With warmer weather and later light, solicitor reports are picking up – including these two reports from Arbor Heights today, which are followed by information on city rules and what you can do if someone you don’t know comes to your door, soliciting or not:
Most-recent report:
A heads up to the neighborhood. This just happened … around 3 pm. We are near 100th & 37th. A male in his mid-20s, lots of tattoos, looked very dirty, knocked on our door and rang the doorbell numerous times. My fiance was home at the time and eventually answered the door. The guy told him his entire life story, how he was recently out of prison, trying to find work. Tried to sell us a fake magazine subscription and would only accept cash. Fiance told him he had no cash on him. The guy tried to convince my fiance to go an ATM, etc. Told him he couldn’t leave, he was working. The guy got extremely mad and aggressive, but eventually picked up his bags and left. We live down a long private driveway and this is very nerve-wrecking. The guy kept commenting what a good neighborhood this is with all the “rich” houses. I think he is scoping out houses. My fiance filed a police report. The guy is likely still in the neighborhood. If you see him, follow up with police, since he is clearly a suspicious person and likely up to no good!
No further description so we don’t know if it might have been the same person from another report earlier in the afternoon:
A man knocked on my door this afternoon and after I asked twice “who is it?” He said “it’s David” I said, “I don’t know you” and he said “I know you don’t” … I told him that if he did not leave I would call the police. He started to leave and go to our neighbors house- I opened the front door to get a pic of him on my phone. He then turned around and covered his face and head with his hands and clipboard when he saw me trying to get a pic. He was under 30, under 6 feet, medium dark complexion, black short hair, thin build. He was wearing a light colored polo shirt.
We were burglarized last year and one thing the police told us was that burglars sometimes knock on doors during the workday- no answer means they will come back later. Perhaps it was innocent, but hiding his face and high tailing it out of range when he saw me with my phone was something that was a red flag.
We also received a couple recent reports of an “aggressive” would-be solicitor – someone who didn’t want to take “no” for an answer. Breaking news sidetracked us from an intended update then, but now we have the opportunity to remind you about the laws/rules regarding door-to-door solicitors. They were best described in this newsletter sent by Crime Prevention Coordinator Mark Solomon in 2013. You can also read the city ordinance – bottom line, in most cases, they are required to have licenses, so the first thing you can do to determine legitimacy, if you choose to engage, is to ask for that.
| 32 COMMENTS