"Don't Regret A Thing": 63 People Reveal Why They Called CPS Or Police On Somebody They Knew

A girl I knew in middle and high school had a lot of problems. She told me her mom and stepdad punished her by taking away her food, locked her in her room overnight, and monitored all of her phone calls. It made me so uncomfortable that I ended up calling the police anonymously and CPS lodged an investigation.

Turned out she wasn't being abused. She was just mentally ill, had a personality disorder, and developed a compulsive lying habit. The investigation ended with her being put into a special school for kids with emotional problems. For a few years she was getting extremely intense therapy and was doing really well.

Then she turned eighteen, stopped going to therapy, stopped taking her medication, and ended up even worse off. I tried to help her but the friendship ended when she sexually assaulted me.

She was only supposed to stay with us a couple days. She started demanding a house key, bed, etc all without paying rent. We were willing to overlook this as she got a job and could probably find a place soon.

Now CPS had already taken away her kid because she lived with her Druggy dad but now she was with us she could see him.

THE ENTIRE TIME SHE HAD HER THREE YEAR OLD CHILD all she did was yell at him and tell him what he couldn't do. If he wasn't sitting quietly doing nothing she was yelling. Our son is a wee younger than him and didn't understand why he couldn't play.

Then we found out she was doing a ton of drugs in her room with the kid.

We called CPS and the father and had a cop assist in removing her from our home which was completely legal because she never paid rent.

Bonus: Her and her friends threatened to [end] me and one got sent to jail for a direct threat. Fun times.

Moral of the story: don't help anyone ever because they probably do drugs.

I once called the cops on a friend who trying to drive drunk.

My wife and I had just moved into our first home and were having a party to celebrate. One of my friends, who was the last to leave, was pretty drunk. He got in his car and started it up. My wife and I tried to reason with him but he wasn't having it. We even offered to pay for his cab ride home but he refused to leave his car. I stood in the driveway behind him to prevent him from backing out and my wife called the cops.

Side note: Not too long after that incident, the same friend punched a hole in our wall during the super bowl and refused to help patch it up. We have since moved and he hasn't been to our place yet. We are probably going to try to keep it that way.

My cousin and I both called on our other cousin on 5 different occasions. Those occasions were when she was pregnant with each of her kids while continuing to smoke [illegal substances]. I'm disappointed in the system because they didn't step up and now she is about to have her 5th baby.

Her 13 year old daughter told me it bothered her when her mom smoked [illegal substance] and blew the smoke in her face. I called the next business day.

I called CPS on a friend of mine's brother and his girlfriend because their daughter was being neglected and the brother was physically abusive to the girlfriend.

Unfortunately, CPS couldn't find anything substantial enough to take the daughter away, and the girlfriend ended up moving out to live with her alcoholic parents. I feel like I caused it to happen and I just feel so bad for the baby girl.

My story is very long, but basically I helped to remove my best friends daughter from her. She was manic and took her daughter from her then husband a very long distance and took her 3 year old daughter on crazy "adventures" which involved [illegal substances], s*x with several random gang banger/hustler thugs. I spent a month or so tracking my friend all over the city and half the time having her daughter in my care. There were a lot of legal things going on, and the police couldn't act on anything because of the circumstances and lack of being able to track her and catch her with someone or doing something bad.

Anyway, she finally let me take her daughter for a night. I went straight to the police the next day when I couldn't contact her on her cell phone. I filed a missing person, child abandonment, and was going to file for temporary custody. Anyway, the child was placed back with the dad eventually, he's a good guy. But she didn't see her daughter for months as she spent time in mental hospitals. I have reason to believe the little girl was s******y or physically a****d during that time. It's so hard working the legal system without being a relative. The child went to counseling and the father has full custody now. I don't talk to my friend much at all anymore, I just can't after that horrible experience. Her manic phase extended into nearly a year of craziness.

I had to call the cops on a former friend... He outstayed his welcome on his visa, had a hard time finding traditional work and started asking me on how to get all sorts of illegal things (but in all 3 examples I told him to buzz off), such as where to get forged passports, anyone willing to marry him for a green card, and eventually, asking me to translate where to get tools used for ID theft... The last one? It was the straw that broke the camel's back since I had $700 stolen from me on my 21st birthday and I got so pissed about him wanting to be an ID thief that I took the day off from work and turned him in the next morning.

