Will police do anything if a threat has been made but no action taken?

If someone has threatened to harm me or my loved ones, will police be able to do anything if the person has not yet physically harmed anyone?

2011-02-04T16:04:35Z

I have children, will this change the response from police?

impaler191202011-02-04T17:19:46Z

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Making Terroristic Threats is a crime. However, anyone can lie and claim that someone threatened them, so to be able to arrest, the police usually seek some independent corroboration. I would never arrest unless the threat was witnessed or recorded (answering machine??) and the person was reasonably capable of carrying out the threat, or his/her intent were designed to cause public panic (as is specified by statute in my state).

Anonymous2011-02-04T16:03:13Z

Generally speaking unless you are a public official such as a judge or congressman, or it is a domestic situation (your husband threatens you), threats are not prosecuted unless the person is "immediately capable of carrying through with the threat". In other words the person is holding a baseball bat and says "I am going to break your legs".

You can call your local police and see what the city ordinance is, and request an anti-harassment order

Edit - Unfortunately your children won't make a difference. Understand the underlying problem here - 1st Amdendment Freedom of Speech. Even hate speech is protected. That is a major hurdle for prosecutions, which is why the prosecutors office rarely charges. All the haters on here that blame the police...we take reports when we know a crime has been committed. If the prosecutor's office will not charge with a crime, we will not take the report. Sorry

?2011-02-04T16:10:57Z

Threats are supposedly illegal, but you will have a hard time finding an officer who will not think it's a waste of time to write the report. More than likely, if you call the Police for this matter, you will have wasted your time and will probably end up in jail for "insulting" the officer.... Insulting an Officer can be anything from asking a question to not giving the answer the Officer wanted to hear.

Having children doesn't matter, at least where I live. A woman was video taping my son while he was playing outside and I called the Police, she told them that she did not own a video recorder and that I was just being mean to her because she is an old woman. Nothing was done and she is still video taping children who play outside...

Anonymous2016-11-29T14:08:06Z

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Anonymous2011-02-04T15:59:56Z

Nope. They can make a report and have that on record if something does happen. They will probably tell you to take out a restraining order or an order of protection.

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