I work in 911 dispatch, so I often get to spend a large portion of my night listening to the absolute dumbest reasons imaginable that people get into fights, and an amazing of them could be avoided by someone just walking the fuck away or closing a door.
A couple of highlights
I get a call from a very angry person. They wanted to park in a space that someone else was parked in. Other party was sitting in their car. This wasn’t reserved or permit parking or a private lot or anything of the sort, just public street parking in a fairly busy downtown area, and I don’t think it was even time restricted or metered or anything like that. Caller had asked them (and from their tone with me, I suspect they didn’t ask politely) to move so they could park there. Person sitting in the car told them to say please. They get into a bit of a shouting match, and I end up having to send a cop out to get 2 grown ass adults to say “please and thank you” to each other and explain what street parking is. I’m tempted to side with the person in the parked car because the caller was an asshole to me, but the truth is they both suck, either one of them could have just driven away at any time and not had to make it anyone else’s problem.
Another one was a domestic. We got calls from both parties, my caller was inside the house, their ex was outside, and they were arguing through the open door. I get all the info I need, told them to close the door and stop arguing with their ex and just wait inside until the cops got there, and went on to answer my next call. Couple minutes later I see that we now have EMS going to the house. Apparently at some point after I ended my call, they opened the door to continue arguing and got pepper sprayed. Wouldn’t have happened if they just kept the damn door closed like I told them to.
Another time my caller had just gotten off of a bus and was following a group of teenagers who had threatened him with a knife on the bus. I told him to stop following them because they have a fucking knife. This bonehead tells me it’s ok because he has a knife too. Motherfucker, I don’t want any of you idiots getting stabbed. They’re walking away, let them walk away. If you have the option to not get into a knife fight, take that option. Especially don’t get into a knife fight with a bunch of teenagers.
Those are probably the most obviously insane ones, but I’m pretty hard-pressed to think of more than a handful of disturbances or domestics I’ve had where both parties were totally unable to separate from each other. Close your door, go to your separate rooms, roll up your windows, just fucking leave and go for a walk or a drive, whatever it takes, just stop escalating the situation.
There are some times where standing your ground can be justified, but I think there’s far more cases where people should have a duty to retreat instead.
I am in my apartment and hearing banging and yelling. Come out and my neighbor is in the hallway. Banging on his door demanding his gf let him in. Shows me his watch and said they had an argument and she smashed it. We talk for a bit and I suggest he spend the night with a relative even offering to drive him. He doesn’t want to, wants to continue to bang on the door and resume the fight. I get frustrated and tell him (this is as best as I can remember it) “you are a 19 year old black kid having a domestic with like 40 people who can hear you. How do you think this is going to go for you when someone gets angry enough to call 9-1-1? And lord fucking help you if one of those drug sniffing dogs barks one time. Now do you want to continue in this hallway until that happens or do you want to chill with me until your grandmother picks you up?”
What is wrong with people? Take a walk and calm down before it gets out of hand.
Then they don’t understand why whatever happened to them when they couldn’t leave the situation. Being right (in their mind) is more important than being alive, I guess.
I work in 911 dispatch, so I often get to spend a large portion of my night listening to the absolute dumbest reasons imaginable that people get into fights, and an amazing of them could be avoided by someone just walking the fuck away or closing a door.
A couple of highlights
I get a call from a very angry person. They wanted to park in a space that someone else was parked in. Other party was sitting in their car. This wasn’t reserved or permit parking or a private lot or anything of the sort, just public street parking in a fairly busy downtown area, and I don’t think it was even time restricted or metered or anything like that. Caller had asked them (and from their tone with me, I suspect they didn’t ask politely) to move so they could park there. Person sitting in the car told them to say please. They get into a bit of a shouting match, and I end up having to send a cop out to get 2 grown ass adults to say “please and thank you” to each other and explain what street parking is. I’m tempted to side with the person in the parked car because the caller was an asshole to me, but the truth is they both suck, either one of them could have just driven away at any time and not had to make it anyone else’s problem.
Another one was a domestic. We got calls from both parties, my caller was inside the house, their ex was outside, and they were arguing through the open door. I get all the info I need, told them to close the door and stop arguing with their ex and just wait inside until the cops got there, and went on to answer my next call. Couple minutes later I see that we now have EMS going to the house. Apparently at some point after I ended my call, they opened the door to continue arguing and got pepper sprayed. Wouldn’t have happened if they just kept the damn door closed like I told them to.
Another time my caller had just gotten off of a bus and was following a group of teenagers who had threatened him with a knife on the bus. I told him to stop following them because they have a fucking knife. This bonehead tells me it’s ok because he has a knife too. Motherfucker, I don’t want any of you idiots getting stabbed. They’re walking away, let them walk away. If you have the option to not get into a knife fight, take that option. Especially don’t get into a knife fight with a bunch of teenagers.
Those are probably the most obviously insane ones, but I’m pretty hard-pressed to think of more than a handful of disturbances or domestics I’ve had where both parties were totally unable to separate from each other. Close your door, go to your separate rooms, roll up your windows, just fucking leave and go for a walk or a drive, whatever it takes, just stop escalating the situation.
There are some times where standing your ground can be justified, but I think there’s far more cases where people should have a duty to retreat instead.
I am in my apartment and hearing banging and yelling. Come out and my neighbor is in the hallway. Banging on his door demanding his gf let him in. Shows me his watch and said they had an argument and she smashed it. We talk for a bit and I suggest he spend the night with a relative even offering to drive him. He doesn’t want to, wants to continue to bang on the door and resume the fight. I get frustrated and tell him (this is as best as I can remember it) “you are a 19 year old black kid having a domestic with like 40 people who can hear you. How do you think this is going to go for you when someone gets angry enough to call 9-1-1? And lord fucking help you if one of those drug sniffing dogs barks one time. Now do you want to continue in this hallway until that happens or do you want to chill with me until your grandmother picks you up?”
What is wrong with people? Take a walk and calm down before it gets out of hand.
Then they don’t understand why whatever happened to them when they couldn’t leave the situation. Being right (in their mind) is more important than being alive, I guess.