A close family friend had to call CPS on his stepdaughter (his wife, the mother, supported the decision). The stepdaughter I never met, but she used to be a wonderful person. Mother of three- two biological kids and one adopted, and happily married to their father.

Then she started having severe seizures, caused by a tumor or something in her brain. She had brain surgery to stop the seizures- there was no other option. But the brain surgery changed her. She got angry, and she started taking her anger out on her husband and their adopted child. I don't think there was physical violence, but constant insults and screaming. She kicked out her loving husband and kept the kids. She stopped cleaning the house and was neglecting even her biological children. The whole family started to realize how awful she had turned towards one of her children, but she wouldn't let her husband take the kids and wouldn't accept help. She was forced into therapy, but she lied to the therapist that she was fine and made her husband sound like the bad guy.

Her mom and stepdad (my friend) essentially moved in to take care of the kids and the house throughout her moodswings. My friend is a retired teacher- he was a mandated reporter. He didn't want to tear apart the family but morally, he had to save the kids. So he put in an anonymous call to CPS to investigate. His wife knew, but nobody else in the family knew who made the call. The children's father got emergency custody, and they eventually got the mother to give him full legal custody.

It's a tragic story. An operation that was supposed to save this mother's life wound up destroying a family. Three children lost their mom, a man lost his wife, and parents lost their daughter. They will likely never see her return to normal.

I've called twice in my life.

The first time was when I was in 9th grade. A friend of mine came over with bruises on her arms and a black eye. She had snuck out of her house and my house was closest. (That's what I could see, there might have been more, but it was enough.) Her mom's boyfriend had been hitting her. I called the police, and learned my lesson about not trusting them the same day. My dog who liked everyone didn't like the cop who showed up. All he did was force my friend to get into his car and drive her back home. (Which would just set off the boyfriend more.) No charges were filed. Eventually my friend mom's broke up with the SOB and she moved away. Only time I was happy to lose a friend.

Second time was for a mentally disabled girl I dealt with at work. Her father was dying and she was wandering around lost and confused because she had fallen through the cracks of her family's issues at the time. I knew if I didn't call it would just get worse. Now the family is VERY vigilant with her because they know people are watching and care.

Not on a friend, but my grandmother's upstairs neighbors were verbally abusing a child and neglecting her, so I called CPS on them. They were out of the condos within the month.

I was on the phone with a friend and had a mutual friend call me. I did not answer right away and they proceeded to call me again. I told my friend on the phone that she had just tried calling me again I did not think it was important as she had not left a voicemail. A few seconds later I got a text from her and had to read it a couple times because it sounded like a suicide note and I was not 100% certain. I screenshotted the text to my friend and he agreed I should call the cops it was very odd. I called the police but they had to transfer me to the police department the next province over, she lived a province over. I was freaking out a bit and could not remember the street number but remember the street she live on. The police told me they will call me when they find her. I sat anxiously waiting for them to call, Well they ended up finding her. She had popped a bunch of pills in an effort to [end] herself but there was an ambulance there and she would be okay. She spent the night in the hospital.

It was about four years ago. My roommate flipped out and was threatening suicide. I was not equipped to handle it and so I called the cops. He was mad at me after because it cost him money for an ambulance ride and a hospital bill. "You should know I'd never go through with it!"

Yeah well if you don't mean it, don't say it. We're not friends anymore and I don't regret calling the police.

I told the principial of my high school who called the police because my friend was going to shoot up the school.

I was in an outpatient group therapy program for severe depression. One woman in my group got kicked out for not reporting s******l thoughts during morning check in (yes, this is a thing that happens). When she said goodbye I gave her my number. She called me to talk a few times and we eventually made plans to go for a walk around this lake.

I got there and she never showed, and she didn't answer when I called. This woman was so depressed while we were in group together that she was nearly catatonic at times. I knew something was up. I called other mutual friends from group and no one knew how else to get ahold of her. I finally called the police to do a wellness check. I didn't have any information about her except her first name- no last name, no address, nothing. I think police were able to locate her by contacting the therapy center but I'm not sure. The police couldn't give me any information but her daughter called me a few days later. She had attempted s*****e but police found her in time and she was going to be okay.

When she didn't show and I first started to worry, I remember wondering if I was blowing this whole thing out of proportion. Like the cops were going to knock on her door and she would answer perfectly fine and everyone would think I was an idiot for getting police involved. But I knew that being embarrassed for going overboard was better than the guilt I'd feel if I thought something was wrong and did nothing. If I hadn't called, she would have died.

