r/sandiego • u/NochillWill123 City Heights • 1d ago
San Diego police non-emergency is a joke
Today I woke up to a car blocking the drive way I was in and had to goto work. Called 3 different towing companies all said need to call police since it’s public street. Then I called the non emergency hotline and cops never showed up . I guess people can get away with parking where ever on the street .
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u/jizosh 1d ago
As someone with a driveway in a fairly busy neighborhood, I keep Western Towing on speed dial. If those dirtbags won’t take it, nobody will.
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u/_unicorn_irl 1d ago
This happens to me about once a month. I've tried everything... Get it done app, non emergency line, etc. tow trucks don't have jurisdiction to tow from public streets and police don't have time to deal with it.
The end result is people know they can block my driveway and face no punishments. If I need to run to the store or something I'm left with ubering. I'm generally pretty civil but I'm considering just smashing their windows from here on out since it's not fair they can disrupt the heck out of my life and face no consequences.
I pay 5k a month in mortgage and can't even use my own driveway consistently. It's so frustrating.
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u/No_Elk1208 1d ago
That really sucks. You need to hire your local vandals or just block your own driveway with your car, trash cans, pallets, etc.
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u/AnnieNonymous 1d ago
I wonder if you put fish oil on vents and door handles if that might match the annoyance and frustration of being trapped from accessing your own property?
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u/_unicorn_irl 1d ago
Yeah if I do go vigilante I'll have to think through a proportionate response. I thought about peanut butter under the door handles. Fish oil is a good one.
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u/Kopitar4president 1d ago
Buy cameras then. They know where you live.
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u/Mittenwald 1d ago
Yeah my concern would be retaliation if they suspect the home owner of tampering with their vehicle. Tough situation when even authorities won't help to remedy it.
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u/Financial-Creme 1d ago
You can get a cheap magnetic gps tracker you can put on the offending cars and then take out your frustration in a neutral location, or possibly their own house.
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u/main_topsail 19h ago
You mean like blocking their driveway with the old beater car you'll borrow from one of us?
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u/gdubrocks 1d ago
Maybe try cones or some paint to make it more visible that it's a driveway they are blocking?
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u/LegitimateCorgi8063 22h ago
Buy some spark plugs, most efficient/effective window smashing devices. ✌🏼
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u/NochillWill123 City Heights 1d ago
I did try calling them ! There was a fat sign with their # displayed on the fence . Mofos try to say it’s not my car and on public road so they couldn’t do anything
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u/mpython1701 1d ago
In Los Angeles, this is handled by parking enforcement. They give you a choice to have the car tickets or towed. Tickets usually take 90 minutes or so to respond. A tow 2-3 hours because the officer has to wait for tow truck availability.
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u/CyberRubyFox Chula Vista 1d ago
Speaking of parking enforcement... try their direct line: 858-495-7800
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u/One-Donkey-9418 19h ago
If Western towing tows a vehicle its guaranteed to be dinged up when you get it back. A nice big bill for storage too. Absolute bastards.
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u/funkcatbrown 1d ago
Looks like maybe your call for service is still open. They haven’t gotten to it yet bc it’s low priority compared to other types of calls.
2024-12-26 08:28:22 REQUEST FOR TOW TRUCK
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u/Jenjen987654321 1d ago
Dang, lotta deaths outside a hospital for a morning.
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u/funkcatbrown 1d ago
It’s weird. More people die around the holidays. And men tend to die shortly before their birthday and women just after.
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u/Glad_Yard5805 1d ago
I went to the link... how could you tell there were deaths from the dispatch log?
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u/SteinBizzle 1d ago
You obviously forgot to mention to the police that the driver appeared to be inebriated and asleep at the wheel. *Unfortunately, between your phone call to the police and their arrival, the driver left the vehicle.
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u/B1GP0PPA82 1d ago
This was my line of thinking as well. "Hearing yelling coming from the car", "smelling something funky", idk but it sounds like it needs to sound more urgent. Sucks it has to be that way, but can't just not get to work over and over.
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u/GrammerSnob 1d ago
We need to split the police into (at least) two different entities.
One entity for when a "good guy with a gun" is actually warranted. Robberies, violence, etc.
