Via Shutterstock / Denis Simonov
After reading through these stories below of the most messed up things cops have seen during searches in the line of duty I can’t even begin to understand how more police officers don’t crack on the job and experience some sort of mental breakdown.
The first story would be enough to make me rethink my line of work, but the others are equally as insane, and most of these are akin to a Horror film so if you’re not ready for that you might want to leave now. All of these completely WTF stories came from an AskReddit thread in which cops shared their most insane search experience and these will definitely make you rethink how insane the line of duty can be for cops (via AskReddit):
robinson217:
I used to volunteer with my local PD. Nothing will beat the old lady who passed away in her house and her little dog ate her face. Literally just the skin from the jaw line to the hair line and from ear to ear. It left the eyeballs in the sockets. Just a skeleton in a lady suit, doing the 1000 yard stare.
geekcop:
Family Disturbance call on Christmas Eve 2011, Husband vs. wife. No battery, nobody went to jail.. but the house was filled with hundreds of knives and dildos. Normal dildos, little ones, great big horse dildos, and every kind of mall ninja knife you can imagine. Every horizontal surface was covered with sharp metal or jiggly silicone, there were even a few new ones under the tree.
After clearing the house we had to talk to these folks with a straight face for a good 10 minutes, it was one of the greatest challenges of my career.
ReV-Whack:
Not a cop but a former corrections officer. Doing a cell search one time and stumbled across a 500ml coffee mate container almost full of accumulated semen… I was later told it took 7 months to save it up.
… I’ve seen and dealt with a lot of shit but for some reason that one ranks up there.
tmoz12:
My brother is a cop. He told me about this time when they responded to a work place accident where a railyard worker had been crushed between two railcars. The guy had been crushed/pressed into the ladder of one of the cars. They kept hearing voices coming from the body. Muffled voices but definitely coming from the body. It took them a while to figure out the worker had been carrying a radio. Needless to say they were a bit disturbed until they reached that conclusion.
usernamebrainfreeze:
Tiny, quiet, southern town. Whole family that had been dead for a week. Their teenage daughters boyfriend who she met online was visiting from across the country. Step dad, mother, daugher and her friend all murder and hacked up by an ax. The mom was a professor at my university a block away and when she didnt show up to work for a few days cops went to house and talked to murder who gave them some plausible excuse so they left. He stayed in the house for a full week before leaving. The cops went back when neighbors reported the smell. They caught the guy at rhe airport about to fly home.
clobberellabeatsyoup:
A coat rack with a hat on. Clearing a dark house and seeing what could easily be a person standing motionless in the corner is not fun.
brainsurgeon23:
Brother in law is a cop. He told me about a time he and his partner were called to do a wellness check on someone with a terminal illness (family didn’t know where he was).
So the get to the house, knock, and get no response. They entered the house to see if he had passed away due to his illness. They did not find him there, but what they did find was a stairway leading down to a basement.
In that basement was a vast number of sex toys, ropes, harnesses, etc. There was also a stage with a bed on it, and a video camera on a tripod focused on it. He had stumbled upon this guys sex dungeon.
The guy ended up being alive, but was visiting someone out of town and didn’t notify any of his family.
MidwintersTomb:
My mother used to work for a police department, and I’d hang out there when I’d be home sick from school. This old man used to walk to the gas station on the corner to get a pack of smokes and coffee every day. The gas station attendant called for a wellness check when she realized she hadn’t seem him for a couple weeks in the dead of summer. Cops went, knocked, smelled something, opened the door, walked in, instantly came back out vomiting from the smell. They had to come back later with respirators, trash bags, and snow shovels to clean up the sludge that used to be the old man.
Another officer almost quit his first night on the job. Really bad accident, guy shows up, the one car has no one in it at all. He’s looking around, guy isn’t on the ground anywhere. He tried to figure out if maybe the guy walked away, so goes to look inside for some identification. Finds the guy. He hit so hard that he slammed up under and into the dashboard, and was just a broken sack of bones stuffed in around the steering column and other parts.
letsfinddwaldo:
Wasn’t my call but I was told about it later. Aborted fetus in a chest freezer. This lady did an at home abortion with some meds she bought online. Didn’t know what to do after so she kept the fetus in her basement chest freezer for months.
