August 09, 2004

• I suggest calling the landlord first, and if it happens again, the cops.
• Send them a strongly worded email.
• wall-punching, door-breaking and general screechiness at 2 am last night. Your answer - would call'in the boyz have saved a life?
• Call the cops. I know that some people are reluctant to get involved, but when it's 2 am, and they are being very loud, and it sounds like things are being broken, call the cops. I might be kind of a hard-ass on this topic, but I knew a woman in college who was beaten up by her boyfriend in her dorm room, and all the people living around her in the dorm heard it happening, and nobody called security, because "they didn't want to get involved." He broke her arm that night, and every time I saw her with that cast on her arm it really pissed me off that none of her neighbors picked up the damn phone to call for help. I wouldn't confront them about it directly. Just call the cops if (when) it happens again.
• Unfortunately mitigated by ugly practicalities: i) will they actually come based on what is happening? ii) when will they arrive? it may be hours, by which time a temporary situation may have long passed. iii) what will they do when they get there (cannot, for example, call during a domestic dispute if a male, without risk of being dragged from your own house) As a result, for me, it ends up being like the do-I-go-to-an-emergency-room decision. Is it worth spending half the night to resolve? Personally, I think a threat to person or property warrants a call, though if it's an imminent threat to someone, personal intervention is likely required and I'll see what I can do. That's a tough call when it's a domestic dispute in someone else's house, though. Intervention, I think, would in most cases be unwelcome (but in a small proportion of cases, eagerly welcomed). Violence between strangers is much more easily resolved -- at least they won't be going home together. Good comment, if joking, regarding speed dial -- most people don't know the number of their local station or its location, and should.
• Sorry, no responses when I first composed that, and I'm new here. Not as tailored to what to do. Definitely call if it makes you uncomfortable. If on the one hand, your worries don't pan out in terms of danger to someone over there, you still have the right personally to an end to that noise.
• As far as after hours noise - only call the police after the face to face conversation fails. Same goes with a landlord.
• I am generally reluctant to call the police but exceptions have included: the couple who regularly fought loudly & violently (across the landing neighbors) while their 2 year old child played alone on the balcony. mind you, the balcony was SAFE, but it pissed me off that they were always in there slamming each other around, ignoring their child, & possibly worse. I called because of the kid.
• I had something simlar happen to me. I was working from my home office doing some video editing and heard some loud banging and screaming from the second floor of the apartment from across the street. I immediatly called the boys in blue and they got a squad car over pronto. They took my statement of what I heard and I didn't think too much else about it. About two weeks later I got a call from the District Attorney who told me that my call made it possible to capture the ex-boyfriend of the woman who lived in the apartment. He'd been in prision for beating her in the past and had threatened to kill her. He had apparently beaten down the door with a baseball bat and who knows what other plans he had. They caught him before he could do too much else. I say, if in doubt, call the mounties.
• I'd agree with the general consensus here, you should call if it sounds like someone might be getting hurt. One of my friends once had the cops show up at his door at 3 a.m. and ask to be let in. They took a quick look around and he asked them what the problem was, turns out they'd had a complaint of screams and loud banging noises. He blushed and said, "Um, yeah... that was my girlfriend." The cops congratulated him and suggested he move his bed away from the wall a bit.
• to echo what ambrosia said, it's your *duty*, if you feel that someone may be getting injured, to call the police. What the police do is on them, but your responsibility to your fellow man - regardless of your affinity for them or lack thereof - is to call the authorities if you suspect that a crime (like assault) may be being committed. It's easy to do, the police will respect your anonymity, and even if no crime takes place, it builds a track record for the persons involved in the event that something bad *does* eventually happen. In front of a judge, the difference between "no reports were ever made about this guy" and "here's a list of the times the police had to come to this guy's house to break it up" goes a long way during sentencing, or even arraignment. And if it does turn out to have been a one-time thing, or just someone getting their load on and having it out, then a visit from the cops both chastens them from further plate-throwing and will, in the event that is was just an anomaly, never come back to bite them.
• When things sound like they are getting physical, especially if someone is screaming No or Stop, I've called the cops. It's a difficult call, though. The last time I had to call the cops was when some guy was sleeping in the hallway of my apt building at 11:30 at night. His snoring woke me up.