I called the police on my friend once.

She made some serious lies about her ex boyfriend that turned everyone against him. Managed to get a restraining order and everything.

When all of this came to light, she (for probably the fourteenth time in her life) threatened to commit suicide.

One night, she texts me goodbye. I called her bluff. After a week in a psych ward, she calls me up to find out I no longer want anything to do with her.

One time my friend who had really bad depression was texting me after him and his girlfriend broke up. He mentioned he was drinking in the texts and they continued to get more incomprehensible as the conversation went on. He then started to talk about how he was just going to shot himself with his dads gun. He has been institutionalized before and I got really scared for him. Originally I planned to tell my mom I was going to his apartment (I had a car at this point) to check on him. My mom was worried about what I would find though and told me she didn't feel comfortable with me going over there. I still knew I needed to help him so she told me to call the police for a wellness check.

Apparently when they got to his apartment they found that he had thrown up in the house *alot* and agreed that they were worried he'd hurt himself. He ended up going to the hospital until his parents picked him up the next morning. Originally I didn't plan on telling him but after talking to his then ex-girlfriend she said that he thought the s*****e hotline he called had informed the police and still felt like none of his friends cared about his safety so I ended up telling him how I called. I didn't tell him at first because I was worried he'd be upset with me for doing that but he was actually really grateful for it after the fact.

I caled the fire chief on my refugee immigrant neighbor. He is super nice but we can only talk through his five year old child who is sorta becoming bilingual. Needless to say communication is hard.

He cleared his land of multiple large trees himself. It was a nice thing to do because it was overgrown. He then stacked the wood into a giant bonfire shape. The issue was are neighborhood is on 1/32 of an acre lots with it being extremelty dense with wood frame houses. The bonfire put was 10' away from his other neighbors old wooden deck and privacy fence. There is also a permanent ban on any open fires in the city or burning wood or trash thst comes with a huge fine.

The kid was only there in his backyard and we asked him and he said it was a fire for his birthday that night and would laugh crazily like a little pyromaniac and showed us the matches he was going to lite it with. Easily a 15' diameter and tall pit of wood with branches formed in a tepee. Me and my other neighbor drew straws and I lost. So i took a picture and sent it to the fire cheif and explained the situation. There was a fire marshall and a interpreter sent out from a local church that sponsored alot of the asian community here. They let the dad down easy and volunteered a city truck and some volunteer firemen to take the wood and explained the ban.

Im hoping the kid didnt hate me but saved his dad from overa $1,000 fine.

Ohhhh, man. So the last several weeks, my life has been in complete shambles. My estranged husband had gotten completely erratic, threatening to [end] me several times. This culminated in him catching me recording him saying it, then a scuffle which ended in him putting me in chokehold and throwing me on the ground, and then using my thumb to unlock my phone to delete the recording. I filed a police report so that I could get an EPO for no violent contact and keeping him from coming to my work.

Before he could even be served that EPO, my friend escorted me to work and saw him get into his car that was parked in one of 5 metered spots in downtown that have a view of my work's parking lot and entrance.

So, I filed for a second EPO which removed him from the home, granted me custody of our children, and put a no contact order for myself and our children. During this time, the police department had decided to press a*****t 4th charges. Since then, his mother and sister put a deer camera on my back fence, and it had *taken photos of them.*

They/he have called in several anonymous welfare checks for my children, and called CPS. He showed up to court for the DVO hearing with *no representation,* only his mother because he apparently thinks he can get custody solely based on his and his mothers testimony that I am a severe alcoholic. I've never even been a daily drinker.

He perjured himself in his cross-complaint, which wasn't granted, and because he was charged criminally in the specific incident he lied about in his petition, when/if we finally have a hearing, he will likely be charged with that as well. So, basically he's screwed, but doesn't know it because he thinks he so in the right that he didn't even seek out legal advice in a civil case involving the custody of his children.

This past year at school, my fiance and our mutual friend went to a shooting range for some fun on the weekend. They were having a good time when something triggered our mutual friend and he had a PTSD episode...while holding the gun. I get frantic texts and a phone call from my fiance that our friend was unstable and wouldn't put the gun down, and I try to tell him to call 911, but our friend isn't having it. So I hang up on him and call myself, and send them to the shooting range. It was awful. I was white and shaking and terrified my fiance would be shot. They sent a sergeant and a sniper. My friend tried to turn the gun on himself but it misfired, and everyone came out unhurt. It was a freaking miracle.