19 police officers answer the question: 'what’s the craziest situation you’ve been in?'

Whether you love cops or hate them, most of us have to agree that being a police officer is not for the faint of heart. Part of the job description is showing up to bear witness to some of the darkest, grimmest, most horrific sides of humanity.Someone recently asked police officers of Reddit: "what’s the craziest situation you’ve been in?" These 19 harrowing tales from cops (including a few from their friends and relatives) prove what most of us already knew: this job is not for everyone.(And neither is this post—don't read ahead if you're squeamish!)1.) From Bigbadballer88: My dad friend who is a cop in NC told me that some teen tried to steal an electric shopping cart from Target with a fuck ton of shit in it and tried to outrun the cops but the cart only went 5mph for like 25 meters then the battery died. The cop just asked him to push the cart back since it died and return the stolen items. 2.) From xfilesarereal: Dad tells the story of a guy he knew who kept getting caught for writing bad checks. He was such a big guy he wouldn’t fit in the police car so they would just meet him at the magistrate office and write him tickets. (I know, some trust) but a year or so after this kept happening, he got a call that there was a domestic dispute at the house. So they rush over there and he’s got an axe in his hand sitting on the front porch all bloody. They approach and tell him to put the axe down which he does and proceeded to tell them that his wife is in the bathtub, or at least her head is. But guy was completely open and cooperative, didn’t run or anything. Asked if he could meet them at the magistrate office and dad was like yeah nah dawg you’re gonna have to get in the car this time. 3.) From Risin_bison: Responded with my partner to a welfare check on an elderly gentleman. Knocked on the door, walked in and couldn’t find him. Went to his garage and found him sound asleep behind the wheel. He tried to commit suicide by asphyxiation. Thing is, he only had a small amount of fuel and it was a new Civic. He was pissed when he woke up that I wasn’t St Peter. 4.) From Wolfhound1142: Definitely the time that an older, mentally ill woman tried to burn her house down because she believed that was the only way to disarm the atom bomb in her attic. I got her to walk with me to my car and get in the back by telling her it was the only place she'd be safe. When I got in and started driving, she started yelling that I couldn't take her to jail because she hadn't done anything wrong. I calmly informed her that we were going to the hospital, which prompted even louder yelling of, "I'm not crazy!" I replied, "I don't think you're crazy." She screamed, "Then why are you taking me to the hospital?!" I told her, "Well, you were next to that atom bomb, right? We gotta get you checked for radiation poisoning." Her eyes got wide and she said, "Oh shit! I didn't think about that, you better hurry!" 5.) From [deleted]: While serving in South Korea, my team was on patrol in the local drinking village when we heard someone drunkenly singing the US national anthem. At a loss for where this individual was, we finally looked up and there he was....tight rope walking on the ledge of a building 3 stories up. This is when precision of language is of vital importance...especially when dealing with a drunk. The sergeant on scene said, "Hey, come down here!" The drunkard said, "On my way!" And proceeded to step off. Under the impression I was about to witness my first death, I was in shock. Through some bit of weird luck/science, he glanced the hood of a slightly misted Daewoo truck and slid down to the ground. We ran over to him and he said, "Hey guys, how's it going?" He had open fractures on both femurs and after some makeshift splinting and controlling the bleeding, he was transported to the nearest hospital. Soju is a hell of a thing. 6.) From Philosorunner: Attended a structural fire in a downtown high rise. Was tasked with evacuating local residents in case the building collapsed. Third house I went to, the guy answers in a full bunny suit with gas mask propped up in his head. English wasn’t his first language, and as I was trying to communicate that he needed to evacuate, it became clear he was running a meth lab inside. Arrested Asian Walter White, and then had to sit in the shadow of the structure fire keeping eyes on the house while waiting for CLEAR (clandestine lab) team to show up. In that time fire trucks basically surrounded my vehicle so I couldn’t move it, even after CLEAR team moved in. Walter had his lawyer call in my pc, and it was about 10 hours before we could head back to cells. I’ve never had to piss so badly in my life. 7.) From j2142b: First time my brother arrested someone was really funny. He and his training officer were working the graveyard shift and got