Being safe is one’s utmost priority. So when you sense danger one must immediately call the cops. That’s what this woman did in the story. However her sister was not supportive of her calling the cops. Read the story and what do you think of this situation.
Source: Reddit
Background: I(40F) am unmarried, no kids. My sister (45F) is married with 3 kids, and bought a house about 3-4 years ago in the “Super Nice” suburb of town. It’s a great area – lots of parks, trails, with a really good school system. I found and bought a house in the same neighborhood. I loved it for the size of the yards, great for my dogs. Love I can now walk or jog to all the trails and the local lake. It is, however, very suburban and most of the people here have families, making me a little bit of an outlier. I’m fine with that, I don’t really care.
I live in the house by myself. Neighbors have been nice but most of them hang out with each other and have play dates with the kids. There are neighborhood BBQs that I have been to.
So a week ago I was watching TV at home (around 9pm), and all of a sudden my dogs started going crazy. My doorbell rings multiple times, and then rapid knocking. I jump off my couch, look at my Ring doorbell and it’s a stranger, male, knocking on my door. I have no idea who he is, and he just keeps banging on my door. My dogs are freaking out. So I called the cops. He goes away after about 5-7mins, the cops show up 20mins later. I showed them the video, they told me they know who it is (wouldn’t tell me), and then left.
The next day I got a phone call from my sister. She’s super pissed that I “called the cops on Dave” and how could I do that in this community. I’m confused…who is Dave? Oh it’s apparently the local neighborhood watch guy and school teacher, and he thought I was driving too fast down the street and wanted to talk with me. I was flabbergasted – 1) There’s no way to drive fast in this neighborhood, there are stop signs everywhere, cops everywhere (they have their own police force), and there are speed bumps every 2 blocks. 2) Why didn’t he call/text/email before knocking on the door at 9pm in anyone’s house, much less a single woman at home? Sister said that my reaction was totally over the top and “you don’t live in the hood anymore. People visit other people”
I stand by my right to be safe and not get harassed by the neighbor. Sister is pissed because there was no danger whatsoever, and apparently this was the discussion at the recent PTA meeting, and since I wasn’t there (why would I go to a PTA meeting), she was charged with “defending” me and now she looks bad by association. She also brought up that I walk my dogs “without a bra on” all the time, and that’s just not good (WTF).
She wants me to reach out to Dave and apologize and say that I am absolutely sorry for calling the cops AND driving fast. She told me that I needed to play nice with the neighbors unless I wanted to be moving in a year. Maybe I did overreact, but I am just so annoyed that I don’t want to do anything related to that, and maybe that makes me AH. Did I go too far here? What are your opinions? What should I do?
Here are a few comments on the story where it was originally posted:
