Do you ever walk by a situation where the cops have already shown up and you can just tell it's a mess?
Yeah, imagine how the cops who showed up must have felt. The situation was likely even more of a mess before they got there.
You don't know what fires got put out, what people got arrested, and how much of the mess got cleaned up before you ever laid eyes on it.
u/HelpIsWhatINeedPls asked:
Cops of reddit, what is the most "What the heck happened here?" moment you've experienced?
Here were some of the answers.
Trigger warning for extreme violence, blood, and gore.
Nothing To Be Done
Former cop. Was a rookie deputy and got this call that a man got his foot caught in a garden tiller and was bleeding profusely. It was a 20 min drive running code so I had time to plan out my actions. I figured the ambulance would be about 10 minutes behind me so I was gonna tourniquet above the knee and i assumed he'd be unconscious and/or needing cpr. I get there and it's a big farm building with two guys just standing their smoking. I grabbed my medic bag (not a medic but it had tourniquet, c collars, gauze etc,,) I run towards them to ask where the patient was and they were white as a ghost just smoking while pointing behind them. I went inside and behind a big John Deere tractor was a huge pto driven tiller about 7 feet wide and 3 feet tall.
There was my victim, with his back against the tractor tire, his left leg was sucked in the tiller and wrapped twice around it with the sole of the shoe next to his face and toe pointing towards the left. His femur shot out underneath the tiller and was beautifully white with no blood. He looked up at me and said "can you help me?" Now keep in mind, I'm 21, thought this was a garden tiller and assumed I'd be able to do something but I was completely out of my element. Two ambulances, the rural fire department extrication team, a welding company to cut the machine apart on scene, a helicopter and a surgeon that came to amputate on scene later he was free.
Not What It Seems
Late to the party but my favorite so far has got to be the tale of the UFO/ALIENS.
I was a cop on the rez for a while and had my fair share of crazies. One night, I'm out driving around and I get a call from dispatch. There's a UFO out in one of the farmer's fields.
Ok?
So I get to the house and talk with the guy. We know each other, he doesn't seem to be THAT looney. I turn my spotlight onto said field and sure as heck, there's something not quite right there. It's metal.
So I go bee-bopping through the furrows and hoping my scarediness isn't showing because this. Is. Freaky. It was an autumn night with the wind howling and clouds blowing overhead.
I get closer. I have one hand on my holstered gun and the other shining my flashlight. I was rehearsing what I was going to say to our new overlords and then my brain finally clicks as to what it actually was.
A wad of those STUPID MYLAR BALLOONS! All blown up and caught on some weeds. I'm talking like twenty of them, just chilling and scaring the heck out of me.
I grab them and walked back out to the farmer. He started laughing and then I did too. I handed them over to him and got back in my squad, still shaking.
The sad part was, he passes away a few years ago, and his family gave me those deflated balloons that he had kept. I have them in my basement now.
What Kind Of Bird?
I'm taking a slightly different approach in answering this question.
A couple of months ago, I got a "QA"/ Questionable Activity call...it's a catch all for anything suspicious...
The caller stated she believed someone had snuck into her backyard, climbed up onto her second floor deck and then left an imprint of their penis on her sliding door.
I show up to the call about 5 minutes later and she's mad at me because I didn't schedule an appointment to come over and her kids saw me...she didn't want her kids to think something bad had happened.
After we get past her anger towards me for showing up, she shows me the glass sliding door in question. In all fairness to the caller there was a sizable smudge and imprint on the glass.
However the imprint looked nothing like any penis I've ever seen...in fact the imprint looked really similar to the dead bird laying on the deck next to the door.
When I pointed out the dead bird and explained my belief that no penis had been placed on her door, the caller became incredibly irate and told me she moved to our city because it was supposed to be very safe, but now she was thinking of moving away because naked people throwing dead birds at her house was more than she could handle...
Realizing I would not be able to rationalize with penis bird, I left and wrote my report...
...some people don't deserve to call 911
New Kinds Of House Calls
My dad told me the one time he went to a house and and a women pulled something out of her shopping bag and started hitting him with it. He's trying to stop her but the other officers are all laughing. Finally he realizes that she's beating him with a dildo.
Quite An Assortment
One time we got a call about a minor wreck in a highway corridor. We get there, I'm handling the accident.
A hundred yards down there is a car on flats. And another further down from that. Unrelated to the accident. One of the drivers walked back to us and told us a sketchy guy had been stopping at these cars to offer his help in fixing the flats. The theory was that he threw something on the road to flatten the tires so that he could 'help' and get money from the drivers.