a call for suspicious activity at a house. They arrive and the homeowner says they're is someone sneaking around his house that shouldn't be there. So they start looking around with their flashlights, grass is really overgrown in the backyard and my brother notice one of those Fisher Price kid's car (yellow & red plastic car) moving on its own. They found their guy, naked and high AF trying to hide under the kids toy and crawl away. Training officer says,"Well, he's yours rookie", had my brother cuff him (guy didn't want to go to jail and put up a naked fight) and take the guy to jail. 8.) From copswithguns: I got a lot of messages asking for more, so here is another story: I’m on midnight shift. I work in a small town (under 30k people) with a county of about 200k people. My beat is a suburb. We get a shots fired call. Usually these are an old lady who hears something she thinks is a gunshot but we can never locate the source and go back in service. This was different. I could hear the stress in the dispatcher’s voice as she told me it was an open-line call-this means the caller was still on the phone giving information in real time. The caller was yelling into the phone so loudly it was bleeding over into the dispatcher’s mic when she keyed up and I could hear the screaming. Me and 3 other officers haul ass to this apartment complex. It’s a single-story unit shaped like a horseshoe with a big open courtyard. We start making our way to the complex, having parked a bit away from the suspect house. It’s about 2am on a weekday and it’s dead quiet. I don’t hear shit. I’m jumping bushes and crossing lawns with my department rifle on me while my partners are moving parallel to me. We get to the edge of the complex. And stack up. We can hear the yelling. The door to one of the apartments opens and the screaming subjects start to spill out. We don’t know who is who so we can out with rifles and handguns drawn giving commands for everyone to show hands and drop to their knees. Everyone complies. I give cover to the three other units who start handcuffing and checking people for weapons. No gun so far. These people tell us the people who fired shots already left in a car (which they describe). We go to clear the apartment when a Hispanic male comes out covered in blood. He was ghost white from the blood loss. He is clutching his left arm, which I can see has been cut to the bone from elbow to wrist and he has arterial spurt. I realize he is minutes from death and apply a tourniquet that everyone that works in this area carries on their belt. This guy loses consciousness. We clear the apartment quickly to make sure there are no unseen threats and then radio for EMS and fire to enter. The surgeon said 2 minutes later with that tourniquet and the guy would have bled to death. We find out that the whole thing was a drug deal gone bad and the sellers tried to take the money and split. Amazingly no one was shot. I spent the rest of the shift searching for the shitheads and writing reports. The suspects drove 1800 miles to Oregon where they were arrested. Side note about adrenaline: it’s awesome. You don’t feel fatigue, or pain sometimes. It can be addictive. 9.) From abbrollher: Not a cop, but a cop friend of mind in SE Washington, DC. He got a domestic disturbance call and arrived to a calm scene. The husband explained he and his wife had been arguing, and that she had gone over the top, but they were both fine now. The wife confirmed the story, but stated she didn’t want the husband back in the house that night. My friend asked if the husband had a place to go, and he agreed to go to his mother’s house for the night. The husband left, then my friend and his partner left soon after. About an hour later, they get a call back to the same house. When they get there, the husband is in the kitchen dead. The wife explains that right after the police left, her husband came back and resumed arguing with her. He got in her face and she stabbed in the neck with a chicken bone, hitting his carotid artery. 10.) From bPhrea: A guy on a sports team I play in is a drug squad cop and told us the following story. They had staked out a meth lab house for awhile and surveilled the house with pinhole cameras for some time. They’d noticed that the occupants were becoming increasingly erratic, someone senior suggested it was due to them not replacing the filters in their protective masks. Anyway, at some stage they decide it’s time to go in, so tactical enter and grab all the guys and clear the rooms. Then a chemical team go in to make sure everything is safe. Eventually my mate and his team go in to collect evidence with a few young uniforms to help. The house is a bit of a shambles but nothing too unexpected, until one of the uniforms picks up a large rubber dildo and starts playing around with it in front of everybody. The senior then tells him: you know that while reviewing all the footage on this place we never saw any women entering or leaving this house... And why are you the only one not wearing gloves? 