Brewmaniac

Last night our daughter woke us up about 12:30 or so and said "mom - dad wake up, there's something going on ouside" There were lights fashing in all our windows and there were five or 6 police cars out in front our house and the two next to us, the cops went though the back yards looking for the neighbor kid, I guess he was involved in a fight or something.
It really freak us out! The cops are next door a lot.
Their house is for sale, I hope it sells fast, so they'll be gone.

How about you do you have any questionable neighbors or have you had police action close to where you live?

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Redjake

Our neighbors used to call the cops on us every single New Year's Eve for shooting off fireworks. Yes, New Year's Eve. Ugh.

My girlfriend definitely has some questionable neighbors - every Saturday morning their little girl throws a temper tantrum and the parents let it fizzle out instead of dealing with it. Usually lasts around 3 hours of pure Screamfest®

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Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

Chimera

We had a group of Drug dealers move into a rental house down the street. For a month we all watched as cars pulled up in the dead of night, all night and morning. Three neighbors and I all made a call the same day to the town supervisor, expressing our concern. That night a continuous stream of patrol cars made loops (every half hour or so) around the streets....until they caught them in the act.
Three days later they were back in buisiness, and we made the call again...they were caught two more times, and within two months the house was vacated, and re-rented to new tenents....who are quite pleasant.

Sometimes people Suck....and need to be removed completely.

Psycho Dad

I live in a small town that is trying to die. As a result, when people die, their houses don't sell quickly and people often simply resort to renting them out or selling them on contract. That has left damn near my whole neighborhood being rentals that have a lot of questionable people coming and going.

One night in particular, we were watching a movie and thought we heard a commotion through the surround sound. Once it dawned on me that this wasn't quite the type of movie those sounds should be coming from, I looked outside and saw two policemen just in time to witness the guy across the street get tasered.

When the kids were young, I kept an eye on the registered sex offender list as well because of all the rentals and the constant turnover of renters.

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Brewmaniac

Ya, what's up with that BS, we had two on our street. It seems they're every where. How f***ing sick is that, getting off screwing a kid. You would have to be one sick bastard to do that. Like there isn't enough adults that are looking for sex.

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mixedmedia

We once lived next a very large, very backwards, very eccentric old woman who used to dig holes in her backyard at night. That always gave us the creeps. But as far as we know she was harmless.

And at one time we lived in an apartment complex and our apartment was edged by a small wooded area in which a floral shop owner was shot execution-style by a couple of teenagers who robbed her store...for five bucks. I was home at the time with my daughter who was less than a year old. That haunted me for years. I was so happy when we finally moved out of that place.

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PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Manic_Skafe

Other than the West Indian family that moved in across the street and converted their home from a regular 1 family house to a monument to all things that don't belong on a single lot - there's a six foot gate, huge elephant statues and a garage that laughs at the size of my house; other than them, their awful house and drunken parties...my neighborhood is fairly normal.

My g/f is unfortunate enough to live directly underneath an obsessive neat-freak who at any given moment has at least 10 cats in her possession. The cats apparently shed all over the place and so the woman vacuums in 20 minute intervals from 5am throughout the entire day. When the vacuums suction isn't sufficient she can be heard violently attacking it for failing her....

..crazies...

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MSD

When I was about 10, we came home to find FBI and SWAT cars and vans lining the street. Turns out they were looking for my neighbor in the woods and aroudn the neighborhood. My mom made me stay in the basement until it was over in case there was any shooting (I don't remember if this was before or after I ignored my mom's demand that I stay in the backyard while playing one day because "I wanted to see if that soudn was really gunshots")

Would you believe I live in one of the richest towns in the country (median home price in my neighborhood is over $700k) and not in a crime-infested city?

Average_Joe

I live next door to an elderly woman who had 2 daughters, one who was very well behaved, and another who was uncontrollable. The uncontrollable daughter had 3 or 4 kids with different guys, and all of the kids eventually became the custody of my neighbor because the parents were either too f'ed up on drugs or in constant trouble with the law. The kids are older teens now, but during their childhood, the cops were always called to the house because the uncontrollable daughter constantly tried to take her kids away or cause havoc in some respect. Since the kids are older, the daughter doesn't come around anymore, which is nice now that I have kids of my own who don't need to witness all of this BS. My main concern now is that if my elderly neighbor were to die, would the house be left to the f'ed up daughter to live in.

