I can tell you what I experienced.

In my brief time as an officer, I approached one person because they looked like they were going to sleep in their car. It was late, behind a local business, and cold. Real cold, not like a little cold. It was below 0 already and it was going way below 20 degrees that night. Probably dangerous even in your car. This man had everything he had in that car, it was loaded down with everything but the kitchen sink. He hadn’t eaten at all that day and didn’t know when he would be able to get out of town to help or at least a warmer climate.

He wasn’t going to lay down across the seat because he literally didn’t have the room for that. He was going to let his car run out of gas to keep it warm while he sat upright at the driver’s wheel.

He was pretty eager to tell me he had a warrant. To get an actual bed, warm meal, and safe. He wasn’t going to the harder pods, he was going to the lower risk pod and he knew it. That was a lot better than sleeping with an airsoft pistol under him in case someone tried to rob him.

There’s a lot of reasons you might be sleeping in your car. Not a small portion of that is people who are down on their luck or just don’t know where to go to get a little help.

A not small section of people have commented that I didn’t actually answer the question. Well in the case of my anecdote I was motivated to maintain public safety. That man was in danger due to the weather. And there are lots of other reasons an officer may make contact with someone sleeping or about to sleep in their vehicle, but this was the only time I came across it. We didn’t prowl around normally looking for dangerous sleepers, but that night we did because the weather was going to be so bad.

As someone who currently lives in my car, in the 5 months that I’ve been living in my car I have only had three police interactions, the first one they were knocking on my window to make sure I was okay, the second one the hotel that I decided to park at called the cops and he asked me to leave because they had called him, the third one had let me up because I forgot to turn my headlights on and I pulled into my parking spot for the night and he asked where I was going and I told him I’m here to park and he said I don’t care if you sleep in your car as long as I’m not getting called.

I believe, at least in my area, the cops don’t generally care as long as they are not getting calls and complaints they don’t care. If it is extremely cold they may knock on a window to make sure that you’re okay but other than that they’ve been leaving me alone.

Myself, and my coworkers, couldn’t care less. We are completely indifferent and don’t like or dislike it. Us knocking on your window is not due to us disliking it, it is usually for a few reasons:

1. Someone called and was concerned for your welfare. Unfortunately, most cops have found people “sleeping” in their car that were actually dead. We will make sure you’re not dead or in need of medical help. While it may be annoying to be woken up, it also really looks bad for the police to receive a welfare call, ignore it, and then find out 2 days later that the person actually was in need of help or dead.
2. The place you stopped is either unsafe, or private property and the owner has requested that you be moved along. The unsafe part is usually for the shoulders of interstates. Where I work, state patrol tags cars that are left on the shoulder of the interstate and they are impounded relatively quickly. The shoulder of an interstate is not safe, and dozens of cops (and motorists) are seriously injured or killed each year after being hit while on the shoulder. Nighttime is also prime time for drunk drivers, which are more likely to not maintain their lane. While it may be annoying, getting rear-ended at 70mph is going to be way worse. As for the private property, that is out of the control of the police. If someone else owns the property and doesn’t want you there, that’s their choice. Most places don’t care, but there are a few that do and will call us.
3. Similar to above, if you are stopped in the traveled portion of the roadway, that is both a safety issue and a violation. It’s also pretty common with people who are passed out drunk. I’ve caught many drunk drivers asleep at a stop light or otherwise stopped in the road. While I don’t care if you are sleeping, I do care if you are sleeping because you’re hammered drunk and fell asleep at the red light. So long as you are sober, I’ll tell you to move out of the road and wish you sweet dreams.

Most people who sleep in their cars with some regularity don’t have a lot of issues with the police. They know where they can park to sleep and not be bothered or have people call. My coworkers and myself see people sleeping every night who we don’t bother. A lot of them are usually in the same spot and we recognize them being there as normal.

A lot of people who are driving long hours and have to stop on a whim due to exhaustion may not stop at the best spot, which causes them to stand out. That’s what leads to people calling us to check it out, or us asking you to move to a safer spot. We don’t dislike it, but we want people to be safe, and we do have to respond to calls for service when someone calls.