A second entity for situations where a different kind of training and resolution is necessary. Minor disputes, blocked cars, etc.
Right now we have this "one size fits all" approach where a single department is expected to have training and experience to deal with murders, suicides, mental health crises, disputes between neighbors, juvenile issues, domestic violence, addiction, homlessness, etc etc... It's too much.
"Defund the police" is an awful moniker, but I really do believe we need to relieve the burden off police so that they can focus solely on one category of crime, and let different agencies take up the slack and be more responsive to stuff like "my neighbor blocked my driveway" types of crime.
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u/TheWayofTheSchwartz 1d ago
I work with LEO and they say the exact same thing. Defund the police, but shrink their area of responsibility to just what they're really trained to do so they can do it well.
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u/GrammerSnob 1d ago
The shitty thing is that a politician running for office would take the totally reasonable thing that I wrote and turn it into "Grammersnob wants to cut police funding because he's a communist who loves crime!" or some bullshit and people eat it up.
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u/TheWayofTheSchwartz 1d ago
Right. We need a new moniker for the movement. Something like, "Let police focus on crime." We could describe it as "Focusing the police force," or something like that.
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u/GrammerSnob 1d ago
You're exactly right.
Honestly, the left sucks at branding. It's always bothered me to see my side be so inept.
"Defund the police" is a bad way to get people on board with reallocating resources to actually HELP POLICE do their job.
"Black Lives Matter" practically invites the "but but All lives Matter" response, and then we get mired in arguing semantics rather than the actual heart of the issue, which is that racism is bad. Maybe that should be the new slogan: "Racism is bad".
"LGBTIAQ2S+" is the punchline of a joke that writes itself as more letters and symbols are added. Same with the rainbow flag adding more and more stripes and colors for the various marginalized groups. The point of the rainbow flag was to include everyone across all spectrums, and I submit "Don't be a dick to people who aren't like you" as a new slogan.
Ugh, now I'm all wound up... :)
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u/chaostheories36 1d ago
Real question, what are they trained for that they can do well? Im looking for a genuine answer as to what the average cop in America, today, is better at than any other profession.
I’m an MFT and I would love to be dispatched to domestic disputes instead of guy with gun.
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u/climaxingwalrus 1d ago
Firemen and ambulances seem to be able to handle all 911 calls without killing people.
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u/chaostheories36 1d ago
Which is kind of my exact point. Firemen and EMTs don’t kill people.
Are they in danger by the very nature of their jobs, just the same as police? Yes. They understand and accept that risk.
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u/climaxingwalrus 1d ago
Oh yeah I was doing the thing where I reply to a random higher up comment on the thread whoops
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u/chaostheories36 1d ago
No mistake made. We agree that police seem to get a lot of funding to do a lot of things and suck at all of those things.
My one question is what are the police supposed to be good at.
Annnnnd it’s probably arresting people of color
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u/YoureGrammerIsWorsts Local Archaeologist ⛏ 20h ago
Which is why there's never been a popular song called "Fuck the Firemen"
Well I'm sure that sentiment is actually really popular, but most for different reasons
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u/auto_generate_user 1d ago
Unfortunately over 50% of voters in this state have far too few brain cells to understand how any of this really works. They will simply repeat the endless echo chamber to feel righteous... Especially if the "evil" side supports more $$ to LE.
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u/GrammerSnob 1d ago
The "evil" side isn't really evil in most cases, just ignorant. They can't (or don't care to) think past "more police = less crime".
I think we can be smarter about how we allocate our resources. Let's let the armed response team deal with the dangerous situations, and create an unarmed response team to handle non-emergency, non-violent situations.
Which political party do you think supports that idea?
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u/spingus Mt. Hope 1d ago
yes!
I live in a bad neighborhood. I have to call the cops for a variety of things throughout the year.
This includes aggravated DV SA.....and noise complaints. The people who handle tweaked boyfriends holding their girlfriends at knifepoint maybe shouldn't be bothered by a complaint about over-amplified polka music.
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u/chaostheories36 1d ago
Not disagreeing, just wanna add that what the police do can be done so much better by different entities.
