![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Because Quora asked
Nov. 3rd, 2016 11:33 pmBad reasons to call the police:
* Someone you love is having a mental health crisis. Do not call the cops, they aren't trained for that stuff and they're cowards with guns, so they WILL kill your loved one.
* Anything having to do with a non-criminal complaint (or a criminal complaint against someone you like) against a black person, disabled person, or trans person. Cops are racists, ableists, and transphobes as well as cowards. They WILL at the very least beat these people to a pulp, and will likely kill them.
* Similarly, if you are yourself black, trans, disabled, or mentally ill, don't call the cops unless whatever's happening is just as likely to kill you as a cop would. Or if you have lots of witnesses. But even that's no guarantee.
* If you are poor, and thus most likely live in a high-poverty, high-crime area, calling the cops might not necessarily be a bad idea so far as your safety from cops is concerned, but from experience I can tell you that in such areas, cops generally take about an hour to respond to your call even when you can see squad cars parked a few blocks away, and if they manage to show up before whatever it is has ended, they won't care. They're only there because they were told to be. In my experience, they condescendingly "listen" to your statement, do nothing about the situation, and then they leave, and their report about the situation mysteriously vanishes. In my experience, the only thing that will get cops in these areas to do their fucking job is to show them a court order that tells their tiny piggy brains what to do and that they have to do it. I haven't yet tried bribing them into doing their jobs with Dunkin Donuts, but mainly because I fit too many of the labels they're bigots against to have the guts to risk my life trying it.
* Pretty much all boils down to: unless you're a cisgender heterosexual white man who lives in a neighborhood that is at least moderately wealthy, it's probably not a good idea to call the cops unless you're already in a life-threatening situation anyway.
* Someone you love is having a mental health crisis. Do not call the cops, they aren't trained for that stuff and they're cowards with guns, so they WILL kill your loved one.
* Anything having to do with a non-criminal complaint (or a criminal complaint against someone you like) against a black person, disabled person, or trans person. Cops are racists, ableists, and transphobes as well as cowards. They WILL at the very least beat these people to a pulp, and will likely kill them.
* Similarly, if you are yourself black, trans, disabled, or mentally ill, don't call the cops unless whatever's happening is just as likely to kill you as a cop would. Or if you have lots of witnesses. But even that's no guarantee.
* If you are poor, and thus most likely live in a high-poverty, high-crime area, calling the cops might not necessarily be a bad idea so far as your safety from cops is concerned, but from experience I can tell you that in such areas, cops generally take about an hour to respond to your call even when you can see squad cars parked a few blocks away, and if they manage to show up before whatever it is has ended, they won't care. They're only there because they were told to be. In my experience, they condescendingly "listen" to your statement, do nothing about the situation, and then they leave, and their report about the situation mysteriously vanishes. In my experience, the only thing that will get cops in these areas to do their fucking job is to show them a court order that tells their tiny piggy brains what to do and that they have to do it. I haven't yet tried bribing them into doing their jobs with Dunkin Donuts, but mainly because I fit too many of the labels they're bigots against to have the guts to risk my life trying it.
* Pretty much all boils down to: unless you're a cisgender heterosexual white man who lives in a neighborhood that is at least moderately wealthy, it's probably not a good idea to call the cops unless you're already in a life-threatening situation anyway.
