First one we got a half-hour or so ago, we were mulling over how to handle. Then came the second one. That suggests a trend – so here are two reader reports of pushy door-to-door folks out in southwest West Seattle (Gatewood and Fauntleroy) tonight:
First, Chris sent this one headed “Belligerent door-knockers in Gatewood”:
This happened several hours ago around 6:30 PM. I answered a knock on the door, and when I answered there was a guy standing about ten feet back, speaking very animatedly but about nothing I could understand. When asked for his badge he pulled a card out of his breast pocket that I couldn’t see from my distance, and appeared to be very offended that I requested it. He asked me if I would have called the police if he hadn’t had a badge, and when I said I probably would have he told me to go ahead and walked off. I’m still hoping he simply had poor communication skills. I think he was working with at least one other guy because I saw someone else on a neighbors doorstep as well.
Then, we just got this from KD in Fauntlee Hills:
I just received a visit around 8:45 tonight, from a young man in his 20s with shoulder length hair claiming to be a salesperson named Dimitri. He was nicely dressed in a white shirt and tie, and claimed to be selling something to earn points to help his family. I said “No thanks, I’m not interested.” Upon closing the door, he began swearing at me through the door saying, “F*** YOU, Bitch”. My husband heard him, walked around to the side of our house, and then saw him walking over to our neighbor’s house. The guy looked at my husband and said, “Do you want to hear what I have to say?” My husband replied, “I already heard what you said to my wife.” My husband then went back into the house.
I contacted the police to let them know a suspicious person was going door to door, swearing at people.
I learned my lesson! I should not have even answered the door to a stranger after dark. I am now done answering the door to ANY solicitor or person I don’t know.
For those who need a refresher course, we’ll go look up the door-to-door solicitor rules in city code and add the link here a minute (used to be on our Crime Watch page, accidentally fell off, need to put it back there anyway). UPDATE: Here it is. The Crime Watch page has it now too, in the “resources” section.
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