nice enough, lost her marbles years ago.

Calls about a ghost in her attic (not the first time this week)

Deputy asks the woman for a mason jar, then heads upstairs to "battle" the ghost. He lights up a cigarette, takes a couple of puffs into the jar and runs out of the house shouting "IVE GOT HIM TRAPPED, STAY BACK!!"

We release the ghost to his own recognizance, and the lady hasn't called since.

Lady called because a cat was in her yard. Not attacking anybody or anything like that. It was just in her yard. Even better is that we had to do a report every time we responded to a call, even if no citations were issued. So in my report, I put a cat as the suspect and a calico as its race.

Tecnically i didn't respond, but:

911 hangup. Upon recall a small child answered and advised there was a spider in his house.

Officer that responded advised over the radio "the intruder has been neutralized."

I lost it.

I had a cat who used to do s**t like turn on the washing machine, turn on faucets, and when the answering machine would come on he would attack the phone. One day I found the phone in my sisters bedroom off the hook, didn't think anything about it and hung it up. Fast forward about 10 minutes and I see a sheriff's deputy in our backyard looking through the windows. My mom and I went to the door, and he kept asking us if everything was ok. We assured him we were and said the cat probably dialed 911. He kept saying if we were in trouble there were signals we could give him to let him know. I can only imagine what he was thinking about the possibility of a cat dialing 911. We invited him in to let him look around for himself; eventually he had a good laugh.

I was dispatched to a house reference a reported vandalism to a vehicle. When I got there, the guy who called was standing by his car. I saw that there was no visible damage to the vehicle. His complaint was that dust picked by the wind was coming from his neighbors yard and landing on his car.

The guy actually wanted to file a criminal complaint! My first thought was maybe I was dreaming this nonsense. All I could do in response was stare at him and I said absolutely nothing. The guy became uncomfortable and explained his complaint again. I couldn't help but just stare at him. At the time, I didn't think I could say anything to him that didn't sound insulting. I think he finally got it since he just went inside his house and never called us again.

Worked for the local newspaper and we got to read all the calls to the cops.

The most hilarious one was from a woman who called in to report a man driving around in his van playing loud music and luring kids. When the cops showed up it was ice cream man. I wish I was making this up. Some people are just nosey busy bodies.

My uncle was a dispatcher in a suburb of Minneapolis/St.Paul, and would tell me stories whenever I saw him. My favorite goes like this:

Uncle: 911, what's your emergency?

Caller: Yes, I'd like to report two suspicious vehicles passing something back and forth in Potawatomi park.

Uncle: Ok, we'll send an officer out to assess.

Uncle: Dispatch to car 45, two suspicious vehicles in Potawatomi park, passing items back and forth.

Car 45: Uhhh...car 45 to dispatch, that's me and Officer Somethingerother, passing Cheetos...

Uncle: 10-4.

A woman called 911 at 5am to report her son would not get up to wash the dishes.

She went to jail.

Edit: Many are asking why she went to jail. Misuse of 911 is a crime in my jurisdiction. One's child not doing the dishes is not a valid use of 911 services.

Once responded to a call originating in the Sheriff's department parking lot. Literally walked out of the doors into the following fustercluck. A woman who had just gotten released from jail's ex girlfriend came to pick her up, drunk, on a moped. The reason it got reported is that the drunk woman was doing donuts in our parking lot waiting for her ex, lost control, and rammed a police car. My training sergeant always had a saying that ran true that day, "We don't catch the smart ones."

Not a police officer but I was a 911 dispatcher.

Just after I got cut loose from training, I received a priority one (meaning immediate response) animal ordinance call. Usually, this call is reserved for animals in traffic or vicious animals, where there is the potential for immediate threat to life.

The reporting party was a parent attending a school function. Caller advised there was a raccoon loose in the school.

I dispatched two officers to the call and they made it on scene. The officer then broadcasts the "suspect" description via radio. "Suspect is small, fast, and wearing a bandit mask. May have robbed a couple of trash cans. We lost him in a foot pursuit."

I almost fell out of my chair, I was laughing so hard.

Once a lady called us claiming that her neighbor was threatening her. As it turned out, she claimed that her neighbor was plotting a terrorist attack. How did she figure this out? She had been going up onto his property and looking into her Middle Eastern neighbor's windows and noticed he had a prayer rug in the middle of the room/said he worked odd hours.

She was given a stern warning about trespassing onto her neighbor's property and told to stop being such a racist t**t.

Working front desk at a hotel. Buddy called 911 on me because I wouldn't give him a free upgrade.

Reporting party said a pigeon was acting strangely on her deck. It wouldn't fly away. It flew away when I clapped my hands.

Also had a call for two people riding bikes smiling suspiciously.

Domestic dispute call -
We got there and the mother of a teenage boy, maybe fourteen, is loud and upset. Her problem was described as, "He's interested in GIRLS!"
Oddly enough, it happens around that age.
Not a thing I could do about that one.

Working in a nice part of town, where there are alot of rich people. Anyways I got dispatched to a call one day:

Dispatch - 2A12 I've got a suspicious person detail for you.

Me - Go ahead.

Dispatch - The person is located at a bus stop on the corner of Rich St and Pretentious Ave. He's wearing a red jacket and black pants.

Me - Copy. What's suspicious about this person.

Dispatch - He's black.

A few seconds pass by, because I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Me - I'm not going. You can clear it off your screens.

Officer here been working two years in a large city. The first call that truly made me question my job choice was a disturbance between a husband and wife. Officers had been out in the house earlier in the day and the wife called 911 a second time. The wife called and said she and her husband were arguing because she wanted to have s*x but he refused because her v****a stunk. It is difficult to remain professional.

I heard a 911 call where an old woman called the police because she couldn't open a jar. The woman actually sent the police to help.