When I saw someone leaning out of a car at speed on the slip road off the M40 at J10 and shooting at a second vehicle, in broad daylight in the afternoon!
I stopped at the services and phoned the police (before mobiles were common). An officer came didn’t bother trying to hide his contempt. He shared the shattering insider insight that people don’t normally shoot other cars in broad daylight in England; took down the good descriptions of the vehicles I gave him; walked off and doubtless filed the call-out under their capacious “Stupid Women” file. It was a total waste of time for both of us.
The second time was when a psychiatrist told me it was time to call the police while he, my mum, a mental health social worker and I were sheltering behind my car while a relative threw things at us. I was shaking so much I couldn’t press the buttons on my mobile, this was early 2000s, and I had to leg it up the drive to the village phone box. I felt terrible as I thought the police would come and physically overpower my relative, handcuff him and throw him in the van. It seemed like a terrible betrayal even though it wasn’t my decision to call them.
In contrast to my previous experience the police were beyond amazing. It was two young officers in uniform but they managed to talk him down, - at one point they were sat either side of him in the boot of his small hatchback at his request. They got him to go in the van willingly and took him to the high security ward at our nearest psychiatric hospital where he stayed for some time before being moved to a psych ward in another general hospital. Obviously it was an incredibly difficult time for us as a family but it is a continuing regret that I didn’t get round to contacting the local police to report how excellent those officers had been. I had intended to but life was very busy then.
The third time was after stopping at a McDonalds while working and seeing a little girl of about 8 or 9 beautifully looking after her quite big baby brother, getting him out of the buggy and into a high chair, feeding him, talking to him like a little mother, no adults in sight. I spoke to her her she was polite but clearly not keen to chat to me so I waited until after she’d left and the staff told me she was a regular and so good with the baby. No adults ever came with her but both children looked clean and well looked after and nicely dressed, as they did that day to me. They assumed she was looking after her brother while the parents were working and they kept an eye on her. I phoned the police after that and passed on all the above. I said the little girl was brilliant and both looked clean and well looked after in terms of clean clothes etc. but the fact she was so good at her role along with the staff saying she was a regular suggested it was a very common thing and both were incredibly vulnerable and she was far to young to be a sole carer. I thought there was a good chance they could identify her as the McDonalds had cameras and it was a bit off a dual carriageway but on the edge of a relatively new built building housing estate where she must have lived given she walked to the McDonalds with the buggy. I was keen to emphasise that the little girl hadn’t told me she looked after her brother on her own, - in case it got her into trouble with her parent(s) if the police or SS did manage to find her. The person I spoke to said I’d done the right thing to call them, which was reassuring as I did feel like a busybody.
Edited to add that the last wasn’t a 999 call. I phoned the non-emergency number.