Like, in what situation is a cop in the best solution to send? Domestic dispute; send a marriage and family therapist. Traffic accident? Send an insurance person to take photos of everything and submit reports. Armed bank robbery; send SWAT.
Police are a horrible grab bag of uselessness that aren’t good at any of the things they are dispatched for. They’re barely trained in anything
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u/Lyx4088 1d ago
Surface level sure, but there are nuances and figuring out how to navigate the nuances is important. Sending someone skilled in de-escalating domestic situations and directing them toward necessary resources is important, but so is making sure that domestic dispute is just a heated verbal confrontation and it will not escalate to something physical or violent, and it isn’t abuse where someone may need legal documentation. You need police when there is a physical threat or abuse to protect people and help individuals leave dangerous situations. In a similar vein, you often need police to direct traffic when there has been a collision and to assess if there was an impairment such as drugs or alcohol that may have been a contributing factor to the accident, or if the vehicle was being operated in an unsafe manner. Not every accident is an oops my bad sort of situation where someone just wasn’t paying attention, didn’t see something, or made some kind of driving mistake that lead to a collision.
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u/defaburner9312 1d ago
Yea. Domestics are the most lethal kind of police call. I agree in principle that police aren't trained to be counsellors but sending some young woman with a psych degree to a house where the husband is hitting the wife isn't gonna end well either. It's a tough situation
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u/GrammerSnob 1d ago
We don't need to solve every nuanced situation now. I think it's enough to agree that not all police calls warrant an armed response. In fact, the vast majority probably don't.
Ask any career police office how many times they've drawn their weapon on duty. I'll be the answer is 0, 1, or 2 in a 20 year career.
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u/SwizzGod 1d ago
I’ve never actually thought of this. This is a good idea. Wonder how hard that would be to implement
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u/YoureGrammerIsWorsts Local Archaeologist ⛏ 20h ago
Another idea, and this is apparently a crazy idea, is that we don't have to accept that police are allowed to escalate every situation they are involved in.
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u/ekmek_e 14h ago
How about just "fund the police"
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u/GrammerSnob 12h ago
Sure, let’s fund the police. Let’s give them all the tools and training necessary to enforce the law. That’s a great idea!
In addition to that, let’s offload some of their most trivial, mundane workload (like neighbors fighting over parking spaces) and let someone else handle that so police can really focus on more serious crimes.
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u/LEGOnot-legos 1d ago
I would 100% let all of the air out of all four tires. I would not damage them just release all of the air. Every time.
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u/Additional-Spend2921 1d ago
They can fill it up with air that's free.. but blocking someone time to go work and make money is lost.. people won't learn unless they lose money 🤣 I'd stab away
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u/BoronYttrium- 1d ago
Even the emergency line is a joke. I’ve been put on hold with 911 for over 10 minutes multiple times lol
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u/NochillWill123 City Heights 1d ago
That’s what scares me, if it’s this bad on non emergency I can’t imagine 911 calls
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u/BoronYttrium- 1d ago
The Fourth of July is the absolute worst day to have an emergency.
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u/ballsjohnson1 1d ago
They should just set up a big "finger reattachment/amputation" stand in the hospital parking lot so people with actual problems can get seen on the fourth
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u/DuesDuke 1d ago
What? If they don’t respond to non emergencies rapidly, you’re worried about the speed they respond to emergencies with? Emergencies are treated as emergencies and the response is immediate. Non emergencies are treated as non emergencies and there will be a delay in the response.
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u/Cheedo4 1d ago
Yeah one time I heard my neighbor screaming at and hitting his gf/wife. Called 911 and literally nobody ever showed up.
He hit her so hard I could hear the slaps through the wall…
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u/thesals 1d ago edited 1d ago
I had a neighbor where that was a weekly occurrence, you can hear him throwing her against walls and stuff. She would scream shit like "Help, somebody Help, he's going to kill me" and the cops would show up and she would always defend him and they'd leave without doing anything to him.... My landlord also didn't give a shit and would say "that's not my problem, call the police"
That was a long year until they moved out, dude was an alcoholic and threatened me multiple times to the point I wouldn't leave my apartment without a weapon.
