Our Real Life Experience and Why You Are On Your Own If the SHTF

Thought I needed to share this incident to give people some 'real world' insight into why relying on TPTB is insane.

Just after 9:00pm last night my wife's cellphone rang with a call from her friend who had moved to NC about a year ago. She didn't want to answer the phone since these calls usually end up in 2hr chat-fests --- something she just wasn't in the mood for. However, she decided to answer the phone. Her 60yo friend was screaming bloody murder on the other end of the phone with a loud menacing male voice in the background. Then the phone went dead.

We're all the way up in MA so my wife immediately dialed 911. For whatever reason my wife didn't have her friend's new address. Just a cellphone number and she knew the town in NC. The 911 operator gave her the number of the local police department down in NC. She called them. Repeated the story and gave them all the info she had. They said they would call her back.

40min later, consummed with panic for her friend, my wife called the local PD in NC to get an update. In the meantime she located her firnd's addresss ---- on Google. The local PD told her they had been waiting for HER to call them back with a street address. What? Seriously? So now over 40min have gone by, who knows what has happened and these clowns have done NOTHING. No one thought to call back and say, 'we don't have access to the hundreds of databases that contain information that could allow us to find her address'. No RMV lookup? No cellphone look-up? So NOW they tell her they don't cover that particular town and she needs to call the county sheriff's office.

45min out my wife now calls the sheriff's office, gives them all the info and they say they will look into it. Now not trusting anyone my wife calls back 15min later and is told they will send someone out 'as soon as they can locate a deputy'. Over an hour into what was most certainly a life-threatening situation nothing had been done. Nothing. 5 calls, 3 law enforcement agencies and zilch.

This was a single, isolated incident. As it turns out my wife's friend is OK althought there will be legal fallout for her husband. Now imagine a larger-scale crisis. What help do you think will be coming your way? And people wonder why we feel the need to arm ourselves.

Originally posted by jtma508
Over an hour into what was most certainly a life-threatening situation ...

As it turns out my wife's friend is OK althought there will be legal fallout for her husband. ...

So NOT life threatening then?

So is she leaving him or will she stick around for more of whatever happened? And if she was a good friend of your wifes, how can she not have her address afer about a year?

Don't sound like friends to me, maybe one of those foozebook ones perhaps?

Sorry to sound harsh, but this just seems blown out of proportion and I'm not surprised the police did so little.

Originally posted by nerbot

Originally posted by jtma508
Over an hour into what was most certainly a life-threatening situation ...

As it turns out my wife's friend is OK althought there will be legal fallout for her husband. ...

So NOT life threatening then?

So is she leaving him or will she stick around for more of whatever happened? And if she was a good friend of your wifes, how can she not have her address afer about a year?

Don't sound like friends to me, maybe one of those foozebook ones perhaps?

Sorry to sound harsh, but this just seems blown out of proportion and I'm not surprised the police did so little.

for real!!.
turning up in the middle of something just gives them more on there plate, "a whole world of hurt" trust me those sheriffs would have been happier to show up with your friend dead than having her husband screaming holding her down with a gun at her head causing a scene that would make them look "bad".
trust me she got lucky.

reply to post by nerbot


Seriously? What kind of moron are you? This woman has been a close friend of my wife's for over 20yrs. They worked together, ride horses together, and my wife has been 'Santa' to her adopted kids for years until they moved out-of-state. She stayed with us for a week back in October while taking care of some business here in MA. Since she moved my wife keeps in touch via phone and email. There has never been any prior domestic issues. Your comments are ill-informed and paint you as a clueless tool. Because she didn't get killed or hospitalized it's no big deal? Who ARE you?

I feel your pain, but not all the blame goes on the police officers. I was an mp in the army for 5 years. 2 years of only doing police work so i have personal experience in this. We would get a call and go straight to it, There is a program call ncic where you can look up names, sometimes numbers to get a house number, but it if was a cell phone you usually couldnt get a house number,but the point i wanted to make is that our dispatchers would hold on to a call for hours before dispatching us. We would show up and get yelled at for taking so long to get there when in fact we arrived 5 min after we received the call. Even with that being said the dispatcher cannot send any emergency relief if they do not know where to send them.

reply to post by PLAYERONE01


If the police would have showed up and she had been dead it would have been a big deal. No police want to show up to a call with a dead body. Id rather take a hostige situation rescue them and slip out without them getting my name, but that is only because i dont want to be pertrayed as a hero for doing my job. Im not someone who gets a big head and takes all the credit for the work everyone else does. The people's saftey was my only concern when i worked. wanted to get a call help people and get out to the next call.

op glad she was not injured and made it out of the situation ok.

Originally posted by jtma508
reply to post by nerbot

 

Seriously? What kind of moron are you?

Yes seriously!

Friend for 20 years? AND YOU DON'T KNOW HER ADDRESS?

What kind of M**** are YOU?

ps: if your friend was in serious trouble ("life threatening"...your words), why did she phone a friend who lives miles away and not the police in the first place?

reply to post by cernuto13


Well, assuming they don't have access to the RMV database (which I find astounding if true), wouldn't it be somewhere in the realm of reasonable for the local PD dispatcher to have said:

1. We don't handle that town. call the Sheriff's office

2. We can't send anyone until we have an address which you need to provide.

or in the least called back to say we need an address??