I'm stuck at the back end of this mess, on the radio trying to get another unit to detain the shady guy.
All of the sudden I look over and there's a guy in nothing but a hospital gown and an IV hanging out of his arm just toddling along the shoulder. The nearest hospital was several miles away so I have no idea how he covered that distance with nobody noticing.
So here I am with 1. A car wreck 2. A guy possibly flattening tires on purpose and 3. An escaped hospital patient. All completely unrelated, on a major highway late at night.
A Mobile Limb
A friend of mine is a cop in the UK and his story is more wtf as he saw it unfold, but missed how it all started. It was his first week out on patrol and he was assigned to an experienced partner. They respond to a burglary in progress and are told that a nearby dog unit was on the scene already. When they arrive at the property they hear a commotion outside that's clearly between an officer and a suspect, and they open the garden gate to assist the dog unit.
What they then witness is a suspect face down on the grass, an officer stamping on the suspect's back whilst holding his arm up near her hip and shouting "stop resisting!", and the police dog absolutely going to town on this guys buttocks with his teeth. The suspect is, unsurprisingly, struggling and resisting and then ends up kicking the dog. The dog then latches onto the guys leg, starts ferociously tugging, PULLS IT OFF and then runs towards the new cops on the scene with it. It turns out that was a false leg (which no-one except the suspect knew at the time), and my buddy the cop said he just froze whilst trying to figure out how the hell he calls this in and whether or not he should retrieve the man's leg from the police dog.
Oh The Shudders You'll Shudder!
As a brand new ER nurse we had two police officers drop off a naked man bleeding from his groin area. We were informed he was not in custody but they would be in the waiting room to arrest him when he was discharged (the city would have had to pay for his care if he was under arrest) the man refused to say anything "without his lawyer" so all I knew was the chief complaint, cut on scrotum. I take off the towel and get to see my first testicle, as in without the normal fleshy covering. The way the skin was ripped I thought for sure a police dog was involved. I'll spare you the rest of the gory details.
Someone manages to get the backstory out of the cops, dude was in the shower when they arrived to arrest him on a meth charge. He runs and tries to hop over a chain link fence. Not nearly as exciting as I was thinking.
An Extreme Overreaction
Show up to a "trouble unknown" call. Teenage looking girl walks out the front door as I arrive, and sits on a chair in the front listening to an iPod. This was pretty disarming for me, she was clearly not distressed at all from whatever the "trouble unknown" was.
I didn't even disturb her as I knocked on the front door. I can see an adult male through the side glass by the door, he has a look of absolute terror. As he reaches the door, a crazed looking woman attacks him from behind, biting his shoulder like a zombie. I would later learn this is his wife.
Dispatch, give me the channel and get me more officers here now. I open the door and the fight is on. Pull this woman off and wrestle her to the ground, face down. She's very small framed, probably 5' and 100lbs max. I'm a foot taller and 80lbs heavier. She's screaming and flailing. I grab hold of her right arm, attempting to put it behind her back for handcuffing but she is supernaturally strong for some reason. I've got both hands on her right wrist now trying to control her and she's not giving at all.
I try pain compliance, muscle gouges, anything to give me an advantage. No response, still fighting. It felt like this was going on for a long time but in reality it was a few minutes. Finally backup arrives, and he immediately goes to grab her left arm, seeing what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm finally able to get a handcuff on her wrist and pin it to her back, and my partner cuffs the other wrist, but she slips out (small frame, small hands/wrist). This happened a few times in a row, and finally out of frustration I yelled "just clamp the cuff all the way down, we'll adjust it when she's under control!"
Finally get her cuffed but she's still flailing and screaming. Other officers arrive at this point as well as paramedics. They're unable to assess her at all really. The husband tells us they bought some cheep herb from a sketchy dude in town and after smoking it she flipped out. I assume it was laced with something, he said he smoked too but didn't have a reaction, so who knows.
We had to drive this lady up to the hospital in a patrol car. She calmed down a little but the entire ride she was rambling about nonsense. The hospital was prepared and had several large nurses waiting and we got her strapped down to a bed, I told the staff about the weed and said "good luck!" When my adrenaline was gone, my forearms were so sore, they felt like rocks from fighting with this tiny woman. Moral of the story, don't smoke stuff you bought from the town crack head.
When The Law Doesn't Work
Too many to choose from I forget them all. So how about non-fatal ones that are kinda upbeat?