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u/AlasknAssasn619 1d ago
But gun control tho right…since the Police will be there to protect you. smh
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u/Expensive-Respond802 1d ago
You should have called and said it looks like someone is dealing drugs out of a car that is blocking your driveway.
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u/dodgedurango2018 1d ago
This same thing happened to me. Yup. Police showed up hours later and had them towed. Said they were responding to a shooting earlier.
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u/no_more_brain_cells 1d ago
Yeh, the police are overwhelmed with urgent things and parking is a low priority. If there was some way they could authorize parking enforcement to come, verify it’s illegal and call the tow truck, the regular police could do other things.
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u/dodgedurango2018 1d ago
Replying again because this has happened twice and the complete uncaring attitude for blocking a driveway aggravates. The second time, it was a kid that showed no urgency and to top it all off, had space behind them to park and not block the driveway.
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u/Mo5tly_U5ele55 1d ago
Get a couple of these bad boys and slide the car right out of the way. If it's a front wheel drive with no parking brake engaged you'll only need 2. 4WD/AWD or parking brake on then 4 would be needed, maybe you could get away with 3. Not ideal, sure, but you could definitely leave the car in a less than desirable position for the owner afterwards.
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u/SDKent1964 1d ago
I have reported cars that have been parked for weeks without moving. The police show up 6 months later and say it isn’t there.
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u/Greedom619 1d ago
Oh wow, would you look at that! The tire on the car is slowly deflating. Oh, I see a stab mark on there. Wonder how that happened?
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u/Bottle_Major 1d ago
Go to harbor freight and get yourself a nice floor jack on sale. Roll that bitch right out of the way.
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u/Traditional_Dog3467 1d ago
Yeah they suck. I was in a car accident a couple months ago. No one was hurt but the person who hit us didn’t have any insurance, ID, nothing. I called 3 different times, and HighWay Patrol showed up almost an hour and a half later. It was ridiculous.
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u/imthejavafox 1d ago
Cops always look bored but when you call them for a non-emergency they never show up
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u/dayzkohl 1d ago
It's hit or miss. I've used the get it done app and had a car ticketed within like 15 minutes.
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u/CharacterHomework975 1d ago
So, in all seriousness, this should have been an emergency call. What you’re describing, which is an individual or individuals physically preventing you from leaving, is false imprisonment. That’s actually a fairly serious crime. And yes, even though you could (theoretically) walk away without your car it still counts as unlawfully detaining you.
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u/qrtrlifecrysis 1d ago
Lol the cops wouldn’t show up for this
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u/CharacterHomework975 1d ago
Probably. But more likely than for a non-emergency call.
If you want to up the odds more, tell them you feel your safety is being threatened (which is a tweaker is preventing you from leaving should be true) and you may have to resort to force to escape. Might bump the priority up.
El oh el.
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u/NochillWill123 City Heights 1d ago
That’s I’m saying! It’s difficult for many of us to resist going overboard and do the right thing, but in the end it’s a let down. For example, I tried to turn on my car alarm to get the owner attention but instead I had neighbors coming at me to stop being noisy. Dammed if you do dammed if you don’t society .
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u/Dimpleshenk 1d ago
I've had random meth-heads suddenly in my face yelling at me in parking situations where I was completely minding my own business and had done nothing to offend or alert anyone around me. Something about meth brings out the most hostile and easily triggered aspects of a person's brain.
Meth-heads who do meth and then act out against strangers in public are a complete net negative to all of society. They are not on their way to contributing something that the world around them can appreciate. They are just a total loss for themselves and everybody else.
I've lived in San Diego long enough to see this and the results in multiple ways. People I know or who live near me have been killed at random by meth-heads with guns. Not because of provoking anybody -- just randomly killed.
I have no sympathy for anybody who does meth, and anything negative that happens to meth-heads on the street as a consequence of their behavior is something I will never shed a tear over.
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u/AdditionAdmirable328 1d ago
I’m assuming you have a car that is probably got a low ride height and you care too much about it but I’ve had this problem on Adams Avenue before and I will push your car out of the fucking way into the street with no hesitation. They tried to call the cops on me multiple times they tell them not to park there. It’s great. I agree the cops are a joke, but that means that they also don’t come for you.