• i totally agree to help end domestic violence. however, fwiw, ymmv, etc. - this thread can only say "call the cops" because it's an online forum (and therefore people are X amount removed). Not that it's not the right thing to do or that the stories aren't helpful, just pointing out that I totally expected the consensus to be call the cops. okay i'll go back to being a useless drunk, please continue.
• Are people misguided enough to figure no one can hear them? A couple I knew would walk a block away to the park to fight with each other. In the world of apartment living, I always thought that was considerate as hell. But they weren't into a "dangerous bout of wall-punching." This sounds like a much more serious fight, moneyjane. You've got a thin wall and can hear everything, but not see anything. Who's to say the neighbor wasn't being attacked? Call the cops. They're trained for these situations. They can sort it out.
• what the heck is a jello tree? i googled it and came up with stuff like: "TO GET MY LOVER HOT, I shake my jello tree, walk like a duck" and did a google image search, which brought up two large buildings. anyone care to translate? i had no idea jello grew on trees.
• Loud music? Go talk to them. Kids in the Jello Tree? Leave 'em be. Scary fighting noises? Call the cops. Visible blood? Scream and run and call the cops. Regarding the don't-get-involved point of view, check out this fascinating paper on the "bystander effect" and Elie Wiesel's famous speech on the perils of indifference.
• SideDish, I did a search as well and from what I was able to surmise, "Jello Tree" refers to a commercial that played in Canada. Never saw it myself.
• I'm not at all an alarmist type, and I know that some people do need to have their fights. But I was personally in a situation where I was trying to scream loudly enough to get a neighbor to call the cops, but unfortunately my mouth was covered too quickly. So yeah, since then, I'd be a call-the-cops type if I ever heard screaming or something similar. Fortunately, I've never had to. (Disclaimer: I would never, EVER call the cops for loud music or some such. At least not 1) before talking to the neighbor directly, 2) before talking to the landlord, if applicable, and 3) before several, really really bad offenses. :)
• Call in the troopers. Even if it's for general loudness at 2AM, especially if you think something bad is happening. The little woman and I have lost count of the number of times that we've been forced to call the LAPD on our neighbors across the steet for noise complaints, like at 11:30PM on a Sunday night, when my honey gets up at 5:30 in the AM for work. For the police, having to resolve shitty issues like noise complaints is a bit of a hassle, but that noise complaint could turn into something much nastier. < threadjack > On a side note, someone needs to remind people who live in apartment complexes and townhouses and yes, even homes, that just because you like to listen to your music doesn't mean that I like to. Play your firggin' music at a reasonable volume. Which means that YOU should be able to hear it, not ME. And that goes double for the bitch who lives downstairs from me! Yeah, YOU! < /threadjack >
• i'm not trying to be an alarmist type, but JELLO GROWS ON TREES IN CANADA.
• Until June, I had to deal with this kind of thing for about a year and a half, everything from the guy upstairs thumping his fucking stereo at three a.m. to the scary ex-boyfriend trying to kick down the front door. My solution? Bought a house. In the meantime, nothing to add that hasn't been said. Nuisance=talk to neighbors. Continued problems=talk to landlord. Potentially scary or violent=call cops.
• I've only called the cops on someone once. My current apartment overlooks some storage units and a couple body shops. One night there were 3 older men (at least 40's, tehy were all pretty bald) banging on a door and yelling. SO I did that, lay in bed for a few minutes trying to tell if they were just drunk or what, thing that you do when you get woke up in the middle of the night. A few minutes go by and I hear "You understand me? Don't mess with me!" So I get up to see one guy had another on the ground. The guy on top gets up and the guy on teh ground just lies there not moving. Did I mention it was Februrary and below freezing out? So I called the cops and they sent SIX cars over in less than 5 minutes. THey ended up hauling all 3 of them off. I never found out what the deal was, but I was glad I called, regardless.
• Sounds of violence? Unless it sounds like loving violence, as it were, call the cops. I've called them when a row between downstairs neighbours turned nasty, and was pleased to have done so (they escorted the girlfriend, who didn't normally live there, home). It was a little uncomfortable when they wanted to check my bit of the house to make sure I didn't have a beaten-up girlfriend stashed away, though...
