I had to call the police this morning

[MissB]

And I really hate that I had to call them.

Someone pounded on our house at 1:30 am. Woke up our dog who barked. The person pounded on our house again and then I remotely turned on our interior lights and let the dog out of his kennel but kept him inside the house.

The guy was standing at our side door. Through the barking of our dog, I quickly figured out that the guy was quite drunk. He thought he was home and was puzzled as to why he couldn’t come inside.

The thing is that I live on the edge of the city in a residential neighborhood. No bars or any business for a couple of miles in any direction. Large lots, no streetlights. I’m shocked he made it to our porch without knocking something over. Our house isn’t right on the street, and there is a lot of large trees and hedges between us and the street (have a half acre). It’s pitch dark out there at night- no one leaves their lights on.

I explained to the dispatcher that we had a drunk guy on our porch and he kept trying the door handles. (I had to tell the guy to sit down several times, and he complied- very drunk. He did try allll the chairs on the porch.) I told the dispatcher that he was sitting there calmly.

The deputy dispatched called me while he was en route. I told him the guy was pretty calm and would sit down when told to, but he did keep trying the door handle every few minutes. I said the guy was obviously very drunk and I was more concerned about him wandering off to one of my elderly neighbors. I didn’t know if he’d driven there and wrecked his car along the way or what.

The local police came and talked to him until the deputy arrived (local police don’t have jurisdiction and I’ve never seen them even respond to our neighborhood). I hope they took the guy home rather than to the drunk tank.

Weird times. Glad the police and the deputy were calm with him.

[Dreampuff]

1. That sounds scary

And I'm glad you ended up with good police officers who responded. He might be surprised when he gets to his own home because he may not be welcome there either. I hope the poor guy ends up deciding to go to treatment because it sounds like he can have quite an addiction problem. Glad you are safe.

[MissB]

11. yes, I hope he does get some help

He was so clearly blotto that it was sad.

[North Shore Chicago]

2. Very good

your encounter turned out okay. Numerous unfortunate scenarios could have happened. Hopefully they took this man home safe and sound.

[MissB]

12. I was keenly aware when calling that it could turn south

but we do live in a liberal area so I expect the police to be somewhat liberal too. I was very clear to stress to both the dispatcher and the deputy that he was calm and not violent.

I found out this morning that they did take him home.

[mnhtnbb]

3. My husband and I had a somewhat similar

situation happen to us about 5 years ago.

We lived at the end of a dead end street off a circle off the main street into our college town.

At 12:30 at night our door bell rang. We both happened to still be up and the lights on. The dog barked. The person started calling out. My husband went to the door and turned on the outside lights. The guy--an older black man-- backed off the porch into the front yard and said he needed help with directions. My husband--who was a psychiatrist-- opened the door and started talking to him. The guy was presenting as being lost but my husband had made a quick diagnosis that this was someone with probable mental health issues, or as I would say, off his meds. My husband kept telling him to leave that we couldn't help him. In the mean time, I called 911. He did head back up towards the circle which connected to the main street. The police called back soon to say they had found him and picked him up. The police talked to my husband, so whether they rode him to the ER, or to an overnight at the police station or to the place he was looking for, we don't know, but our police department in a very blue college town was not known for being racist.

It was a scary experience, though.

[jaxexpat]

5. That story reminds me of a very important fact.

The community of LEO's in any given place is representative of the community in which they reside. Police in blue, progressive, liberal(if you will) communities will probably be composed of people who, if not themselves "blue", are accustomed to living and interaction with people of same. The converse would be true as well. People whose communities are "mean streets" would be policed by persons accustomed, inured, to life on those streets. So, that makes generalities (especially those I find convenient) essentially falsehoods.

Just an exercise into the obvious.

[MissB]

13. I think if he hadn't been repeatedly trying to come in

we might have dealt with it differently. But I wasn't too keen on the idea of dh opening the door, especially with our guard dog on alert.

[cannabis_flower]

4. I remember....

A ride I gave as an Uber driver. I pull up to an average suburban house. The guy got in and was really drunk. The destination said something like 13220 Inwood. I took him there. It was a short ride. A few blocks and he said that wasn’t his house. He looked at the address and said it was 1220 Inwood. I had him correct the address and off we go. The drive was about 10 miles. We pull up in front of a mansion in the most expensive neighborhood in town. He’s like “that’s not it either”. He corrected the address to 12300 Inwood - pretty close to the original address. So I made something like $30 instead of the $5 I would have made.

I could imagine someone drunk putting the wrong address in their Uber ride and not realizing they are at the wrong house.

[MissB]

14. ha! okay that's funny

and yeah it could've been an uber but our street name isn't common at all. He lives in a whole different part of the city, definitely not in this section at all. It'll remain a mystery likely, as the guy was so drunk I doubt he could recall much.

[Mazeltov Cocktail]

6. Betty White

[intheflow]

7. Was he white?

Just asking because that would explain the cops being calm wth him.

Also, in a similar story, I dated a guy with a drunk for a mother. The family regaled me with stories about stuff she did while drunk, a favorite was the time she went to check the mail at 2am and then spent an hour trying to get into the next door neighbor's house because she thought it was her house. Ha ha ha, good times!

I'm being sarcastic. That was such a dysfunctional family, I broke up with the dude soon after.

[MissB]

15. yes

he was. I also said multiple times that he was being calm and sitting down when he wasn't trying to open our doors.

Drunk folks are so not fun. My own dad was quite the drunk, and there were many times we had to retrieve him from various places.

[Ferrets are Cool]

8. You handled that well

[MissB]

18. Thanks

Always aware it could turn out worse. In hindsight it may have been good to ask him to show his license.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

9. Something similar happened to my evangelical sister...

... years ago.

She wasn't (re)married at the time, living alone inside an apartment.

Hard banging on her door around 2am. She yelled through the door that she wasn't the woman that the door-banger was loudly requesting with slurred speech.

He later body-slammed against the door with such force that she feared he'd bust it down, and she put her back against it to help provide support as she cried for him to go away. She also loudly prayed to God while it was happening, which certainly didn't surprise me.

She managed to call the cops, and they finally arrived after a long delay. They arrested the guy, which my sister never witnessed because she was still terrified at that time. But she later opened the door for the police and explained her experience.

She somehow learned the guy's name -- maybe from the cops? -- and we looked him up in public court records. His arrest record was a mile long, and it frequently involved alcohol and drugs.

Then she said to me, "I should visit him at the jail and pray with him!", which about made my head explode, and I convinced her to stay the f**k away from that maniac.

[MissB]

16. That would be scary!

I was less worried with our 90 lb dog on alert. He wasn’t having any of this guy’s antics in our house, so I didn’t worry about him coming in.

Glad you were able to convince her that it was a bad idea to follow up with him.

We found some of the guy’s personal items on our property this morning. The sheriffs office will send someone out to get it and return it to him.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

19. Yeah, your guy seemed more calm.

My sister is one of the nicest evangelical Christians out there, in my opinion, since she's not mean-spirited or judgmental. She's very naive, though.

That guy had several violence-related convictions too, so I certainly didn't want him to possibly become a regular part of her life.

I'm glad that your situation didn't turn out very bad too!

[Fla Dem]

10. Very, very scary. Glad it turned out ok for you.

[MissB]

17. Thanks.

Scary for a bit then kinda funny when we realized how he was just going to sit there, occasionally rattle a door knob and wait for whatever. But waking up that early with a dog alerting us of some danger is not a good way to wake up!

The police and deputy were very professional and calm with him.