11.) From Lockerd: I ain't a cop, but my dad is, and this happened when I was on a ridealong with him quite a few years ago....relatively short one this time. After eating our lunch, we went down to a runoff point so he could finish some of his reports (that's usually why you see a lot of cops on the side somewhere that isn't directly connected to the main road), I was on my phone watching some videos, when he got called in to check something that was happening up the road. I was sitting in the car the entire time this happened. Headed up the road to a construction site (by that time it had been active but non-progressing for five years), where a bunch of people were just standing around looking weird...dressed in weird suits and obvious fake construction costumes with fake hardhats. A representative of the construction company had called the police down when these people showed up and didn't say a single thing for hours, backup arrived and about six cops were trying to get two dozen people to say anything. After a half hour passed, every single one of the trespassers began to dance and music began to blare from portable speakers, it went on until the song ended, at which point one of the dancers stood up and said "Danielle , Kyle has an important question for you". Everyone was motionless until the person who stood up started looking around and asked if either of those people were there. It took another five minutes before a threat of arresting everyone came to head and got the speaker to finally begin talking about what was going on, turns out someone had hired a flash mob crew (they were a bigger thing back then) for a marriage proposal, but no one showed up. After all of that was done, my dad found out that the person who hired the flash mob did so to rob a jewelry store up the road and assumed that the flash mob would draw all the police to the site, not having enough intelligence to realize a flash mob trespassing on a mostly empty machine free yard wouldn't rank higher than an armed robbery of a jewelry store. The guy was clever in a "yes yes yes, no" kind of way, the idea was logical but the execution and targets were absolute dogshit, he bragged about it, and was stupid enough to think that saying "you can't prove the flash mob was me!"....when literally no one asked him about the flash mob, he was smart but also extremely dumb. His name was actually Kyle, his wife is actually named Danielle, and he paid the flash mob crew with his own money...dumb. I would pay to have a video of his lawyers face, I doubt it was a fun day for them. 12.) From alwaysmyfault: Not a police officer, but I know one. I'm sure he has a million stories, but my favorite that he's told me was the time he was called to a local Mexican restaurant. When he arrived, he was directed to a Cadillac in the parking lot that was a rockin, if you get my drift. He knocks on the window, and a butt ass naked 80 year old woman gets out, pissed off that someone interrupted her getting laid. Her 80 year old husband was laying naked in the vehicle still. This old woman stood outside of her vehicle, completely naked, for a solid 5 minutes, arguing w my friend about how she should be able to get laid whenever she wants. There was more to the story of course, but as I'm not the first hand story teller, I can't do the story the proper justice it deserves. He didn't arrest them, even though she stood naked outside for 5 minutes, so she got off easy (pun intended). 13.) From copswithguns: Did a stop on a pretty obvious dope car. Driver is tweaking on meth. Passenger also tweaking and is a female that weighs 95 pounds while being 5’8 or so. She looked like a concentration camp victim. She’s offering to provide oral services in exchange for her release. Obviously I decline. Guy in the back appears to be asleep. I get his ID from the tweaking driver as my backup arrives. We get all 3 out, I can see needles all over the car. The guy in the back wakes up and gets out. Dispatch gives us returns, letting us know the back passenger is has a parole violation (he was released early from prison IYDK) for felon in possession of a firearm. The dispatcher was supposed to warn us before giving the return out loud over the radio but didn’t in this case. Old dude stands up and reaches in his waistband. I see this happening in slow motion and realize it’s about to get real. My partner swings from around the other side of the vehicle where he was talking to one of the other suspects. I start to yell gun in time for my partner to straight up linebacker this dude, which we got into cuffs. Had a .45 in the waistband. I went home and hugged my son, who was 1 at the time. 14.) From SgtSavage1106: Answered a disturbance call to find a drunk dude climbing in a car while his wife screamed at him. She smacked his windshield with a bat, destroying it as he peeled out. We followed him maybe .5 mile with the sirens and lights while he drove with his head out the window Ace Ventura style. Poor bastard didn’t get his head back inside in time passing a UPS truck and his head pieces ended up on my windshield. 