Car in a pond. Guy bought the car, hated it, got so angry he literally drove it into a pond and they left. Ticket for littering cause I jumped in to see if anyone was in the car.
Car wrecked in a tree...IN A TREE, like up in the middle of the branches, I just..don't know how.
Half missing decomposing dead body from natural death. Turned out the many cats in the house ate half that person. (Ok that ones gross)
A ride-along had a warrant and got tased by the Officer they where with, trying to run from. That was a more of wtf moment hearing it over the radio.
Guy going through a divorce and decided to renovate his house at 2am with a sledge hammer, by taking out all the walls and furniture, cause his future ex got awarded the house. (Didn't arrest him, was still his house, just keep the noise down please)
The Crazy Lottery
Not me but my dad but when he was on the road years back he got a call from a man saying he was locked in someone's closet. So he goes to the location of the call which was a project housing unit and knocks on the door. A man answered exclaiming "I CAUGHT ONE! I CAUGHT ONE!" My dad has absolutely no idea was this dude means until he opens up the closet and sees a man with dwarfism tied up in the closet. Apparently the man was going door to door for some organization and when the psycho dude opened his door he thought he found a leprechaun and proceeded to "catch" it and throw it in his closet for safekeeping.
Dating and the search for love and companionship... What a nightmare.
This journey plays out nothing like in the movies.
Every Prince or Princess (or everything in BTW) seems to have a touch of the psycho.
The things people say during what should be simple dinner conversation can leave a dining partner aghast.
Like... do you hear you?
Redditor detroit_michigldan wanted to discuss all the best ways to crash and burn when trying to make a romantic connection. They asked:
"You're on a date and it's going really great. What can another person say to ruin it completely?"
I once had a guy ask me if I was willing to follow him into the woods, depending on the price of the meal.
Yeah. No steak is worth that.
Plans After...
"Thanks for the ride but I have a date with someone else, I figured you wouldn't drive me if you knew I was going on a date with someone else and I really needed a ride."
"Online dating, talked to her for a while, finally got the courage to ask her out and then she said that as we got there."
iareyours
Mirror Image
“'You look just like my wife!'”
catalinachild
"I did have a guy tell me I reminded him of his son. I don’t believe English has a word to adequately describe my feelings at that time."
UnicornMagicRainbow
"That would definitely do it."
chaotica78
Third Wheel
"'Hope you don't mind if my mother joins us.'"
ofsquire
"Actually had a girl do this on a first date because she had anxiety issues. Honestly wasn’t bad except that 90% of the time she was silent and her mom talked over her."
"I didn’t mind that much and wouldn’t have minded trying again when she was more comfortable except that she was let go at the company we worked at and she deleted her social media profiles and she never responded on her number. Ah well."
Seightx
Liar
"'Hey bro aren't you gay? I made out with you last night.'"
"Random dude I've never seen before in front of my (f) date."
JHXC16
Was he lying though?
Filter Issues
"'You looked better on Tinder.'"
waqasnaseem07
"Isn’t it basic knowledge that everybody looks slightly worse than the worst picture you can find?"
no_user_ID_found
The Past
"'My ex used to do that too.'"
xxIvyOF
"Yep. I’ve definitely had two otherwise-decent-guy date-situations sour because the ex-comparisons just would not stop flowing. No woman wants to be seen as interchangeable—I’m not here to perfectly fill that ex-sized hole in your life. Focusing on the present moment and a future we could build together is a courtesy we need to grant each other in earliest dates of dating."
LarkScarlett
Powerless
"'I'm an alpha, you cant handle my top energy.'"
Midnightgay28
"I actually left a dude in the middle of dinner, in part, for saying this. I ordered an Uber under the table while pretending to listen to him. Went to the bathroom, and never came back. That was when I was young. Now I’d just say, 'How about we enjoy this meal in silence, before we head our separate ways.'”
UnicornMagicRainbow
Mommy...
"'Mother says I should be back by 9.'"
"Saying 'mother says' just feels weird."
bunnyrut
"That gives me Norman Bates vibes."
Werewolf_lover20
"'Mother says alligators are aggressive because they have an overabundance of teeth, but lack a toothbrush.'"
sodaextraiceplease
Obvs...
"'If you were going to be murdered, what method would you prefer. Purely hypothetical. Obvs.'"
Specific_Tap7296
If it looks anything like a Dateline NBC episode... RUN!
