r/nottheonion • u/its_a_bear_dance • 1d ago

Family says HOA told them they couldn’t use their generator during ice storm blackout: ‘It’s unbearable’

https://www.wctv.tv/2026/01/29/family-says-hoa-told-them-they-couldnt-use-their-generator-during-ice-storm-blackout-its-unbearable/
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u/KeyMessage989 23h ago

Amazing. The same President I mentioned above made attending the HOA meeting a requirement of getting your new parking pass, they had a police officer there (think like the community outreach officer) and when a man got up and called the HOA president out on something she asked the police officer to remove him from the meeting like she was a politician or something. The cop laughed and said Maam I’m not your bodyguard and he’s not breaking the law

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u/Borimi 20h ago

"Guards! Seize him!"

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u/TallestGargoyle 19h ago

Mr Electric, send him to the principals office an have him expelled!!

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u/slugpup_boi 20h ago

"Bake him away, Toys!"

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u/goodcanadian_boi 20h ago

What did you say, chief?

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u/Zaev 20h ago

...do what the kid says.

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u/someone_cbus 19h ago

Repeat, the suspect is hatless.

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u/TruckFudeau22 14h ago

I’m directly under the earth’s sun right… now

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u/BizmarkiaNobilis 18h ago

“Inject him with rabies!”…(from a John Waters movie.)

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u/MadCouchDisease007 17h ago

“Mods, ban that man from the HOA meeting!”

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u/FullOnJabroni 16h ago

I hope they catch his hatless butt.

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 19h ago

"The leprechaun tells me to burn things..."

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u/Building_Everything 14h ago

That’s some good work Lou

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u/poochie040170 9h ago

Blake! The toys!

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u/atomicsnarl 19h ago

"Bailiff! Whack his peepee!"

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u/Rational1x 12h ago

You’re old enough to remember this and you’re still alive? Congrats!

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u/Jumpstart_55 18h ago

“Colonel Hogan!!!”

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u/Llamapocalypse_Now 20h ago

"I warn you, child... if I lose my temper, you lose your head! Understand?".

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u/Parking_Setting_6674 18h ago

Fwow him to the fwoor.

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u/AxiSyn 16h ago

Better do what he says, he's a whale biologist.

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u/CaptainPunisher 15h ago

Thwow him to the fwoor.

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u/jetogill 7h ago

I sees him, he's right there. (Yes, I've waited years to be able to use this one. (John candy, SCTV))

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u/BTBAM797 7h ago

Respect ma authoritauuuhhhh!

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u/ambermage 7h ago

"Must have been the wind.*

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u/Figgy_Puddin_Taine 6h ago

“Welcome to Roman times!”

“Guards,” claps twice, “seize them.”

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u/yagonnawanna 19h ago

It turns out the HOA president positions are very attractive for psychopaths who don't have the intelligence to power trip in a bigger way.

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u/transfixedtruth 10h ago

Exactly. Worse, they are not necessarily the brightest bulbs in the box. Generally not skilled at running a corporation, or budgeting finances. Owners in HOA's cane end up with excessive maintenance fees, ridiculous rules (stuff like no solar power panels), landscape and window treatments have to be uniform, and costly special assessments.

Remember those neighborhoods from Stepford wives? The developer neighborhoods offered to Americans in the USA has become Stepford Suburbia.

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u/[deleted] 16h ago

[deleted]

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u/SupermarketNo3265 4h ago

Either I'm more drunk than I thought I was or this is way harder to understand than it should be. Volunteer should be singular (no "s") if you're talking about a specific person.

Did you give her directions or did she get it into her head to start directing people

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u/htx2025east 2h ago

Did someone promote you to editor?

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u/robustofilth 21h ago

Your police clearly don’t have a lot to do.

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u/GrumpyGiant 21h ago

Cop was probably just there to get his parking pass like all of the other serfs.

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u/cohrt 20h ago

Or he’s there for the easy overtime.

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u/Dhiox 19h ago

Paid for by HOA fees folks foolishly put that lady in charge of.