15.) From tenthplagueb: I just asked my dad, who was a cop for 30+ years. He told me he pulled over a car full of "Woodchucks", older drunkards from a rural area in the Northeast area of the US. He was in his late 20's at the time, so in good shape compared to the drunks. I think there were 4. While my dad was processing the driver, he had him in the front seat of his car. Once the guy realized he was probably going to be arrested, he started ripping the radio and anything he could grab out of his car. He grabbed my dad and pulled him out of the passenger side of his vehicle and onto the ground. My dad landed between this guy's legs and into some kind of leg-lock chokehold. The guy, during all this, has started to scream to his friends to get his gun and kill him. Once he has him in a leg-lock, he looks down and says "now I'm gonna kill you." before he starts to choke my dad with his legs. I guess backup showed up just in time, or had been there, the deputy at the time hit him in the head with a baton and sent him out. 16.) From fastcapy: My first day on the job with a small dept. Get an animal complaint at a house along the river. RP states there are some angry geese in her yard that won't let her out her door. My FTO (field training officer) and I roll up. Sure enough, a gaggle of 8 big angry geese in the yard are basically barricading the little old lady in her house. We try to make noise and scatter them. They have no fear and go on the offensive. We retreat to take cover behind the squad car as we formulate a plan. We decide we will use the dog control poles, which we normally use to wrangle loose dogs, to try and catch the geese while keeping them a safe distance from us. The FTO gives me the brand new pole that has yet to be used. The FTO and I both grab a pole and head back into battle. I get close to one and it takes off running. I follow in hot pursuit. I get within reach and make a diving leap with the pole and somehow manage to get the noose around it's neck and pull it tight. As my body crashes to the ground, the pole falls free of my grasp. I watch in shock as the damn goose runs into the river dragging the brand new control pole behind. I figured the goose would slip the noose once in the water and the pole would go to the bottom of the river. Great, now the chief is gonna be pissed I lost the brand new pole in the river... Well, the next day we got a call from a bus driver reporting kids on the bus we're upset that they could see a dead goose as they crossed the bridge and it appeared someone strangled it with some kind of pole... Oh F... Sure enough that damn goose from the day before never shook the noose and managed to get the pole stuck on a piece of drift wood, pulled the noose tight and strangled itself right in view of the school kids heading over the bridge on the bus... The FTO and I headed over to the boat launch and commandeered a pontoon boat, headed to the dead goose and plucked it from the river. The boater was not quite sure what to think of the whole ordeal but we all ended up having a good laugh and I got our new animal control pole back! I never lived it down. Tl;dr: Got in an altercation with a goose, lost the departments new animal control pole, upset a bunch of kids on their way to school and commandeered a boat to retrieve the now accidentally dead goose. 17.) From -CarterG-: My partner and I once received a call out about an escaped swan. Let me tell you we definitely did not have any luck catching it. 18.) From subarutim: I've told this story before on reddit. I was a special deputy at the Aspen airport (Sardy Field). This was about 1990. I was just standing around the front of the very quiet airport one summer's day, gazing at the sky (pretty stoned, I think ;)... In drives Dr. Hunter S. Thompson in his old red convertible (yes, that one). He was wearing a long blonde wig, and was sitting up on the back of the seat, steering with a foot. I assume he had rigged some kind of throttle control (probably just a stick, lol). It was just me on the sidewalk, and him in the traffic circle doing a slow crawl-by. It was such a slow day there were no porters on duty. He did the Queen wave, just slowly going past me... I was in stitches. One of the most surreal moments of my life. I got a private performance by one of the most strange and intelligent dudes, ever. We'd had other encounters, but this one was special ;) 19.) From poopypantsposse: My dads a cop. One time Owen Wilson was filming a movie in the city my dad is a cop in. My dad caught him intoxicated peeing in a bush in public.