Part 1 of a true story:


It's 3am. You awake to the sounds of your dogs barking, ferociously, within your bedroom. You are groggy and confused, woken from deep sleep. You think you hear yelling from another room of your house, but you can't discern what it is or if it even is yelling, over your 2 German shepherds' barking and the closed door. Your dogs have never done this before.

You live in a "transitional" area. You see drug deals down the street daily, you know that at least one house on your block has been hit by SWAT for drug dealers in the past, and you are 3 blocks from a housing project renown for gang-related violence, drugs, shootings, murders, etc. (Creekwood for any of the Wilmington-savvy viewers), and your street sees frequent foot-traffic from them.

You are a law-abiding citizen. You have never been in trouble before, not even a speeding ticket. You do not do drugs, you don't smoke weed or drink to excess. You and your wife have full-time jobs and pay your taxes. You don't have kids, either.


As you wake up you realize that you do hear voices, though you can't tell what they are saying. But they are in your house, at 3am, and the dogs are going nuts.

Both your phones are on the chargers in the kitchen. No house phone.


What do you do?



Part 2:

2008-ish, Wilmington NC.

It's 3am in the hood. 3am is the start of the long stretch on an overnight patrol shift. Life is pretty wild up to around 2:30. In NC bars stop serving at 2am on the dot, give the drunks another half hour to pour out and head home. A few fights, maybe a wreck. But by 3am they are mostly home and passed out.

An alarm call comes in. Alarm calls come in all the time. Matter of fact, the city is pondering enacting a fee for false alarms, as their recent study showed they are 97% false, and you get several every shift. False meaning an equipment malfunction, with no broken windows, open doors, etc. Officers generally answer them alone, and call backup if you find anything, that's how monotonous they are. Except at 3am, when everyone's bored, then usually one other will show up to get out of the car and stretch and maybe share a smoke.

You look at the address and map it in your head. You've worked this area for going on two years, this street itself is actually pretty nice, wide with older homes, but it is adjacent to straight shit, and the shit bleeds over. It's also a straight shot from the shit to downtown with nice sidewalks.

You had a foot chase on the street a couple of months ago, caught a dude selling weed within the block last month. You have spent several hours just sitting on the street, after speaking to a few neighbors about the drug sales in the area, on top of formal complaints they've made. You've seized guns and drugs on over a dozen occasions already in your short career at the housing project three blocks away--a project that officers don't go into alone at night. You remember an armed home invasion about 5 houses down in the last 3 months. And three murders in the area in the last 6 months. This is a Folk Nation controlled part of the city, but the Bloods control the rest, and are constantly fighting with the Folk Nation groups.

Your training officer was almost killed with his own gun by a guy on PCP nearby, one rookie before you. His rookie shot and killed him after he got 3 shots off at your training officer. You tick all these off and think this might actually be one of the 3%.

You ease down the street the house sits on and park far enough away to be able to sneak up. The call is about 2 minutes old at this point, maybe less. Your beat buddy parks with you, and you approach the house. The alarm is for a side door. The normal procedure is to do a quiet walk-around to look for anything out of place, say a broken window or a forced door, before making any decisions or taking any other action. You know from experience that a side door alarm notification is as reliable as the pull-out method. You start your walk, noticing two cars in the driveway, both cold to the touch.

As soon as you reach your side of the house, you find an open side door. Your heart rate goes up.

You take a deep breath and draw your gun, quietly radioing that you have an open door, requesting additional units. You ask dispatch to locate a phone number for the address and call it to see if they can reach anyone. As your backup is arriving, the dispatcher says they have located two numbers associated with the residence, but no-one is answering. They have also called the alarm company, and the alarm company has not been able to raise any of the contacts they have for the address. There has never been an alarm at the address before, false or otherwise.

You now have enough officers to prepare to enter the residence, to look for and apprehend what may be, at best, burglars. At worse, gang-banging murderers. You push the door open and begin yelling "Wilmington Police Department! Wilmington Police Department! Wilmington Police Department, Come out with your hands up!" You give this command several times over about a minute before you go in, preferring to err on the side of caution for any innocents than busting in unannounced.