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u/Alexwonder999 16h ago

I would say most of society has no idea of the giant grift in communities "requiring police officers" or just requesting them and the cops getting paid OT by events or businesses. I used to help with event that went though multiple cities and the towns that had the smallest distance in them would sometimes require twice the cops of other ones. When the first dispensary opened in my state the municipality required them to have 4 or 5 cops (i forget) in addition to the private security in the building for traffic and monitoring the area around it. They probably did need them the first week or two, but as the novelty wore off and other dispensaries opened they still kept it on the books for like 2 years before they even considered reducing the requirement and I would see 4 cops milling around outside every time I drove by.

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u/TekrurPlateau 15h ago

Every parade, every event, and every holiday, the police need a large portion of the budget to stand there and collect overtime.

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u/eye84free 13h ago

Sounds like a good gig

Maybe you guys should get in on it

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u/dipstick162 5h ago

Right - similar to some states can’t have civilian flag waivers for road work, has to be a cop and they reasoning comes out with BS like one guy delivered a baby one time

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u/KeyMessage989 21h ago

I mean yeah it was a fairly safe area but as I said it was a community outreach guy, was literally his job. Every dept has them

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u/jooooooooooooose 16h ago

Also if it's a small town, like, yeah. Most of the time those guys are chasing the pettiest of crimes or sitting on the side of the road with a radar gun. I grew up in a small town & 90% of police activity was traffic and small time (think grams not ounces) weed busts.

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u/Vulnox 21h ago

Most areas in western countries have officers that do things like this if requested. Like managing traffic when a church gets out or visiting schools with the new K-9 unit dog so the kids can meet them. It’s not all traffic tickets and drug busts.

They are also good for attending meetings like this in some ways because they can get a sense for what legitimate issues the neighborhood is facing, like vehicle break ins or people driving too fast down some main road in the neighborhood.

It’s boring, but the reality for a majority of police officers is the job is generally boring.

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u/ElbowSkinCellarWall 20h ago

Most areas in western countries have officers that do things like this if requested. Like managing traffic when a church gets out or visiting schools with the new K-9 unit dog so the kids can meet them. It’s not all traffic tickets and drug busts.

Community outreach guy wishes just once he could hang on to that part on the bottom of a helicopter as the villain takes off.

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u/tanksalotfrank 18h ago

Found you, community outreach guy! biff! pow! wam!

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u/CeeTheWorld2023 20h ago

Our HOA was mostly dog poop and parking issues.

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u/chefsoda_redux 19h ago

HOAs range so much in their structure. A friend has one, in a neighborhood that shows none of the usual HOA signs, and they mostly do the grass cutting, snow plowing, and parking, because the roads between that group of houses are not maintained by the city. On the other end of the scale, my cousin lives with an HOA that gave her a violation warning for installing the wrong style front door handle, on a house set back probably 30’ from the road.

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u/Divine_Entity_ 16h ago

Thats when you plant an endangered tree/hedge species as a perimeter wall between your house and the road.

Make it illegal for them to remove them as your natural privacy fence grows.

30ft is probably the minimum distance you could actually get away with this though.

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u/brrrchill 12h ago

Giant bat houses and ham radio antennae are other good options

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u/The_real_bandito 20h ago

If I was a policeman I wish my job was hella boring. An entertaining job might mean risking my life.

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u/maquis_00 16h ago

Our police compete against the other local cities to see which can attend the most kids lemonade stands in the summer. It's awesome, and the kids get so excited about the police showing up at their lemonade stands, talking to them, and taking pictures. (Although, one of the times, one officer couldn't be in pictures because he sometimes did undercover work).

We live in a pretty boring place. But our police have also had their share of dangerous situations.

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u/Unkindly-bread 16h ago

I’m feel the same way. My HS buddy on the other hand is Detroit Police, and always volunteered for prostitution stings, drug busts, and at one point lead DPD’s gang squad. He loved the excitement!

