Be alarmed, not alert

We got back from celebrating Willie Nelson's birthday around midnight.  There was an alarm going off somewhere down the road.  I went to investigate.

Ever since an aboriginal woman had a stroke at a bus-stop in Brisbane a few years ago and had to lie there paralyzed for hours and hours because everyone assumed she was "just" drunk, I've been applying the "How Would You Feel If You Needed Help And Nobody Helped You" test to situations like this, where you might prefer to walk away but you know that if you're wrong you're going to look like an arsehole.  So I did.

After promising my Smaller Half that I wouldn't attempt to do anything heroic, I wandered off into the night.  It didn't take long to establish that the alarm was going off in the house just up the road.  It was all blacked out and I didn't want to go creeping around the yard and peering in windows, because one of my close relatives once ran into his yard in the middle of the night brandishing a katana because he thought there were prowlers in the yard, and there's got to be more than one lunatic like him around so why take the chance?

So I came home and called the local constabulary.  The conversation went like this:

Policeman
[Yawns] Yes?

PTR
Good evening, my good man.  Or perhaps I should say, good morning!  It is past the witching hour after all.

Policeman
[Sighs]  How can I help you?

PTR
In my capacity as a concerned citizen, I'd like to place a report of an untended alarm sounding in the borough.

Policeman
Has the house been broken into?

PTR
I don't know, I didn't want to get chopped in the neck with a katana.

Policeman
We don't attend security alarms.  We leave that to the security companies.

PTR
What if it's a smoke alarm?

Policeman
Well, keep your nostrils open and call us if anything happens.  Thanks for your call.

Okay, so I took a bit of poetic license with my lines, but I swear that's what he said back to me.  He didn't even ask me for my name or an address.  What if there's an inquest?  What if I do end up doing something heroic, like saving a dog or a parrot, and I sign a movie deal with novelization rights to follow, but I need to establish that I did actually call for help and I wasn't just holding out for a movie deal the whole time?   I want this on the record!