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Despite the advancement of technology rendering people left to their own devices–literally–to entertain them, there are some leisurely activities that will never go out of style.
Or so you would think.
Do people still knit to pass the time? Are people actively collecting stamps?
It depends on who's asking.
Curious to hear about hobby trends, Redditor gizehgizeh asked:
"What are once popular hobbies that are slowly dying these days?"

Before we've become conditioned to living on our phones, these activities used to keep people occupied.
Before Texting, There Was This
"Letter writing."
– littlekingMT
Literal And Tangible Joy
"Well the internet killed pen pals for sure. I do remember I had a Japanese girl for a penpal maybe back in 2007 or so. I honestly don't remember how it started, pretty sure some website, but that was a fun experience. But now I can just straight up talk to foreign people real time, lol. But yea getting a physical letter that someone took the time to write and mail still is hard to beat feelings wise."
– skyburnsred
Model Trains
"When I was growing up, every town had a model train store in it. Now I have one in region and everything else has to be bought online."
– Hairy_Effective1172
Pretty Rocks
"Don’t see anyone playing marbles anymore, I had an awesome collection in school."
– sheeple85
"I had some marbles as a kid in the 90s. My grandma got them for me and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with them. I always imagined them as a thing kids in the 40s played with."
– Ryoukugan
People Were Moving Canvases
"Paintball has been dying a slow death since 2006. Sad, really."
– hobo_recycler
Before the general population began hating clutter, collecting was once a "thing."
Precious Coins
"Coin collecting... I'm a silver/gold nut and I'm always hunting for precious metal coins. whenever I go into a shop they get all excited because 'no one under 70 collects coins anymore.'"
– ThatFishySmell99
Post It
"Stamp collecting."
– spooky_scully_mulder
"Collecting in general, really. Of course there are still prominent collectors but it's slipped more into enthusiast and niche territory than being a popular hobby that you might expect anyone to have."
– iuytrefdgh436yujhe2
What A Gem
"Rockhounding was immensely popular back in the 1950's and 1960's. Personally, I think it's a fascinating and fulfilling hobby, but when I go to a meeting at a rock and gem club, I'm usually the youngest one in the room by several decades."
– filthy_lucre
People once enjoyed making things.
Admiring The View
"Stained glass. I learned how to make it from my old man, and my junior high art class teacher also taught it. Very few artisans are still around."
– brobeanzhitler
Metal Vocation
"Black smithing."
– kenworth117
"I bought a forge to try. It’s insanely hard work, and crazy expensive. I still haven’t finished a piece."
– DSentvalue
Scrapbooking
"Yeah. I'm watching the arts and crafts stores around me completely uninstalling their racks for specialty paper. Now the only thing they have is mega packs of repeating colors/images. To boot all the inclusions like papercraft/die-cut things, washi tape, scissors, stickers, etc have gotten so expensive I would rather go buy $5 bags at value village to get an assortment of things versus buying anything new. I really, really miss yard sales for the same reasons."
– Phantasmai
I envy people who have jobs that are basically their hobbies.
Not everyone gets paid doing what they actually enjoy and have a profound level of passion for.
If they do, kudos to them.
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When we first meet someone–whether through mutual friends, at school, or in a new work setting–we generally feel people out to determine if they're worth getting to know.
While the process could take time, some people make our jobs much easier after spotting instant red flags.
Curious to hear about our general radar of people, Redditor xxFluffie asked:
"What is something that makes you immediately dislike someone?"

Some people just think they are absolutely hilarious and never realize they're the only ones laughing.
Next In Line
"They laugh about having screwed someone else over. If you think you're not next, well, you'll learn."
– whiznat
Unfunny
"when you mention you don't like a thing and they immediately do that thing 'as a joke.'"
– wayfinder
Playing Devil's Advocate
"Kneejerk contrarians. People who, no matter what you say you like or believe, just have to dismiss it and say they like or think the opposite."
– BubbhaJebus
People who put others down get slammed here.
Bad Parents
"When they treat their kids sh**ty in public. I don't mean handling tantrums, setting a rule, having to hurry to the train etc. I mean perfectly normal-behaved kids getting in trouble for trailing along peacefully, looking at things, asking questions etc."
"If you don't like tiny humans who learn the world, why have them??"
– raxeira-etterath
Public Humiliation
"Treating people sh**ty in public for laughs. Like being rude to service workers because they think it’s funny. Big red flag."
– Ok_Personality_1080
Simply Uncalled For
"Someone who is a d*ck to other people or animals for no reason."
