Know the phone numbers of your local police.

[MtnBiker]

The 911 outage in Washington state brought this to mind.  This actually happened to a friend of mine a couple of months ago. This occurred in the SE US.

A group of us were out-of-state at the beach. One member of the group decided to check her nanny cam to see how her pet was faring.  She noticed the camera was not pointing where it had been.  Watching further revealed someone she didn't know was walking through her house, carrying a pillowcase.

 

Step One.  Call 911. BUT we were out of state.  They answered, but claimed to have no way to contact law enforcement in our hometown.

 

Step Two.  Called some hometown LEO numbers from business cards.  It was the weekend, no answers.

 

Step Three.  Do google searches to find some hometown LE numbers.  It wasn't that easy.  The whole system is now predicated to primarily work through 911. A number was finally found that was answered on the weekend.

 

This whole exercise took 10 - 15 stressful minutes.  The good news.  Once contacted the local police responded rapidly.  They actually caught the perp, still in the house with the goods.

 

Lessons learned:

1.  Have a local PD desk phone number in your cell phone.

2.  A cheap nanny cam is worth the investment.

[Paul53]

Great advice. FWIW you might ask for an unrecorded line. Sometimes you want to report something without being recorded.

[Cougar_ml]

I guess I'm just lucky, my uncle is a local police officer, so all I have to do is call him.

[Mrs.Cicero]

That would be great, if we had any local police, but it is too small a town to support a department.  I have to call the county sheriff... and the issue with that is that I am right on the edge of the county line, so it takes them a good 25 minutes to get here.  Sometimes if there is a Statie unit closer, they come instead.  But it is still a call to the county, first.

[minervadoe]

In California, a cell phone call to 911 will get you to the California Highway Patrol who will dispatch someone to you.  So, I programmed in the regular dial up emergency number for Santa Clara and San Jose police departments.    As mentioned by the O.P., it took me fifteen minutes to find those numbers, but doing it in advance of an emergency that may never happen was not stressful, just monotonous.  

years ago, I walked across a Union Pacific railroad track on my lunch time walk and noticed that the plates connecting the rails had been pulled off.  spikes and plates were lying all over the place.  The track was on a corner where the trains leaving the Peninsula slow to a crawl for a tight turn. I spent fifteen minutes on the phone trying to find someone at Union Pacific who cared.  I finally left a message with a manager in Tennessee.  When I left work, hours later  there was a derailed train with crane cars on either end putting cars back on the track.  The whole thing was surreal.  Literally a train wreck in slow motion. 

Edited May 24, 2019 by minervadoe