RogueSock:
Friend is a cop: Wellness check called in. Went in – smelled horrible – and discovered a large dead guy, shirtless, sitting in his front room, in a lawn chair watching TV. He had setup an industrial space heater behind his chair, which was on at full blast. Due to the heat, and apparently other factors he had “merged” through the back of that lawn chair.
Yurei2:
My aunt is a police dispatcher. Normally she takes calls from the public and has an officer nearby respond. But one day she was asked to work the station’s radio because the normal guy was sick. That meant she was acting as the central hub of the police radio network, taking calls from officers in the field and issuing backup to them, that kind of thing.
She wound up having to listen to four cops talking back and forth in a panic as two squad cars arrived to check on a reported murder (The person who called was certain that there were multiple killers present). The victim’s meat had been cut into one-inch cubes, as if their killer was going to fry them up, or make kebabs. The whole crops had been disassembled like that. Bones cut into neat inch segments, organs removed, separated, organized. She remembers one of the officers panicked and screamed something along the lines of “This is OCD movie monster bullshit.”
I can’t remember the exact quote sadly, and I doubt my aunt remembers it herself. She thought they were playing a joke on her until they called for a hazmat crew to get the body.
Forensicunit:
Creepiest: A dead guy. But not just your average dead guy. This guy died on his couch, surrounded by no less than 1500 Miller Lite cans. Plus, he had no friends or family. None. He was retired and his electric bill was auto deducted from his checking account. He died, on his couch, and no one realized it for 5 months. When we found him, the top (front really, because he was on his back) was completely skeletonized. But the bottom (or back, against the couch) was still meaty and rotting. The half skeleton was kinda creepy. But its really creepy and sad that this guy left this world and it didnt affect anyone. Just gone and forgotten.
Funniest: Respond ro a burglary. Going through the house with the homeowners, a young married couple, documenting damage and loss. Step in to the bedroom. Theres a red vibrator on the floor. They look at it, I look at it, and then we look at each other. Spend the next 5 minutes with locked eye contact talking about the broken window, missing jewelery, missing TV, etc. Everyone refusing to look at, discuss, ir acknowledge the vibrator. And then on to the living room.
Pregate:
First let me start by saying that there is a “Whataburger of Death” in our city. Every time I have gone there, I have immediately had to respond to a death after I’ve ordered. (At least three times, that I can remember off hand) It’s around 3 am I believe. So I went to the WOD, (before I had christened it as such, now I refuse to go for fear of murdering another due to my want of a taquito) and was dispatched to an open door alarm across town. I arrive, park a bit away, and walk around the house. As I get to the front, my partner pulls up, and I say “looks clear, but I haven’t gone to the door” and he remarks “well, it’s open, soooo…” Now, I promise I’m not an idiot, I had just pulled up at an angle that I couldn’t see the front door and was gonna check it last. So we approach and announce. He and I remember that the resident of this household is crazy as hell. She calls in regularly to complain about things, but is absolutely paranoid, says things like she is deathly allergic to any fake scents, and so won’t talk to you if you are wearing perfume or deodorant. Her son is also a severely mentally handicapped adult. Her husband is relatively normal, but she kicks him out of the house all the time. He’s a bit cowed to it all, so he goes and stays in hotels for a week or two, then comes back. Lights in the kitchen and back room are on, so we open the storm door and announce more, no response. So we start to clear the house. Immediately to our right is a dark hallway with doors on either side and the very end. We decide to take that first. As we shine our lights down, we see all of the doors are open, and at the end of a hall is a bedroom with someone lying in the bed. More announcements. We continue to approach, no responses. Now, we pause and think “uh dude?” To each other. Then we realize the person is a woman, and their eyes are open, and they’re staring straight at us. “Ma’am, police!?” No response. “Dude, is she dead?” “No dude, she’s breathing, look”. Look again, yep, steady rise and fall of the chest. Ok.. She’s crazy as hell, maybe she’s being crazy, maybe she sleeps with her eyes open… Continue down the hall. Still no response, clear the rooms to the left and right very quickly, neither of us wanting to take our eyes off of her. We get within about 9 feet and again, “‘Ma’am, police!!” Nothin. Blank stare, breathing… “Dude there’s a gun by her