– xebt1000
Those with ulterior motives rubs people the wrong way.
The Scheme
"If they try to get me to join their MLM scheme."
– spazmcgee1
Hard Sell
"A guy I used to be friends with in high school reached out a couple of years after graduating about a business opportunity he wanted my opinion on because 'you've always been smart', then he set up a Skype call and brought some other dude into the call and they started trying to sell me on what was clearly an MLM scheme. The guy went from friend to 'I'm never talking to you again' in a matter of 10 minutes."
– Mental-Afternoon-164
A Timeline
"Good gawd, this! I've had more than one exposure to this abject bullsh**tery..."
- Back in the late 80's/early 90's I was invited to a meeting of literally the OG "Pyramid" where you're recruited to pay in, and then you go out and recruit others to pay in, and the last in line got f'kall.
- In 1995 I had a coworker try to reel me into Amway, which was a hard no.
- In 2000 it was Pampered Chef, though to be fair they did have useful products.
- In 2009 a coworker tried to get me into some stupid video calling service that was obviously stupid from the description. He even got offended when I called bullsh*t.
– Mystical_Cat
Too much ego is a no-go.
I Can Do Better
"Being a b*tch just to stroke their own ego."
"We get it, you can lift 5lbs more than the 12 year old, you don't have to rub it in their face just because you're slightly better"
– Livia_Pivia
Can't Top This
"Oh, you did <story that's been told>? That's nothing! I did <implausible story>.
"I get the whole empathy through relating common experience, and I'm someone who does that (which drives some people crazy on its own), but there's a big different by empathising through common experience, and one-upmanship."
– Tisarwat
Lacking Conversational Etiquette
"Starting to talk over me when I was already talking."
"Stop it you rude, arrogant jerk."
– R33Gtst
If one or more of these traits sound familiar to you, you're not alone.
We don't have time for braggadocios, pyramid-schemers, and conversation interrupters.
And that's just for starters.
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Children tend to believe just about anything they hear.
That there are monsters under your bed, watching too much TV will make your head explode, and silly faces will be permanent if you make them too often.
The sky is truly the limit when it comes to silly things that children will believe.
Some call it naivitée, other's youthful innocence.
But it's hard not to look back with embarrassment on certain things we believed as a child, that today might simply seem dumb.
Redditor Disastrous_Toe_6548 was curious to learn the multitude of silly things people believed when they were children, leading them to ask:
"What's the dumbest thing you believed as a kid?"
Pleading to deaf ears...
"My dad told me he had hearing loss and couldn't hear me if I whined because my pitch would get too high."
"Would completely ignore me until I asked him questions in a normal voice."
"Trusted him implicitly until I was 12 and he yelled at my younger brother for whining."- Tyrion_Stark.
Get it while you can.
"That they took everything off the shelves when the supermarket closed."- fgyfddg.
Silly superstitions.
"My grandfather used to tell me that if I played with the fire, I'd pee the bed."
"I believed him for a while, until I got older."
"I think he was just trying to protect me from the fire."- teddypa1981.
"Rain, rain go away..."
"That if it was raining where I was, it was raining everywhere in the world."- morningshartz.
Age is just a number.
"My parents used to seem really old to me, so much so I believed they grew up like cave people as children, wearing giant leaves for clothes and what not."- Laleena_.
So that's how they're made!
"That smokestacks from the power plant created clouds."- Scaniarix.
An instant cure.
"The sun gives you sunburns, therefore, moonlight should heal them."- velocipeter.
Better safe than sorry.
"Don't drink and drive meant all drinks."
"My dad was super confused when I told him he wasn't allowed to have any soda until we got home."- hulagirlslovetoparty.
Don't believe everything you see on TV.
"There was an episode of Mickey Mouse where Mickey couldn’t reach something at first, so he tried again and somehow his arm was long enough to reach it."
"As a small kid I believed that if I couldn’t reach something, I should just try reaching for it again and my arm would then somehow be long enough to reach it."- That-Dutch-Person.
The miracle of childbirth.
"That babies are pooped out."
"When I was like 7 I was listening to my aunt as she explained that childbirth was pretty intense and painful for her, and I was all solemnly like, 'yeah, sometimes just my poops are painful, I don’t think I could get a baby out' and she went 'um, WHAT?' and her reaction made me realize real quick that I had f*cked up somewhere and I tried to change the subject while my mind was just reeling lol."- thesoundingfurrows.
Oh to be a child again.
And to believe literally everything you're told.
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