Had this woman been killed, God forbid, tell me the local PD would not have been in serious legal jeopardy for having sat on their hands.

reply to post by jtma508


They could have called the other pd for you, we called at least 2 cities over but maybe that was just my base.
Probably assumed its common knowledge but they forget some things slip the mind in an emergency situation.
Now for if they would get in trouble as sad as i am to admit it probably not. All depends on the situation, how they tell the story and how they can spin it to not look like they are at fault. most likely nothing more than an ass chewing. pardon my language.


As far as the op not knowing her address if you had read the post he clearly stated she had recently moved.

It's quite normal to not have anyone's exact street address these days as we hardly use the post, and get the addy just prior to a visit so we can plunk it into google maps or the car navigator system.

Maybe the friend just hit the speed dial for her best friend so that she could hear what was going on & 911 it

Made me think of this one..

Hmmm...my thoughts on this are as follows:

1. Your wife's friend should call 911 first, if she needed to call somebody. There's no way a friend, no matter how deep the friendship, can help you from a long way away. If she was on the phone with your wife when the ruckus started, she should have immediately hung up and dialed 911. I know, though...sometimes people panic and forget what to do. HOWEVER:

2. People should stop assuming that dialing 911 is going to save your life unless you are undergoing a medical emergency.

3. This is why I'm a firm believer in being armed at home. You can dial 911, leave the phone connected, and then fight for your life. You're more likely to get a response that way.

4. We called the local police a few months ago to check on my aging mother-in-law (she's 87). It was late at night and she wasn't answering her phone, so we got worried and called the local sheriff. It took them over an hour to get there, and this is a tiny town of only a few thousand people, so it's not like they were busy. Turns out that she was sleeping with the TV blasting so loud that she couldn't hear the phone ringing, lol. "Welfare checks" are low priority, apparently.

5. We assume, out here in the sticks, that we are absolutely on our own, no matter what. If some robbers came up our dirt road and tried to break in, and we called 911, it would be 20 minutes at the absolute earliest, before we got help. In that amount of time, if we weren't armed, we would be dead. We had a grass fire out here about a year ago in high winds, coming right for the house. A call to the fire department was practically useless, as it took them 40 minutes to get out here, 13 miles from town. Local farmers got their guys out there to put out the fire by getting in front of it with their trucks and spinning the wheels, causing dirt to fly on the fire and extinquish it. By the time the fire truck got out here, the fire was totally under control.

Start thinking in terms of self-sufficiency, folks. Budget cuts in most areas means that you won't get help quickly. Make emergency plans and know what to do in any situation!! 911 should be thought of as a back-up, not as a first response.

It amazes me how easy it is for some people to criticize situations they have little knowledge of. Seems like a hobby for some...

Anyway, I can completely relate, I went through a similar situation. I got a frantic phone call from my sister who lives on the other side of the country, telling me her friend that she had met in the hospital had tried to kill herself by taking pills while on the phone with my sister. My sister had no address for her, so had given up, figuring the friend was dead at this point, but I still had hope. With very little info to go off, I called the PD for the town she lived in. They would not help. I had a boyfriend's name and phone number, but he would not answer. I gave that info to the PD asking if they could find him to locate her. I called the hpspital they had met at, spoke to the head nurse, who was also unwilling to help despite my plea that if she had a shred of humanity, she would look up the woman's address and give it to the police herself. I did not give up. I finally got someone on the phone from her town's PD who listened, and almost 4 hours after the friend's call with my sister, they located her and brought her to the hospital. It was very frustrating, to say the least, but when they called me back to say they found her and she'd be ok, it was all worth it.

why didn't the friend just dial 911? There would never have to be any talking she could have just dialed and set it down and they'd come hearing the background and what was going on. This is easily done without being obvious instead of yelling over a phone to another friend 1200 miles away.

reply to post by jtma508


NC is just screwed up period!! If you get a chance, ask you're friend in NC if she has experienced any supernatural incidents?

For those that ask why a woman in an abusive situation doesn't call 911...it's because we know damn well when he's right there in your face raging ..no cop..anywhere...will make it to you in time. And if they do, he'll still make your life beyond hell.
Quite easy for many to sit back and judge. You don't know till you have been so beaten down by fear that you almost think it would be easier if he really did do something than live with the aftermath.
Don't judge any woman who has lived with domestic violence till you have walked a mile in her shoes.

Unfortunately, jtma508, there really is not any legal recourse for local law enforcement taking their time to act, or not acting at all. In three separate rulings by the US Supreme Court, the court found it is not the duty of law enforcement to protect the safety of individual people. Those cases;

Warren v. District of Columbia
Castle Rock v. Gonzales
DeShaney v. Winnebago County

If anyone doesn't believe me, feel free to look them up. The court found that since law enforcement is limited in their resources (man power, vehicles, etc), they are allowed total discretion on what they choose to act on, or not act on. It is similar to the discretion District Attorney and Prosecutors have. They ruled that because of this law enforcement cannot be sued for failing to do their job.

This is why any state who's home and self-defense laws are based on law enforcement responding in a timely manner are a joke, and have no reasonable basis. At the end of the day, its up to the individual to protect themselves and their homes. A fact backed up be the US Supreme Court.

Wow...this sounds like South Africa,not the USA.I always assumed America was at least a "country that works" when it came to emergency services-even if lately you may be in danger of yourself being shot by the cops that respond to your call,at least they Did respond,and fairly quickly.I hope this was an isolated incident?