• jim_t, on the other hand, I live a relatively sedate lifestyle, but I have a neighbor who insists that the rest of the world live to her time clock. She's quiet, but likes to stay up until 4 or five in the morning, then likes to sleep until ten or eleven in the morning. If I use my kitchen before 10:00am (i.e. turn on the tea pot, open and close drawers, turn up NPR so I can barely hear it as I make toast) she calls and complains that I am being unreasonable. I can understand asking someone not to make noise before 7:00am, but I got a friggin life and have to eat before I work. She's on disability and makes up her own hours.
• I'd agree with the consensus here, but add that - assuming you are able to give a clear and credible account of why you felt it necessary to call the police, because of a reasonable concern for someone's wellbeing - the cops will generally welcome you doing so, even if it turns out to be nothing more than a normal row/great sex/Joe Eszterhas movie with Dolby Surround. Compared to the number of genuinely frivolous cases or wild over-reactions they have to deal with every day, they'll be thankful. (Probably.) This, of course, goes hand-in-hand with what most others have said - don't call the cops because of nuisance noise. They are rarely, if ever, the right avenue to persue such complaints. Of course, you also want to make sure that when the cops explain they got a call, it's not immediately obvious to the violent couple that it was you who made the call. It shouldn't matter if you genuinely believe there's somebody in danger; but in reality, it does. How to get around this extra dilemma... I dunno. Anybody? Yeah, and what's a Jello Tree?
• As someone who's been on the noise-making side of things, I agree with the face-to-face conversation thing first. If it continues after that, then call the cops.
• I have to respectfully disagree with people who are advocating the "no police" for noisy neighbors. (The neighbors who cause most of the problems don't live in the same building, so talking to my landlord, or theirs, for that matter, wouldn't solve anything). Let me give you an example of why I don't like confronting people about noise, and let's use my downstairs neighbor as an example: This woman likes to listen to music at a loud volume. Not blasting, but I can certainly hear it through my floor/her ceiling. When she moved in, Kimberly and I had gone down there several times to ask her to keep the noise down, including one Kimberly solo mission at 4AM, when they would not even answer the door. They would turn it down, but it would invariably be turned back up later that night/next night. As time passes, we mention it to the management company, as well as the tenant manager. We are told that the management company has called/sent notices of warning (there is a clause in the lease that specifically mentions no loud music EVER). Meanwhile, the loud music still continues. Fast forward about 6 months, to last week, when I went down to talk to them (once again) at 11:30PM. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a very nice guy, but I'm tall and physically imposing (6'2", 250lbs). I had no intention other than to nicely and politely ask her if she would mind turning her music down. But when she ripped the door open, and started screaming at me, before I could get a word out, I knew it was the wrong thing to do. She started screaming about harassing her, and how she was going to "file a suit" against us for complaining, and how she hears me snoring every night (which is true, I snore like a chainsaw) and how she's never complained, and how we've lied to the management company about the noise and she's received letters of warning from them, etc. Then she slams the door in my face. So yeah, when at all possible, I call the police, and ask them to mediate. Because the last thing I want to do is ask someone throwing a party with 40 of their friends where the beer has been freely flowing for hours to turn their music down.
• I guess the noise issue might be case-by-case. My neighbors, who live in the house next door, scream at us through the window if we as much as talk in our yard after 9pm. This same neighbor calls the police every time we have a party (once or twice a year, max), and every time that the police show up, they agree with me that there is no reason for them to be there, and they leave. So, I'm not making much of a point here, except that neither our neighbor talking to us nor police action is working in this case. ;) But I'm sure the police take the neighbor a lot less seriously every time they call.
• We've got the in-between solution here: the noise police (for want of a more formal term) who you can call when a party is too loud or the neighbours won't turn their stereo down. They'll give a warning the first time, then the second time they'll confiscate the stereo, and so on. I wonder if there's something similar - a less official place to turn than the police, who keep a record and can get the police in if necessary for something like this. I don't know - maybe the Mob?
• But for what it's worth, I'd call the police if it sounded violent.
• Talk with your neighbors. If you think something's up that you can't handle, call the cops. But almost everything can be solved by talking to your neighbors and being like "What the fuck, guys?" A good "What the fuck?" solves most everything, as people are shamed into good behavior.