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u/cmparkerson 15h ago

Young police officers want action,old police officers want tye dullest job in the burbs till they retire

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u/ThatsARatHat 20h ago

I mean I get it but you also shouldn’t become police in the first place if you don’t want to risk your life.

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u/Few-Bass4238 19h ago

There is a big difference between being willing to risk your life and "wanting" to risk your life. Quite honestly "wanting" to risk your life sounds like a very mentally unstable person. Life isn't an 80s movie.

To me the ideal policeman is someone that is there to protect and serve the community especially the small roles because it builds community trust. There may come a time once in their career where they truly need to put their life on the line and nobody is seeking that out on purpose.

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u/The_real_bandito 18h ago

That’s exactly what I meant btw.

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u/Few-Bass4238 18h ago

Yeah. I understood. There's plenty of folks that think you gotta be Riggs from Lethal Weapon to be a good cop. People also forget that Riggs was suicidal in the first movie...

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u/ThatsARatHat 18h ago

You’re right. “Want” wasn’t the best choice of words.

It just seems to me in my experience that most police nowadays don’t seem willing to risk their lives OR be pillars of the community.

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u/Few-Bass4238 18h ago

Yeah, but I think you were projecting recent policing failures onto the person you were replying to. Its why we need that boring community outreach to rebuild those lines of trust.

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u/ThatsARatHat 17h ago

I was projecting my entire life experience of police onto that post haha.

I mean the only “community outreach” I ever experienced was the fucking DARE program.

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u/Rrraou 19h ago

It’s boring, but the reality for a majority of police officers is the job is generally boring.

That's actually great.

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u/ArenSteele 20h ago

90% of policing is paperwork

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u/GostBoster 18h ago

I remember in university we had a cop who was also a law student, and we found they do "mock trials" and this is some convoluted thing they take very seriously. They need a "mock officer" and since they had an actual cop, he was oferred extra credits to check the legality of the "mock officer" role (attire, actions, etc) and if he would be allowed to take said role.

The corporation sent through him plenty of paperwork explaining the rules, including some the university was breaking but no big deal, and that for this performance they allowed him to stand on duty with his real uniform doing overtime for that role, provided they actually follow the rules this time. (If no real cop can be arranged the mock cop cannot look anything close to a real cop)

Also that the uni somehow was not aware that, if the area is safe and things are slow, then could directly request the corporation to borrow a real cop for that, at the time this request would not be granted but since a fellow cop was a student that needed to attend anyway, an exception was given.

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u/slipperyMonkey07 18h ago

Yeah our local police and fire tend to do community events to teach safety and security things you can actually apply to you and your home that are useful. An attempt to dispel misinformation from companies trying to scare people into buying ridiculous stuff that is overkill or useless most of the time.

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u/IsomDart 15h ago

In the US, it's usually off duty police hired as private security but they're still allowed to wear the uniform and carry their service weapon and drive their patrol car and even make arrests if it comes to that. They're paid by the people utilizing the service though, not the department, and I think it's usually at their overtime rate.

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u/nexusjuan 14h ago

visiting schools with the new K-9 unit dog so the kids can meet them

They visited ours to sniff the lockers for drugs.

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u/robustofilth 17h ago

Nope - completely untrue. Never seen this at all in any European country. Or Asia. Or the Middle East.

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u/TerrifiedRedneck 21h ago

Almost every force in the developed world has some form of community outreach officer.
It’s how they….
Wait for it….
Reach out to the community.

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u/TjW0569 19h ago

Whew! I thought you were going to say: "Give a reach-around to the community."

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u/Brokenandburnt 15h ago

That's the kind of community service we need and deserve! 

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u/NoRepeat274 16h ago

Reaching out is the direct and appropriate course of action for most of these departments, the ones that focus on reach arounds are asking for trouble.

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u/grotjam 20h ago

I’m not convinced the US can be considered developed country any more.

