“Are people really that dumb?”
“Have you met humanity?”
-J. and C.
Working with the police means that you get more than your daily allotted amount of evil glee. Robberies gone wrong, the occasional drug induced streaking incident, and dozens of reports of missing items a day (with the complainant usually returning sheepishly an hour later saying they’d just put their backpack in another room, they found their keys in the fridge, or that their wallet was, in fact, in their pocket the entire time. Yes, all of these have happened) are great sources of amusement. But the best/worst (depending on your point of view) stories usually involve a particular type of person: the Concerned Citizen. These minions of annoyance lurk everywhere but a few of them manage to reach truly aggravating levels.
Underling CC’s – call the police to inform them of events outside their jusidiction (“There was an accident on the highway, aren’t you sending somebody?!” “Ma’am, the highway is in another city…”)
Intermediate CC’s – call the police to inform us of incidents absurdly outside our control (“Someone parked too close to my car!” “Are you unable to enter your car?” “No, I can get in.” “Has your car been damaged in any way?” “No, but they could have damaged it. What are you going to do about it?”)
Advanced CC’s – seem to have a standing appointment to call the police once a week informing them of the same incident, usually based on some form of bigotry that makes you want to smack them with a big wad of common sense/decency (“There’s a bunch of (insert race description here) who keep going in and out of the house next door!” “Yes, sir, as you might be aware the Ramirez/Chin/Ogatoo family lives next door to you. Our records show that, according to your phone calls, they have lived there for some time.”)
And then, on a completely different plane, we have over-protective parents. One student’s mother called the police after her son failed to come home from work when she expected him (note, she did not call her son). Turns out he still had a while to work. And the reigning queen of freakouts is the mother who called the police when her son didn’t answer his phone (a single call, mind you). Her son was “found” in his dorm room, safe and sound.
Anyone else pity these women’s potential daughters-in-law?
Small Dog Syndrome 
Ah, the descendants of the original witch hunters. Nice to know that some psychopathic tendencies remain in the gene pool.
I will admit I called the police because I couldn’t find my four year old son at church. Our church is not all that small and I had looked everywhere or I thought I had. I had been looking for about twenty minutes and was in a panicked state, I asked others to help me find him, when he couldn’t be found I called the police. Only to find him later in the nursery. The one place he shouldn’t be. I assumed if he had gone into the nursery they would’ve taken back to where he should be. I had to call the police back and tell them “Never mind.” Felt like a complete idiot. But I would rather feel like an idiot then not to have my son.
I agree you should never take risks with missing children…but I stand by my opinion that mothers shouldn’t call the police looking for twenty-two year old (actual age of one student) sons who missed a phone call.
Wow! I bet you do get some interesting experiences working in Provo, Utah!
It’s really no wonder that the 22 year old guy did not answer the phone when his mother called!!