My aunt had to deal with a heartbreaking instance of this one day: while she was at work, her husband called to say goodbye. She frantically called 911 and begged for them to send an ambulance and the police to her house... and the station that 911 contacted refused, claiming it wasn't in their jurisdiction. By the time they were able to convince someone to go up there, it was too late. About two weeks later, she was trying to go to work and found police from the same station had partly blocked off her driveway with some of their cars... as part of a speeding sting operation. She called them out, and they moved enough to let her leave.

Wait. A ''sting operation''...for ''speeding?'' I must be misunderstanding something here.

Either your police have SkewedPriorities or your hometown has a REALLY low crime rate.

This is extremely narmy if compared to the troper above, but this troper lives on a street which often gets noisy (it's near a shopping mall and a few night clubs) with drunk kids kicking down bottles and people passing with their boom cars or noisy motorcycles. Calling the police is next to useless, and they will only come after being called many times.

An unfortunate case of TruthInTelevision in some respects. This troper knew an abused woman who was reluctant to file a police report against her husband...because he was a cop. Most of the other officers knew he was an abuser (this is a small town), and they felt like they couldn't really intervene because "you never know who you're going to have to count on to watch your back one night." This troper sometimes has a hard time taking the police seriously because of this.

Unfortunately this is true. My mom was a cop and she said you could tick off one person, but if you made too many people mad, you could call for back up one day and everyone would take their sweet time getting there which could be very, VERY bad for you. It's sad that people let their petty grudges get in the way of being professional, but hey, cops are human and humans can be petty.

My brother was hanging out at the park with his girlfriend and her brothers (who had just moved to town recently and hadn't made any friends yet). Then this kid comes up with a bag full of fireworks and tells them he's going to do something cool. Next thing they know the kids is fleeing from a bathroom after blowing up a toilet. So Chief Wiggum and Barney (as we called the cops since they already were the poster children of this trope) show up and begin questioning people. My brother's group tells their side of the story and they go home. A few days later I get a knock on the door and see two cops there asking for my brother (who, luckily, was at a friend's house). I told them I didn't know where he waswas half a lie since he tended to wander around with his friends so I didn't actually know where he was. I then called both him and my dad to tell them what happened. So they went down to the station to straighten things out, at which point the cops did their best recreation of a scene from Law & Order. Here's apparently the evidence the cops were working off of: The bomber (who already had a criminal record) and his friends (some of which ALSO had spent time behind bars) spread the rumor that my brother did it (most of the other people asked even said it was just what they heard). When the only 3 witnesses who weren't implicated in the crime were questioned they gave the real story, but the cops apparently work off a score board (3 not guilties from actual witnesses vs 27 rumors from people who weren't even in town that day, which number is bigger?). THEN comes the OTHER reason my brother was considered guilty, our parents aren't dirt-poor meth-addicts (as was the case for the other kid's mother), so it was up to US to pay for the damage. The whole thing got straightened out after the bomber was caught bragging about nuking the toilet.

Another (shorter) story about the same police force. The reason we called them things like "Chief Wiggum" was because the cops barely did any police work. They spent most of their days pulling everyone they saw over regardless of how fast they were going. They've stopped doing it as much recently (probably because I think there's a limit to how many drivers can dispute ticket and win before higher authorities step in), but in the past it was a pastime to bet on which car would get pulled over next.

A friend of ours was almost bashed up by a bunch of youths after money, but she managed to make it to her car in time. She called the police (who apparently knew who these thugs were BTW), but they did nothing. Poor lady was so traumatised she sold the car just so the thugs wouldn't be able to track her.

If you ever live around Highland Avenue in Shreveport Louisiana you learn this real quick: NEVER CALL THE COPS! Unless it involves drugs, or get them news publicity, they will never do their jobs. This troper has personal experience, I had a neighbor that was stealing stuff,(ie a Washing Machine among other things), they said 'We can't handle stolen property'. The guy beated his girlfriend (You could hear her BEGGING for help), police stood infront of their door, while it was going on, and did NOTHING!

hell, if you live anywhere in Shreveport, I'm guessing you shouldn't call the cops. The whole city is...well, malfunctioning would be a good way to put it.

The above is why this troper protects himself with MoreDakka. I keep an AK-103 in my house loaded with a 100 round box magazine finne of alternating JHP, FMH, Incendiary, JSP, and Tracer ammunition. And I won't leave my house without my C.C. Permit and a loaded M1911 pistol. I simply will take no chances with my own safety.

As was noted previously on the main page, third world countries tend to have incredibly shitty policemen. This Filipino troper bore witness to policemen in his barangay responding in force to arrest a lowly street vender because the street vendor turned down advances from a married lady in a public class he was taking and she had connections within the local police. Coincidentally, the local police also has their fingers in an extortion racket and that same vendor is one of their regular victims. I'm not just saying the police are useless, they're part of the problem. There's a reason we generally just keep our heads low and go with it, as the alternative is to piss off some powerful people who could make your life and that of your family very miserable.

This Troper from British Columbia, Canada remembers a Daria quote that extends to a situation a few years back in his area, "Law enforces frequently use excessive force to uphold the law". Recently there was a huge scandal with the RCMP(Our national policeforce, stands for Royal Canadian Mounted Police, they're also called Mounties) where a Polish man, who had a temper tantrum in an airport because he'd been in the bag handling area waiting for his mother for 10+ hours, was tazed despite having visibly relaxed at the sight of their obvious official capacity. The man proceeded to suffer cardiac arrest and die because they tazed him...4+ times, because they couldn't be bothered to take a minute risk with an unarmed man even despite outnumbering him. Since then the officers were let off without punishment and one of them has been involved in a hit and run that was likely because he was driving with his kids in the car, while under the influence. He wasn't tried for impaired driving because he promptly went home and claims he had a drink or two to calm his nerves before turning himself in.

As a further note, this troper realizes not 'all' cops in his area are rockstupid, lazy or otherwise useless...but it still makes him have difficulties trusting them beyond the understanding that they are more or less a necessity...plus they've had some recent busts of drug rings in this tropers area which are points towards usefulness.

Edgy here. On my morning commute down a country road, I saw a police car parked behind trees by a gate to a farmer's cattle field. As I was driving by, said farmer was just pulling up to his gate in front of the police car, blocking it in. Lesson: Don't park your cruiser on private property in order to catch speeders.

Having read stories of people dying from tasers and ''small children'' being handcuffed for ''having a tantrum'', this troper has come to the conclusion that police officers are not only useless, they're idiots. In case something--God forbid--were to ever happen that would require this troper to call police, she's trying to come up with a Plan B.

This troper's best friend once had her house broken into while everyone was asleep. She, of course, called the police to have them try to catch the guy who did it, only to have them arrive to say, "Hey, I think your house was broken into."

This troper got pulled aside in the airport because the security folks thought I had a bomb in my stuff. It was my mp3 player. A cheap, iPod knockoff. They thought it was a bomb.