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u/TommyG456 1d ago
Call a tow company and tell them you lost your keys and need to tow it to get fixed.
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u/selchie0mer 1d ago
I started thinking on this. I was thinking those wheel blocks. And they would need to come ask you to take it off. But I wouldn’t want them to revenge on my home. So I know those big stickers are pretty good. I had one at an apt years ago. Neon orange sticker paper. It was printed with the laws I broke and put on the windshield of the drivers side. And it took forever to get it off. They inconvience you, and break a minor law.. it’s a fair trade
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u/purplesharpiedots 1d ago
Not sure if this was mentioned, but towing companies sometimes use notebook-size neon orange stickers on which says you have x amount of time to move the car before it’s towed. The sticker is huge and obnoxiously hard to remove. Possibly start applying onto driver and passenger side windows of cars in your driveway. I guess this would really only deter repeat parking offenders and offers no immediate resolution to the issue of being trapped in or blocked out of your driveway, but it’s a nice advertisement to others driving by not to park there.
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u/Orientalrage 1d ago
Also I heard you can escalate your calls to priority if you say you have to leave now for work.
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u/1320Fastback 1d ago
You think the non emergency is a joke you should try the actual emergency number.
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u/AlvinsCuriousCasper 1d ago
It’s a lower priority call. It could take a few hours to have someone respond. There are other higher priority non emergency calls that require an officers attention.
I’m sorry people suck (the driver of the vehicle blocking the driveway).
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u/chathobark_ 1d ago
@title YES
You really gotta call em multiple time and they still don’t want to come but eventually will
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u/No_Elk1208 1d ago
Maybe set it on fire. Call 911 and say there’s a fire (don’t tell what is on fire; just give address and hang up) and my driveway is blocked. 😂😂
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u/beachOTbum26 1d ago
I’ve called when a homeless person tried to walk into my house and I’ve called when some guy followed a girl and tried to grab her and we had him cornered - both times it took 3 hours to come literally useless
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u/AggleFlaggleKlable 1d ago
It’s taken weeks for parking issues to be resolved near me. There was once a broken down truck right on off-ramp by our house and after reporting 3 times it sat there for 3 weeks. Same thing with a broken down work truck in a red zone that blocked the view of oncoming traffic. 3 weeks!!!
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u/WingmanZer0 1d ago
Yeah it takes 3 hours for them to respond to noise complaints if they ever even do, which is usually what happens. It's because 7 squad cars show up to a domestic dispute somewhere and 6 of them are just hanging out playing candy crush.
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u/WizardBonus Mission Valley 1d ago
You needed to say the car had a knife and it was threatening you. Weapon + violence = 911 VIP.
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u/cahrens2 1d ago
Karens call 911 for homeless people sleeping in a hammock in Carlsbad and no less than 3 cop cars show up.
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u/DaCowboyMenace 1d ago
With a budget as large as the SDPD's where the hell is that money going to if something this simple takes so much time?
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u/NochillWill123 City Heights 1d ago
They never showed up… and seems like many people experience similar issues
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u/DaCowboyMenace 1d ago
9 figure budget but can't send a single beat cop to handle a clear cut law violation. What use are they?
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u/Shibbystix 1d ago
here's the thing.
You're in a poorer neighborhood.
You KNOW if you were in La Jolla or Sunset Cliffs, that shit woulda been addressed.
but you're in City Heights (howdy former neighbor!)
That makes you a low priority.
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u/Zach-the-young 1d ago
Learn how to steal a car maybe? Drive it a few miles away and park it in a parking lot lmao
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u/i-hate-in-n-out 1d ago
There's a joke in season 4 of Only Murders in n the Building where they are on hold with 911 for hours. Sadder, this same joke was used in an animated Christmas movie I watched this year.
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u/Longjumping-Ad5441 1d ago
It sucks but it all depends on priorities. I have my own case they're working on and learned San Diego and Chula Vista are backed tf up. I waited 3 hrs for them to file my report. If they weren't gonna show when you called, they should have at least taken a report.
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u/usefultoast Hillcrest 1d ago edited 1d ago
I go once a week to a business that does after hours private events. They have a small parking lot in an urban area. Myself and 7 other drivers park in the lot, go into the business, and come out to find a car parked in front of the only driveway out. No other exits, lot is bordered by walls.
