<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Today, a reader wonders if she should have called the police last night...Here&amp;#x27;s our sweet reader&amp;#x27;s question: Last night, in the middle of the night, I was woken from a sound sleep by shrieking, crying, and what I assume were objects being thrown in the apartment above mine. I&amp;amp;#8217;ve heard my neighbors fighting before which generally consists of the guy (who lives in my building) making his girlfriend leave and go back to her apartment, and she will throw huge crying fits on our front porch. Last night&amp;#x27;s fight was the most violent I&amp;#x27;ve heard. I was lying in bed listening to him ream her out and throw things, and she was shrieking and crying for about twenty minutes. Then he said that they should leave because someone might call the cops and they&amp;#x27;d think he&amp;#x27;d hit her. That left me with the understanding that he didn&amp;#x27;t get physical with her. They they got in his car, where I could hear them fighting for another twenty minutes, before the car peeled out and sped off. My question is, when, if ever, would you, as an outsider, call police for a case of domestic violence? Even if he didn&amp;#x27;t get physical with her, it wasn&amp;#x27;t safe for either one of them to be driving. When I finally got back to sleep I kept having nightmares that something terrible was happening to me and no one would help. The whole thing made me feel very unsafe, and I felt guilty that I just sat there and listened to a fight that was clearly violent. Where&amp;#x27;s the point where someone should step in and help? Here&amp;#x27;s my answer: My darling reader, what a scary situation! No wonder you were completely freaked out. I have to say, I&amp;amp;#8217;ve actually called 911 a number of times in my thirty-one years. Once, I saw a big fight erupt outside my apartment window and called the police; another night, I saw a cab driving really dangerously and recklessly and called in with the license-plate number. If I&amp;amp;#8217;m on the verge of calling the police, my personal approach is to err on the side of caution, and go ahead and do it. You can explain the situation to the 911 operator and she can help decide whether or not to send police; if so, the police will come, assess the situation and make a professional decision about how to handle it. Next time, if you feel nervous about your neighbor&amp;amp;#8217;s behavior and think his girlfriend may truly be at risk, I would call 911 if I were in your shoes. At least, that&amp;amp;#8217;s my opinion! What about you, my dear readers? What would you do in this situation? Have you ever called 911? What happened? P.S. Do you ever get spooked out in the middle of the night? And an afternoon when Vitamin-G blogger Sarah had to call 911... More Ways to Get Glamour You could win $50,000 just for registering for or logging in to Glamour.com! Sign up for Glamour.com&amp;#x27;s Style Tips of the Week and Beauty Tip of the Day newsletters! Add Glamour to your iGoogle homepage. Photos: istock.com (top) and Jupiter Images (bottom). Models used for illustrative purposes only."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/smitten/2010/02/readers-dilemma-should-i-have>