• tracicle - in Briatin, we've got Noise Abatement Notices and, more generally, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. They perform exactly that function. They allow the necessary local authorities to intervene, mediate, and where necessary launch a civil action, to obtain a court order preventing people from carrying out certain specified actions. If these are broken, criminal proceedings can then be brought (in addition, equipment can be seized - for example, amplifiers, noisy machinery, etc.) If used properly, in cases where attempts to find a reasonable compromise between parties has failed, they allow for a clear definition of reasonable behaviour to be established by neutral institutions (a combination of the agencies and the courts), backed up by law. Of course, not everybody is keen on them, for some very valid reasons. But I think they're the best solution I've yet heard to problems such as this, as well as potentially much more serious or threatening problems. The trouble, of course, is that people's definition of reasonable behaviour differs. For example, jim_t and I would seemingly disagree on the idea that 11.30 pm is an unreasonable time to be making noise (and I'm a pretty damn quiet person). Obviously, if it were explained to me that someone in the near vicinity had to get up very early, and that it was disturbing them, I'd stop, as people should. But there's nothing de facto unreasonable about being audible at that time, to my mind. And equally, simply being able to hear somebody else's music, or DIY, or rampant lovemaking, does not to me constitute a nuisance. Noise happens everywhere; city, countryside, it's unavoidable. (To restate to avoid conflict, I have absolutely no reason to believe that jim_t and Kimberly are being unreasonable about their situation - and there's absolutely no way I could know - but things like squid's example show that are plenty much unreasonable people on the "shhhh!" side of the debate too). So. These things are all matters of opinion, and they should be resolved as such. If, instead, a neighbour routinely called the police on me, or others, for such behaviour - well, I'd think that was tantamount to harrassment, not to mention a selfish waste of police time, and I'd get pretty angry.
• jim_t's anecdote reminded me about what I have learned about dealing with scary neighbours. A few years ago my family had a neighbour who was complaining about us making noise, playing music late at night, etc. However, though we can be messy, we are very quiet; during the months that she continuely complained (and eventually had us taken to an eviction hearing), all of the people in my house but me were asleep by 9 or 10pm, since they worked very early (we also had a 1 year old child). She claimed to hear my brother opening and shutting a CD player - when we didn't actually own one, or a stereo of any kind. We eventually realised that she must be schizophrenic, but it was still really stressful to have this woman just stand at the end of our small yard yelling at us. So - the main way to deal with crazy people like this (and jim's neighbour) is to take notes. Write down the details of every incident and encounter with them, including time and date. When the landlord comes around to talk to you, you will have it all there in front of you, and be able to tell them your side clearly. You can also respond if your neighbour starts making accusations against you. My mum did this - and we were able to show that she was harassing us with no reason, that we did not have any music playing device in the room she accused us of playing music in (which backed onto her own bedroom). We still suspect that she had the people before us falsely evicted, but at least we weren't - and a few months later, discreditted, she moved out.
• A grumble about shift workers: I used to be one. I cannot for the life of me understand how other shift workers can have the temerity to demand that others cease normal day time activities (kids playing, mowing lawns, etc). You've been working late? Cry me a river. You chose a shift job, and either get paid extra, or get a job you wouldn't otherwise have. The rest of hte world doesn't have to revolve around you. This moves to a more general peeve: people showing up in an area and demanding everyone adapt to them. If you hate late night noise, why the fuck would you move into an inner-city apartment above cafes and next to nightclubs? If you hate kids, what the fuck are you doing in the suburbs?
• I called a neighbor recently when he and his wife were obviously having a physical fight. Yelling I will try to ignore. Noise I will knock about first. But if someone is yelling for help, destroying/stealing property, or obviously being physically hurt I call the cops. Rodgerd: This is so true. In Austin, our night club strip on 6th street and surrounding has been fucked over by new noise ordinances because when the area became 'cool,' they built yuppie apartments and the yuppies apparently want to live near nightclubs in absolute silence. or something.
• One caveat about talking to loud partiers: be sure it's not your first contact with them and they are friendly. If you do have to (I mean have to because it is 3 AM on Monday) call the cops on another occasion they will think it was you. (Then they cut the cable for your cable TV that runs through their apartment and the landlord evicts them.)