pillow…” Now, were dumbfounded and freaked out a bit. I think, no matter what, I don’t want her waking up/coming to and grabbing it. So.. “Alright, I’m gonna holster, grab the gun, and get to cover. Watch my back”. So I lunge, grab the gun, and immediately it hits me. The gun was in a pool of blood. I yell “fuck!” And throw the gun on the ground. My buddy says “what?!” I say “it’s covered in blood!” So he steps forward and hits the light switch. Then the full scene is clear to us. She is lying on the bed, GSW to the head, blood pooled in a crook of her arm. No blood on the floor, sheets were dark colored, couldn’t see any of it til the lights were on. She’s still breathing. We ask for a medic code 3. I tell my buddy to go get a camera. He comes back in, and at some point one of us (can’t recall who) says “crap! There’s someone else in bed! A small tuft of hair was visible from under the covers. We throw it back and see the adult son. Half of his head out, glazed over eyes. Update dispatch, two GSW to the head, one dead. We kinda step back, medics are already on scene. Medics take one look, pick up the lady and toss her on the floor, grab the male, put him on the gurney and run. Turns out, though most of his brain was on the bed, his nervous system was intact and was keeping him breathing. She was lying on top of him. His breathing made it look like she was breathing. She was dead as a door nail. Murder/suicide. So, as my buddy and I spoke later.. “I swear she was alive”. ” I know, she’s like a zombie”. “Fucking Zombie Lady” And thus, the FZL was born at my department.
Vizzy1225:
Friend of a cop here. He told me about how him and his buddy went to search in an apartment. They looked around and his buddy finally called him over. A guy was just … in an oven. Dead of course, but in an oven. When the guys tried to pull him out of the oven all the contents and gas of the dead guy fell right out. A few of the guys vomited and gagged.
SwagyY0L0:
I was a fresh officer with dreams being a hero. I get dispatched to a call of a family fight. Not wife husband, but brother sister. The female was reporting the male had attacked her. I arrived and located a female and male. The male I knew from prior contacts. I detained him in handcuffs and quickly smelled the strong odor of pepper spray. I found out that after the male knocked off the females weave she pepper sprayed him. I knew there were different types of pepper spray, like gel.
I’m walking around the house taking photos for my investigation and accessing the property damage. I noticed that in his room the odor from the pepper spray was extremely strong and made my eyes instantly water with a decent amount of stinging sensation. The fumes made it incredibly hard to breath and left me without the ability to breath at points, requiring that I leave the room to get fresh air. I find a brownish gel substance all over the walls in the shape of handprints. I photograph it and determine that it was the pepper gel that male suspect was wiping off of his face onto the wall. I found it odd that it was all over the walls and covered the room. I though this chick dusted him with the entire can of pepper gel.
After some investigation I took the male to jail.
I responded to the same house several days after for an unrelated medical issue. There were more family members at the house and the male was still in custody. I was having a conversation with the family as the hero firefighters were saving the day. I inquired if they had fully cleaned up the pepper spray from the males room. They gave me a strange look and told me there was none in there. I told them about the gel that was on the wall. I then sat there in horror as they explained to me this man had been, for years, cumming on his walls and playing with it. And the gel was in fact old cum and the fumes were the pungent smell of this man’s cum room… My fucking God.
Let’s end on a lighter note, shall we?
kiwibrandon:
Funny and irrelevant story. My cousin is a cop and a little on the short size (min requirements for a New Zealand Police Officer). During a search of a house, he was using a 20 litre paint container to stand on to assist in searching higher areas of the house i.e closets and such. At the completion of the search and after 3 hours they had found fuck all. My cousin then looked in the paint container he was using the whole time to stand on, thinking it would be just paint but instead it was full of weed. about 20kgs of quality grade Corromandel Gold. Laughter ensued.
Alright, bros, that wraps up the coverage from my end but if you want to keep on reading through this AskReddit thread in full you can CLICK HERE to head on over! If you’re a cop and want to share your story here you can just hop in the comments below and if it’s good I’ll happily add it to the selection above! And, as always, if you’ve got an amazing and WTF story to tell that you think bros should hear you can always fill out our anonymous ‘TIP OFF‘ sheet and send us your story!