Willravel

The previous owners of my house had problems with their neighbor's drugged out goat attacking their dalmation.

DaElf

When I was young there was a helicopter spot lighting over my house every other weekend. SoCal in the 80's oh those were the days.

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SirLance

Many moons ago, a neighbor kid broke into the house behind me. The owner shot him because he thought the screwdriver the kid was holding was a knife. Kid died.

The kid lived with his mom and stepdad, and they had constantly been arguing about discipline. His mom didn't want to face some of the shit he was into, and wouldn't let the stepdad impose any discipline at all. They wound up divorcing and selling the house.

It was very sad, and bad for everyone.

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Brewmaniac

Ok Will, you can't post about a drugged out goat attacking a dog without explaining.

This made me laugh out loud! Hell I'm still laughing, I've got tears in eyes, from envisioning this!

Thanks dude!

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clavus

Growing up, my folks owned the building next door to our house. It was a Victorian, converted into four apartments. My dad had more kindness than sense and regularly rented to people who were down on their luck.

When a handicapped gentleman of Native American descent needed a home, my father and I built a ramp for his wheelchair, installed bars in the bathroom, and basically did everything we could to convert a 100 year old building to a modern day handicapped-accessible low-rent apartment.

My father dubbed our new tenant “the roll-away Indian.” Over time, his name was shortened to “ol’ Rollaway.” Political correctness and sensitivity were unknown in our household.

In hindsight, the ramp we built was little better than the stairs it replaced. Though solidly constructed and painted with textured porch paint, shot up at a 45 degree angle. This made wheelchair ascent impossible without aid. And descent was little more than a brief, harrowing fall.

Rollaway’s friends showed up shortly after he moved in and build a longer ramp with a smaller rise over run ratio. They did a great job. Then they all got loaded, raged into the night, had a fight and drove home drunk.

His friends did that a lot. And he got just as drunk as everybody else. It wasn’t uncommon to see “ol Rollaway” mired up to his axles in the muddy front lawn, yelling at his woman or laying next to his chair clasping an empty bottle of something cheap.

Eventually the rollaway Indian moved. To jail I think.

My Dad rented an upstairs apartment to a tall, obese woman with hair like a frightwig and the kind of stare that made cautious people skitter out of her way. She dressed in tight, violent-colored clothes and had the intense, twitchy manner of a someone who was too busy to cut her lines straight.

We called her “Gorgeous.”

Gorgeous had a lot of friends who rode motorcycles. And while they were always respectful to me, they had a tendency to yell at one another late into the night. One evening, I returned from Youth Group to discover a small number of emergency vehicles next door.

While I was out, a particularly loud argument had erupted, only to be cut short when one of the participants “tripped and fell” out of the second story window.

One day Gorgeous just wasn’t around any more. She probably tripped and fell into a shallow grave.

Then there was the time when my dad rented to a very nice young woman with a very ferocious dire wolf… er dog. And while the young lady was courteous and kind, and always paid her rent on time, she had a parade of visitors at all hours of the day and night. These people never stayed long, and they looked a lot like the friends of Rollaway and Gorgeous.

She was gone before my dad could come up with a good nickname for her. But I’m sure all her friends called her the same thing afterwards – Narc. Ya. Dad unwittingly rented to the undercover cop who brought down a whole web of speedfreaks, cookers and dealers.

Good times, Dad. Good times.

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mixedmedia

Haha! Great stories, clavus, and so charmingly told. Nice!

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Grasshopper Green

When I first met hubby I would stay at his house at night sometimes. Early one morning we woke up to some bright lights and commotion in the backyard; his bedroom window faced the yard and the light woke us up. His cousin had committed a burglary and had run to hubby's house to hide (unbeknownst to us).

When we moved back to Utah from NC, we rented an apartment next to some crazy as hell people. We thought it was just the couple that lived there, but the girl's mom lived there too, and often had panic attacks or something. She would call 911 and then wouldn't answer when the cops showed up. We had cops over to our place asking if we knew if someone was home, and since we didn't know about the mother, we would tell the cops no one was home. One afternoon we heard strange noises coming from their place and hubby went to investigate. He saw the mother on the floor yelling for help...so he jumped through her window and had me call 911. The ambulance showed up and the EMTs casually strolled into the apartment, since it was a common occurance. She then proceeded to get pissed at the EMTs, cops, and hubby since she didn't call them. The couple wasn't any better. They would get pissed at each other and the girl would lock the guy out of the apartment, and he would pound on the door and threaten her. I was glad when we moved.

