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Comment by notyourwork | Hacker News Reader

> 2) Call the police, don't "complain about the noise", tell them you want to "swear out a complaint" for violating ordinance x, paragraph y. They are obligated to take your complaint and forward it to the District Attorney[1].

Good luck getting them to pick up. At least where I live (Seattle), I don't think its possible to get someone on the phone unless you call 911. Daytime phones automated system defers everything to online.

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City council meetings are for this. They typically have a citizen comments section at the end of the meeting.

Where I live, these citizen comments are beloved by wingnuts who hate their neighbors and are trying to convince the city to harass them. So - you know - try not to come off as one of those.

Agreed, per my comment the 1:1 meeting with your representative works well too. I don't know how common it is but I have found my city council member always willing to sit down for 5 - 20 minutes to hear what I have to say. Want to emphasize again though about doing a bit of research at the library about just what ordinances are involved and how to identify them for law enforcement to use. This helps your rep appear to be smart and well informed when they go to the police chief or city manager to ask them to "can you do something about this?" kind of request.

That saves waiting for your turn at the podium in the meeting and it avoids the wingnuts labeling you as the person "out to get them." Both are good things IMHO.

I lived in Portland for years - and it's the same. Even if you did get someone on the phone, I doubt anything would happen. There's tons of cars without plates, mufflers, windshields, etc. driving around that the police don't care about.

Another upside to living in the flyover states I guess? I can get multiple people up to the mayor on the line.

I fear Oregon may become a flyover state. I was at a local meetup (though admittedly, all tech centric) in Portland and there was consistent joking about how Oregon is what you see when you're traveling between Seattle and California or California and Seattle.

Actually faster here to dial the non-emergency. I once called 911 because a 7 year old child approached me at a gas station asking for money. I was put on hold. When I called the non-emergency I got through right away. The cherry on top was when I received a callback from 911 dispatch over an hour later to check if I was okay.

As someone who has lived in a variety of south-east US cities, the idea that nobody picks up on the non-emergency police line is bananas to me. Is this really true?

For good reason, have you SEEN how crazy most of the public that would be calling is?

Are you unfamiliar with “non-emergency” lines? I’ve made considerably more (obviously still not a large number) of calls to the non-emergency number than 911. Most recently when my car was towed but the two company hadn’t updated their database quickly enough, for example.

I thought that being able to connect to a live human operator / police dispatcher outside of 911 was ubiquitous in America.

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