Police broke into my home because my child cried during the night while I was asleep : legaladvice

Authored by reddit.com and submitted by W-M-D

This has been a really weird morning... not sure if I chose the correct flair

I have a 5 year old who stays with me during the weekends. He sleeps all night without any issues (except for the very rare nightmake/sleep talking). Lastnight he was the happiest little kid in the world because we put up our christmas tree. I put him to bed around 9pm and watched some movies with my fiance who lives with me. Around 3am I got sleepy and wen to join her in bed. She gets up around 4:30am to go to work and leaves around 5am.

At 6:30am I am awoken by a single low knocking sound. I get up all sleepy thinking its my kid jumping on the bed (at which point I usually just get up, make sure he brushed his teeth and put some cartoons on to buy me a few more Z's). As I exit my room I am greeted to 4 cops staring me down across the hallway. I dont immediatly register what is going on and wonder if I should serve them a drink. One cop asks me who I am to which I reply with my full name and ask what is going on. He continues his interrogation, asking If I live with a woman. Fear slowly starts to creep up to me, thinking she was in an accident. I answer that I live with my girlfriend. The cop asks me if I have a son to which I reply yes. He asks me where he is. At this point I lean over the wall and I see my door busted upen. I am thinking someone killed my fiance and took my kid so I look at the cop, turn, head down the corridor to bis room and slowly open it fearing the worst. I see my son in bed, still tucked in and looking at me as if nothing happened. i come back down the hallway and tell the cop "he is there, what is going on!?" The tell me to step out into the dining room and I put my hands up as I walk past them. 2 cops walk into my room and check inside. I sit at the table and the cop sits next to me as another watches over us. I look to the door and theres the lady that guards the complex I live in with another lady i have never seen before just peaking into my home.

The cop questioning me tells me someone heard a child crying and called the police. He says they got there at 5am, which would mean they got there just as my fiance left for work. He claims they called at my door for an hour and a half and no one answered, then they heard detonations inside and decided to storm in. They never went outside my window to call me which would have done the trick. My apartment has weird acoustics and I cannot hear knocking in the living room from my room, if the door is locked, especially since my front door has a protective gate that doesnt allow for knocking.

He asks me why I didnt hear him and I told him I must have been deeply asleep. He asks if I am under the influence of drugs and I say I just went to bed late because I was playing red dead redemption.cop gives me a case number (not sure what they are called) and tells me to give that to administration so they fix the door (thats not how that works) and they leave. As the cops leave I could hear them talking with one of the ladies who was saying the child was crying too hard for it to be nothing. The cop told her there was no evidence of abuse or wrongdoing and she just couldnt believe it. I asked my son if he was crying and he said yes. I asked him why and he said the fan stopped working...

So now I am sitting in an apartment with my son and a broken front door. I fear when I go outside I'll be judged by my neighhbours as the child beater or worse.

I have been trying to understand the timeline of events. I went to bed at 3am and my fiance got up at 4:30 then left at 5. If the cops got there at 5am as they claim, then the call must have happened around 3:00 - 4:30. My son must have stopped crying before my fiance fo up and didnt resume his crying for the rest of the night. The cops get here at 5 and hang outside my door until 6:30 when they hear the "detonatios" NOT a crying child. My son had no signs of having been crying and he even stood next to me on his own during the police questioning.

Is the police right to have broken into my home like that, leaving my household exposed and then just leave like nothing happened? What about the detonations they claim they heard in my apartment? Was that just an excuse to burst in? He sort of implied the detonations where heard outside and got them freaked out.

Illuminati_Shill_AMA on November 11st, 2018 at 23:11 UTC »

The LAOP from this post should trade police departments with the guy whose police department told him kidnapping was a civil matter.

seanbeag on November 11st, 2018 at 21:37 UTC »

Kid woke up crying when the fan broke. Snuck downstairs to play red dead redemption. Cops heard sfx from game. Kid ran to bed when they started kicking the door in.

watchy_watchman on November 11st, 2018 at 20:12 UTC »

my first thought was about the tree

was second thought was calling bullshit on the cops saying they knocked for ninety fuckin minutes. no way did they do that.