All you can hear are barking dogs, as you enter the house and begin to search, continuing to loudly yell your warnings.



To be continued...


And now, The rest of the story:


As you enter the house, your two main concerns are confronting armed bad guys, and being confronted by armed residents, defending their home. This is on your mind. You've already tried to avoid the latter, by having your dispatcher try to call the residents and by yelling as loudly as you can. But thugs kick in doors and yell police, too...

The failure of anyone to answer could also mean the bad guys are either in progress, or have already finished and left. You know that one of the first things bad guys go after is a victim's phone, and tying people up and leaving them, dead or alive, is certainly in the realm of possibility.

But you've got a job to do. People buy alarms and install them and pay to have them monitored so that the police will show up when they are needed, and if you were tied up in the back room, you'd damn sure want the cops to come in.

So in you go.

And all you can hear are dogs barking.

You clear the first couple of rooms and start down a hallway, yelling "Police Department!" all the while. This is something you have done dozens of times. Well over a hundred, with this same group of guys. You're comfortable with it, HK USP .45 in one hand, Fenix TK10 in the other. Your heart rate is stable, you're ready for any surprises...you know what to expect from your team. As you continue you see several doors and they are all closed, including one at the end of the hall. Closed doors are OK. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, opened doors are the threats and are cleared first as you go. Unlocked doors are cleared when you come to them. That much makes sense. Locked doors are passed, and are for last. Never made sense to me--if I was a badguy hiding, I'd go into a room and lock the damn door. But that's how it's done.

You're pondering how much the statistical odds change every time you clear a room and find no one. It's a game you play in your head every time you do this...the more rooms you find to be empty, there must be a statistical formula that states how much your chances of finding a bad guy in the next room are. But if math was your forte, you'd be a naval officer right now, and not searching some house in the literal hood.

As you ponder your statistics, that end door opens.


And there are those two dogs that have been barking like the hound of Hades for the last 3 minutes. You and your guys light up the hallway with a couple thousand combined lumens, and see the dogs and a scared-shitless pasty white dude holding them back, in his tighty whiteys.

You quickly determine that Mr. Tighty Whitey isn't a threat, isn't a bad guy, and if he turns around the tighties might not still be white. So you shine your flashlight at your self so he can see your badge and uniform, giving one last "Wilmington Police Department!", and you see him breathe a sigh of relief. He and a woman ease out of the bedroom and close the door, leaving the dogs, saying they are OK.



The rest of the squad completes the search of the house and finds no one. You talk with the man and woman about the situation. They had gone to bed shortly after midnight. Both of them left their phones in the kitchen, charging, which was their standard practice. They pick them up and see multiple missed calls from their alarm company and police dispatch. Their dogs sleep with them in their bedroom, and had woken them suddenly from a deep sleep, barking like they wanted to eat someone. The residents weren't able to hear anything over the dogs' barking, but thought that they might have heard someone yelling. It was several minutes after they woke up before they could discern the word "Police" from the hallway.

Their alarm is not audible, so they didn't even know it had been triggered. When you tell them the activation had been a side door, and you found their side door open, the wife looks down at the ground, and sheepishly says that she had walked the dogs just before they went to bed and has a habit of forgetting to lock the door. You surmise that it was either attempted by a nefarious character and abandoned, or the wife had not properly shut it and it had been blown open with the wind.

Either way, the two check throughout and don't notice anything out of place. They thank you for your response and say they are going to try to go back to bed.



You go outside and light up a Turkish Gold with your buddies, and wait for the next call...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: chongosuerte,

Release the hounds...

Take up position behind my bed with the SIG556.

The best thing you can do is prepare, think and observe.

As long as you are in, your dogs are in, and your perimeter is unbroken, you have time. Opening your perimeter, turning on lights, opening windows or drapes (especially backlit from your interior lights) will reduce the time you have to think and observe.

But I have read this story before, so I have a pretty good idea of what's going on here.

Get behind solid cover with your firearm and a flashlight if you have one, while the wife's calling 911.
Do not expose yourself or open the door unless you have spoken to 911 and they tell you it's the police.
Hopefully you don't live in Southhaven, MS.
There is nothing outside your door that makes it worth going out there for.

