Originally published at: Eight cops enter house without warrant won't leave for 8 minutes despite the owner telling them to go repeatedly | Boing Boing
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11 Likes
I have mixed feelings on this one. The cops should have cleared out once it became clear that this was the wrong house. The homeowner is wrong about them needing a warrant, though. The 911 call gave them probable cause, and they did have a right to check it out.
Why they had the wrong house is a big question, though. If it was incompetence (or laziness) then the cops should be held accountable (not that I expect they will).
I’m just glad it didn’t escalate to someone getting shot.
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If there’s no landline for the 911 call to originate from then where did it come from?
Either the claim is bogus or there’s some glitch causing the address error. Or some way to spoof it.
As I understand it, all 911 calls are recorded, and I assume even a hangup call would have a computer record of whether it really came in or not.
21 Likes
I have a possible explanation that (for once) might explain how the cops weren’t wrong to show up in the first place:
The landline that was registered to that address could either have been moved to a different address and the old information hadn’t been purged from the system or converted to a VOIP number. My former-landline-now-VOIP sometimes registers with automated systems as a landline and sometimes as VOIP.
How they conducted themselves once they got there, that’s a whole different kettle of fish. But yeah, they didn’t kill the guy, so YAY.
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I call bullshit on the every premise that there was a 911 call to begin with. The victim should sue to force discovery.
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There were cops in my house one time and one of them leaned up against a wall and raised his foot up and pressed it against the wall. I asked him if he did that at his momma’s house.
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Yes, but it doesn’t require that many (m#####fucking) cops barging into his home or require 8 (m*****fucking) minutes to clarify that there is no landline at the house, when every individual there states the same. 
If this were California, I’d seriously consider smoking some marijuana and hotboxing those assholes in the entryway.
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The man wasn’t Black; had he been, we’d likely be talking about yet another fatal tragedy.
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So if there is a victim in a house and the victim managed to call 911 but the attacker managed to hide the victim or worse and the cops show up all the person at the door has to do is say no problem here I don’t even have a landline.
The cops should just believe the guy lives there without verifying that he belongs.
Cop should just say sorry and leave?
I get cops can’t just show and enter your home without a warrant but in this case they appear to be responding to a 911 call.
This also happened quite a while ago and he was found guilty of obstruction.
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Where are the EMT or paramedics? Where is the ambulance? Where is the fire truck?
All I see are cops, including one who has history with the homeowner.
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I had some cops show up claiming that a 911 call had come from my address once. I had just moved into an apartment in the Bay Area, in Mountain View specifically. There was no land line in the apartment. When they asked to look around I stepped out and closed the door behind me.
They eventually went away without coming in. I’m sure it helped that I was a a white lady and the complex was basically silent when they showed up. The officer was not pleased with me closing my door behind me, but decided not to push it after I answered enough questions.
A bunch of cops just let themselves into my mom’s house via the backyard once while looking for a friend of my brother’s. No warrant, no call. They decided it was “suspicious” that the gate was unlocked and the sliding glass door was partially open on a sunny day and came on in.
They questioned my mom, accused her of lying after picking up a picture of my cousin, and found an empty weed baggie to threaten her with. She got exasperated enough to show them an actual picture of my brother and to say the girl had not run off with him because “he doesn’t go with girls”
Then one of them referred to my brother as her “daughter” for the rest of the harassment. They decided to leave when my grandmother woke up and they had to deal with a sleepy confused white grandmother and got tired of the whole pointless thing.
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Maybe it’s just me but it seems like he really didn’t like the nice policemen trying to help him or save someone. /s He was so eloquent in expressing himself I don’t know how they missed the point about him wanting them to leave. What a fucking clown show. That whole herd of cops for nothing but showing their power. The call didn’t come from there, how long would it take them to verify that and then go look for the real caller if indeed there ever was one. It might be enlightening to know the back story of why he hates them so much.
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My life experience has certainly made me more afraid of the actual cops than contrived television plots like the one you describe.
It has also taught me that cops are not usually helpful in domestic disputes anyway.
They took over an hour to show up the one time someone was actually actively trying to break my door down. He left and came back before they finally showed up and found him peeing on our steps.
If he was a competent murderer instead of a drunk asshole, I’d be dead and he would be long gone.
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In hindsight, that’s correct, and I agree they should have been able to wrap this up in less time so they could move on to figuring out where the real call came from. However, 911 hangups should be taken seriously. Assuming they had a good faith reason to believe they were at the right house (which I’ll concede is maybe generous) they would have been negligent if they’d just taken the homeowner’s word that there was no landline and not checked the house for someone in danger.
I’ve seen cops behave a lot worse than the ones in that video.
I missed that part (I watched the video, but didn’t read the twitter thread). That definitely makes me less understanding of the cops behavior.
Somewhere amongst all the swearing…
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Eight cops for a 911 hangup? Which happen all the time?
The usual procedure for a 911 hang up, with no contact, is for the dispatcher to call back. Depending on what happens on that call, an officer might be dispatched.
Unless someone was in distress before the hangup, officers are rarely dispatched. Maybe if there are two hangups. Ordinarily, a single hangup, with no contact at all, results I’m a dispatch only if there are previous issues at the home from previous calls.
This was harassment
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Cops usually do accept that. In fact, they usually do a lot less, even when someone actually reported a crime in progress (and it wasn’t just a hang-up of dubious origin). There are plenty of cases where cops showed up due to a 911 call, the person inside is too busy being murdered to answer the door and the cops just left (or, in some cases, just drove by the house, saw nothing and left, depending on how poor or not-white the neighborhood was). The cops then went to court and (successfully) argued they had no duty to actually investigate these situations.
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This has happened to us before and the police knocked on the door. Once we opened the door, they asked a couple of questions and realized that we did not call 911. As a matter of fact, the sheriff deputies told us that extra landlines sometimes call 911.
Easy peasy. There was no need for extra police presence.
Yep! I think these cops had an ax to grind.
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Is this house one of a block of condos or an apartment? At our house it’s fairly easy to spot our landline coming in via a phone wire through a labeled box on the side of the house.
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