• Jello Tree; it's real, I tell ya! But, as mentioned, I now realise it must have only been seen in Canada. Basically, all these kids would be screwing around in this tree...with wiggly Jello...fruit..hanging off it, and Bill Cosby would bust them by saying, "Hey you kids! Get out of that Jello Tree!" Then I guess everybody just had some normal Jello or something. Used here as something you yell at your dopey friends who appear to be up to something nefarious, like smoking a joint or being drunk, or just generally unruly. That's what I should yelled at my neighbours. What happened was I heard tons of really loud banging and arguing, but couldn't really understand what they were yelling because they both have heavily accented English (I believe both of them are here to study English - he's Mexican, she's Korean) which can be extra scary, because maybe they're yelling "Go Canucks!" or, "I'm getting my death laser, and you're gonna be sorry!" So I hammered on the shared wall, no effect. Then I banged on their door. Nothing but more freaking out, but I figured out he was calling her a bitch, so I went down and woke up the building manager. We banged on the door a few times, and a dude finally answers it. I had my phone in my hand, and a sawed-off pool cue just inside my slightly open door that was a few feet behind us in case things really wigged out. Turned into a he said/she said thing - story was, she came home drunk and smoked him one upside the head as he lay asleep on the couch. He was hitting walls and doors instead of hitting her - she'd also ripped two religious medallions given him by his mother off his neck, so I understand why he was pissed. So everybody calmed down slightly, and I kept my phone nearby back in my apartment - I figured if they went at it again, it was cop time. Finally everybody shut the fuck up and went to bed. Yay!
• Eh, don't turn them in. Record them. It could end up gold.
• I should have shown them The Passion of the Jello. Scary art just makes our day-to-day problems seem so insignificent.
• wall punching screamy nutso crap? call the cops. babywannasofa - that sounds like william s burroughs on a big bender. Loud music? Well, it just so happens that my stereo goes to *12*, and I have 6 hours of tibetan monk chanting. But I usually just asked nicely.
• Todfox, rodgerd: a "world-class" golf resort was recently built just outside of Christchurch complete with fancy hotel and exclusive ownership apartments and all that flash sort of rich-American-tourist sort of stuff. Said resort was built right on the flight path for planes landing and taking off from the airport 5km away. Last year residents of the resort said they wanted the flight path changed because of the noise. Go figure, eh?
• Just for random calling the cops story: I was walking across campus last month and heard a man screaming about how he was going to kill this bitch. He would scream for like three minutes and then shut up for five and then scream and so forth for like twenty minutes. So I finally get freaked out and called the cops, on what turned out to be my friends filming a movie. Luckily they had called beforehand to warn the police. I felt like a very relieved jackass.
• I "called the cops" twice: 1) Most recently, I called them on New Year's Eve, 2001, when we received our mail and our AT&T bill had "white powder" in it. They referred us to the Fire Deptartment, who sent two great big trucks over to the house only to tell me my envelope received some extra paper shavings from the envelope stuffing machinery. 2) The first time was when I lived in a rented house. The next door neighbors were real low-lifes. When there 20-something-year-old son came screaching into his driveway and ran into his house, followed in short order by another car full of big dudes pounding on the door yelling, "Come out, Stony, so we can kick your @ss!", then started walking around the house looking for a way in, I called the cops. They got there pretty quick too. Stony was a pretty obnoxious neighbor and could have used a good @ss-kickin', but I didn't want the crime scene tape blocking our shared driveway.
• My noise-making story: The woman I was dating at the time was in the early stages of Graves disease (unbeknownst to both of us at the time) She was staying at my place after having a knock-down-drag out with her father. The effects of Graves are extreme mood-swings, among other things. She had one of these and after a lengthy screaming fest at me for telling her she could crash but would eventually have to go back to her dad andd patch things up, she picked up a knife and attempted to slit her wrists with it. I grabbed her and disarmed her and basically held her 'til she calmed down. I would've probably called the cops myself if the neighbors hadn't. Cops ring the bell while I'm still sort of subduing her, not wanting to let her go, I drag her with me to the door. Needless to say, the cops didn't look too kindly on the black guy holding the little white girl in a half nelson, her face puffy from crying for the last hour or so. Eventually, things got straightened out, but not after lengthy questioning and some less-than-favorable looks and commentary from a couple of skeptical cops
• I actually do have a story to relate regarding whether or not to call the cops. I'm just still contemplating the jello tree. Do you suppose this is Canada's answer to Mexico's killer bees? Has NAFTA aided jello tree proliferation? The mind boggles (or, in the case of a jello mind, quivers).
• Hey BearGuy, killer bees come from Africa thru Brazil. Stop your petty accusations of Mexicans terrorizing NAFTA nations with insects when you should really worry about us stealing canadian's jobs and climbing up their jello trees.