Get behind the bed or furniture, point the gun at the door, be quiet and wait for them to enter or leave.

For the record, I do believe in shooting through walls but one must be very careful about that.

I live alone and I sleep with my bedroom door locked.

Pick up my P220ST with light, and my phone and dial 911 and tell them what I know/hear, and where I am in the house.
as I get to the safe in my closet to get my 870.

Then I'm gonna wait...

Can't protect my son by barricading in my bedroom, so I would have to go into the hallway with my rifle and WML, telling my wife to call the police and hide in the bedroom with the Glock 19. Since I haven't identified who is making the sounds, I think I would want to aggressively call out that I was armed, the police have been called, and that whoever it is should leave, if I see a threat, I will shoot.

If it's police for whatever reason, I would hope and pray they would have sense enough to stand off a second until we can verify everything. If it's an intruder, I would hope and pray that I hadn't tactically disadvantaged myself to hinder protecting my family.

I grab the 29 and a light,my dogs done got the perp beating them off,first chance at a clear shot I take care of the problem for striking my dogs

Kids in two different places in the house, so I'd have to go investigate. Gun and blindingly bright light. If it isn't a cop or a daughter, I'm probably shooting it. Only problem would be if the daughter was stupid enough to have a boy in the house without telling me - and I don't think she is....

I assume I'm being set up on my answer, but I'll still give you my response.

Given the description - I am in that boat right now. Just the wife & I with dogs. If I hear voices in my home at 3 am and no one is to be there, I am letting my dogs out and shooting whoever is inside. (Have a 2022 with streamlite in my nightstand) I'm sorry, but even if I know you and you are not to be in my home then - at that point, its your life or mine. If you were coming over, I'd expect a phone call or doorbell. If not, anyone in my house without my knowledge is an intruder and a threat to my family.

Don't shoot the TV.

OP says "no kids" - so I point the P220 at the bedroom door while nudging my wife to check the living room camera on her IPAD with one hand while queuing up 911 on the phone...

In reality, my daughter is down the upstairs hall from the bedroom, so I end up taking cover at the top of the stairs and waiting.


If you've thought about home security cameras, we recently put Arlo on the house - one in the living room, others surveying around the house. Very cool addition, and decent night vision...

https://www.amazon.com/Arlo-Pr...-4&keywords=arlo+pro

Happened to us two nights ago. My dog goes nuts about 3:00 am. Roll out and open safe by feel, get HK p7. Wife pulls up phone and hits automated routine that turns on flood lights, some interior lights. She checks our downstairs camera and I head out, check kids first on 2nd floor, wife says downstairs is clear so go check.

Our dog is good, so we listen when he goes nuts. Checked front camera later and someone got out of car and approached house but beat feet when dog barked, lights came on the car left. That's pretty rare for us here. Got my attention, really happy with Arlo cameras and Smartthings automation but need to add a few more nighttime motion sensors.

quote:

If you've thought about home security cameras, we recently put Arlo on the house - one in the living room, others surveying around the house. Very cool addition, and decent night vision...

https://www.amazon.com/Arlo-Pr...-4&keywords=arlo+pro

Costco has the same arlo pro a bit cheaper - but that system is awesome and easy to setup. Hint, if you want a larger area covered get two 3 camera systems so you have 2 base stations and six cameras. Cheaper than adding cameras later at $180 a pop, but that price still is not bad. Pair it with a Smartthings hub and some iris motion sensors, some GE Zwave switches and you really can monitor your property. My whole setup was less than $1K including Arlo.

Assuming no kids, grab AR & take cover.
Reality: My girls are upstairs, so a cautious check would be in order.

According to the other thread, you should lie down prone on the floor to avoid the cops shooting you. Take your chances it's not a home invasion.

Grab my pump shotty and an empty Vaseline jar.

^^^^^ 'Cause it's SHOWTIME!

around my house it is not unusual for the dogs to go nuts in the middle of the night. Never seen a person, but many deer and an occasional bear.

If Voices were coming from another room, i would let the dogs out, nightstand gun in hand, then probably turn the TV off.