I called towing, same answer, public property. Called the non emergency and they said they’d get to it. Four hours later I get a call back from police (I was the one who called) stating they came, the driver was in the car when they arrived, refused to roll down the window to speak with the police officer, and left.
A police officer told me they couldn’t speak to someone because they left.
People have been chased, assaulted, and shot by police officers for less.
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u/PocketShock 20h ago
But if your parking meter is five minutes expired and you run back to your car, it will have a ticket.
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u/-Dream-Fortress- 19h ago
Just get a key and let out the air in their tires. It’s not damaging their car, just massively inconveniencing them 🤷🏻♀️
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u/Dense-Yesterday9161 17h ago
I painted a plastic trashcan lid safety yellow and stenciled the words “impound” and “boot” on it. When the people block my driveway I put the “boot” i side their front left wheel well then sit back and watch the driver freak out.
Best one was someone sat for a hour before they figured it was a prank
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u/Orientalrage 1d ago
It’s awful. Batting 50/50 on blocked garage calls. Sometimes they show up in 3 mins , sometimes 3 hours
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u/hpboogie 1d ago
I was like this sounds like City Heights and the tag matched up. I bet well see more of this once that “no parking on the corner” law comes in effect.
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u/bgross42 1d ago
Here’s a job to entertain: place these “non-emergency” calls in priority response order:
*smoke from my neighbor’s barbecue is blowing in my window and I have asthma. *someone parked at curb, blocking my driveway. *the guy across the street has been detailing his truck for three hours, playing loud music which offends my deeply held religious beliefs. *a person from the next block is walking her dog and letting it defecate on my lawn - again. *those kids are riding their skateboards/e-bikes again *the couple in the house behind me are arguing again, loudly *someone is running their lawnmower/leaf blower at 0700 on Saturday morning, again *did we just have an earthquake? *someone stole my kid’s bike/soccer gear/boombox from my driveway *I think I saw a UFO land in my neighborhood but nobody else did
Now factor in the finite number of officers & patrol cars and the nearly infinite number of actual crimes & emergencies….
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u/Odd_Contribution2873 1d ago
Always makes me wonder if this subreddit is like a yelp where it’s only anecdotal complaints about law enforcement being posted or if it’s actually this bad. Haven’t really seen any evidence to the contrary though, which sucks
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u/Temporary-Cycle6224 1d ago
Is there a sidewalk that you would be blocking? If not park in your driveway with half your car hanging out of the driveway into the street. So nobody can park in front of it. I do this out of necessity because my driveway is very short. You’re occupying your driveway in a way where nobody can block you in.
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u/DeathMetalMochi 22h ago
I once called the line because I, and an 60yo woman, got locked in a parking garage. We parked legally but the pay box wasn't working on our way out so the gate wouldn't open and we were stuck inside. The service button wasn't working, there was no security on the grounds, and all the listed phone numbers onsite led to voicemail. What did both the non emergency and emergency police line say? "There's nothing we can do since it's a third party establishment." That'll be my first and last time calling non emergency for anything.
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u/moldedbyviolence 19h ago
Salt water in a gas jug n put it in the cars tank. Less obvious less suspicious and no evidence so they wont suspect a thing and you’ll most likely never see the car on the road again 😂
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u/musclepupflex 13h ago
Yup, they are a joke. Called about a noise complaint, a business blasting music on a rooftop from 10PM to 2 AM. Called numerous times, nobody showed up and nobody followed up. SD police are a joke.
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u/Windyturtl3 9h ago
That’s a bummer to hear. This happened to our place last year in Clairemont. A well tinted Honda was left in front of our driveway when we woke up at 7am. But non emergency had a city Parking Enforcer and a tow truck to our place in an hour. We were impressed, guess they aren’t consistent
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u/Algo2Pete 8h ago
Get a handful of parking violation stickers, slap a couple of them on the windows, windshield. Amazon is a good place to look.
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u/WhoCaresWhatITink 1d ago
That sucks.
Next time tell them to make sure to send a flat bed because it has 4 flat tires.