Just after New Year's about 10 years ago, I'd just bought my house and had barely settled in. I'm woken up by what I thought was just the juvenile delinquents across the street setting off fireworks at 1 in the morning. Went back to sleep. And then again a few minutes later, but this time I realized it was not fireworks, but definitely gunshots. Knock at the door, SWAT officer in full camo, assault rifle, the whole deal. Tells me a dude in the apartments next door has been shooting at cars on the street, and shot at the cops who responded, so you know they're pissed off. Asks if they can use my dining room window to try to get a shot at the guy. I'm not going to say no.
So they set up the whole thing on my dining room table: heat scope sniper rifle, tear gas grenade launcher, just like in the movies. The order us into the back room, with the lights off. It's quiet for a while, then the *bleep* totally went down. They ended getting the guy without killing him (a rarity with Portland cops). But the SWAT guys have to wait around for forensics and the incident commander to take stock of everything, so I made them all coffee and they hung out watching MASH for a while. Took days for the smell of tear gas to dissipate. And none of the cops ever said anything about the loaded bowl sitting on the coffee table the whole time.
It was a great "welcome to the neighborhood" moment, but totally random and nothing like that ever happened again.
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