We have snowbirds across the street that sign up for the sheriff to stop by for the first few weeks they are gone. They rattle the doors, and walk around the yard. We have a sheriff living in the neighborhood, and he passes our house quite a lot. He paid us a visit about a year ago. Was all settled in for the night and heard some loud knocks on our front door and the doorbell was ringing off the wall.
Seems when I powered off my iPhone, I activated the distress signal instead of powering it off. They came in the house and saw everything was ok. Asked me if the people across the street were ever home. (They leave in October and come back in May).
They saw my police scanner, and didn’t say anything. I know they really don’t like ‘snoops’ and a lot of jurisdictions are going encrypted which means the only equipment that can hear traffic is what is provided by the manufacturer (usually Motorola).
That’s when you say, “Oh cool, I’m just going to ‘redirect’ your presence to the local jail for trespassing, and ‘redirect’ your income to fines and compensation for violating the law by disturbing me when this sign is posted.”
The posted sign is enough to qualify it as trespassing before you answered the door. I’m a master semantics player and love to play semantics as much as anyone (my kids hate this), but it doesn’t matter what definitions or semantics they use, it only matters if the law agrees with them, and in this case it doesn’t. Call it trespassing with recorded evidence (on the doorbell) and tell them to get out of the whole neighborhood ASAP if they don’t want the cops to take them to jail now. The sign is the warning. If you have to talk to them then they’re already guilty/offended.