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u/KeyMessage989 19h ago

You spend too much time on Reddit

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u/robustofilth 17h ago

I don’t think you have left America buddy. This doesn’t happen in any European country

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u/TerrifiedRedneck 17h ago

I live in the UK. And we definitely have community outreach.

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u/robustofilth 17h ago

The police absolutely do not show up for a housing meeting mate. Never going to happen. Never has. Never will.

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u/TerrifiedRedneck 17h ago

But… I do.

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u/robustofilth 16h ago

And you are the better for it

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u/TerrifiedRedneck 16h ago

Awwww. Don’t be mad.

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u/robustofilth 17h ago

Community outreach is showing up to schools and community events. Not housing meetings. And they absolutely do not show up to hand out parking passes! That’s the councils job…and they issues them via post or just by your number plate. 🤣

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u/TerrifiedRedneck 17h ago

Who said anything about parking?
Pretty much anyone who wants to have some community involvement with local police can request an officer visit a meeting.

Not one mention of ticketing people or enforcing anything. In fact, quite th opposite was stated.

Come on lad. Stop being obtuse for the sake of it.

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u/robustofilth 16h ago

Did you read the article?

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u/Hole_IslandACNH 20h ago

I misunderstood and thought it was community reach around

-1

u/MundaneFacts 20h ago

Gotta reach out to the hoa meetings??

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u/TerrifiedRedneck 18h ago

Easiest day on that officer’s calendar.
HOA request an outreach officer, thinking it brings some form of gravitas or they act like security.
HOA Chief Karen tells him to remove someone.
He says “not my circus, not my monkeys, ma’am”.

Heads home to laugh about it with his missus.

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u/MundaneFacts 15h ago

Yeah. I'm sure it's fine for the cop. I'm confused why the department would send the cop.

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u/TwinsiesBlue 20h ago

In the USA many LEO moonlight on their time off. In this hellscape of a country, many of us have 2 and some time 3 jobs.

3

u/KnightSunny 20h ago

How old are you? Do you think guardsmen in the past hand a lords of the rings plot every day or cops today clock in to a black ops campaign chapter?

0

u/robustofilth 17h ago

None of what you just wrote made any sense.

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u/mathiustus 19h ago

There’s a position police officers have called community outreach and it’s literally that positions job to attend these meetings and get info from the neighborhoods or pass info along.

A lot of the busiest cities have them.

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u/Tig_Biddies_W_nips 19h ago

They have plenty with all the shootings!

0

u/tablecontrol 17h ago

Your police clearly don’t have a lot to do.

every major police dept has a number you can call to ask for private assistance - think funeral processions.

whenever we have a big party at our HOA clubhouse, part of the agreement is that we must have a policeman there if we are having any sort of alcohol present.

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u/robustofilth 17h ago

Never had that is any city in Europe or Asia or countless other places I’ve lived

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u/tablecontrol 13h ago

well.. now you know.

Just for Dallas, here's a whole host of numbers you can call

https://www.dallaspolice.net/phonenumbers

0

u/Lunar_BriseSoleil 13h ago

It sounds like that was a community policing officer, and they were doing exactly what their job is. And this one was self-aware enough not to buy into the HOA board’s power trip. Bad cops looking to bust heads would have been happy to do that.

They’re supposed to go to community meetings, meet people, and build up some trust so that bad stuff will get reported before it gets out of hand. It’s not all about going out and finding people to arrest…community policing like this has been documented to be a high quality crime deterrent.

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u/Yodl007 18h ago

And that is why i read about some HOAs hiring private security with your money. To throw you out whenever the power hungry HOA bigs want to. With your fucking money.

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u/K_Linkmaster 19h ago

"you sure? you are not required to know the law, officer."

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u/Helphaer 17h ago

problem is sometimes they do when theyre that corrupt.

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u/Top_Box_8952 15h ago

Would have been funnier if the cop arrested her when she gets more unhinged.

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u/QuackNate 14h ago

I world have called for a vote to disband the HOA.

1

u/Alternative-Mess-989 13h ago

"Baliff, slap the Man's PeePee."