Most recently, we had someone try to kidnap a girl in the alleyway behind our apartment complex, and the lights from the police cars woke me up. I didn't know why they were there; they came by our house the next day and talked to hubby, asking if he had seen anyone suspicious. It kind of freaked me out, we live in a pretty good neighborhood and things like that are fairly uncommon around here.

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Willravel

No problemo, here's the story:

Okay, the house I live in is at least 60-70 years old (though we rebuilt a lot of it when we moved in a few years back), and there was a lovely elderly couple that lived there for like 55-60 years before us. About 45 years ago, the house was surrounded by groves, and only had one neighbor, the house next door. They were reclusive and they raised some livestock, including goats. There had always been rumors that they were producing opiates, but nothing was ever confirmed. Back in these times, the couple had their kids and a female dalmation named Pepper. Pepper was mild mannored and great with the kids. So one day Pepper was eating her food, minding her own business, when a cracked out baby goat cleared the 6 foot fence seperating the two properties and charged. Pepper only had enough time for her eyes to go wide and she got butted into a bush. The goat flipped out doing flips anjd charging into trees and the big window. The husband, being a military offier, had no qualms about running out the door and straight at the goat. The goat charged in kind just in time to have a rod iron chair smack it over the head. The husband hog tied the goat, walked up the the front door of the neighbors, untied the goat, and threw it in closing the door behind it. There was a lot of noise and the goat never came back.

fresnelly

Our friends had a rough and tumble rooming house kitty corner to them. The police were visiting constantly, and loud music and yelling were the norm.

Eventually, enough calls had been made to the city that a flock of Bylaw Officers and City Inspectors descended on the house. I guess the combined cost of the Bylaw infractions and code violations did the trick because the property management company seized the house and evicted all the residents but the quiet guy living in the basement. It's been dark ever since.

When researching our own house, we found out it went through a really rough patch during the 70's and 80's. It was unoccupied for a number of those years, as well as a flop house too. There was even a murder by a psychiatric outpatient in the connected unit next door.

Our place even made headlines in the 80's due to a unique and precedent setting ruling regarding spousal abuse. Basically, the offending husband's sentence was dramatically reduced because his wife was found to have "provoked" him. Apparently they both fought constantly and she gave as good as she got. In the final incident she keyed and then kicked in the dashboard of his trans-am. The tax rolls show that they sold the house during the trial.

The neighbourhood has changed greatly since then and we couldn't be happier.

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snowy

We are the neighbors with "police action" in our driveway. No, seriously. They stop by here at least once a month. They were here, knocking on our door, just a couple of weeks ago. Why? Because my roommate was playing his drums at 4 in the afternoon--which isn't against the law where we live. At any rate, we live in a college town where the local cops get off on busting kids for drinking and noise. Unfortunately, we live in a cul-de-sac of four houses, all occupied by college students, who are as noisy as they are quiet. Generally, we're good neighbors, and keep our parties inside or in our backyards. However, some of our neighbors on the cul-de-sac aren't as good as we are. We've only had the cops come to our door once, but the neighbors have had multiple run-ins with the local PD for noise. Generally, though, the police action we see hasn't been justified, and some of it has been downright ludicrous--especially considering most of the police response has been to neighbors that are usually quiet, compared to the ones who are usually noisy.

On a side note--we're not any noisier than some of our non-college student neighbors, so that always makes me feel better. In fact, we have a bunch of guys in their 30s that live across our back fence who threw some REALLY crazy parties this summer--the kind where people were puking in the backyard the next morning. There's never a dull moment in our neighborhood, but there's also not a lot of REAL crime.

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Brewmaniac

Will your story cracked my wife and I up, we both were laughing out loud. Thanks again!

Brew

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opus123

Less people locked their front door back then. Great story !

Our street used to be a drug street, but it got reformed before we moved here by an elderly lady that used to live next door. She would call the police for every drug deal she saw. She had a fence with two barking dogs and 911 on speed dial probably. The only time the police came to our street in the last 5 years are these three incidents.

1. At midnight one night I saw a large white vehicle ( I think SUV) crash into our group of mail boxes. I ran out and looked at the mail everywhere and strangely the mail boxes were all fine, but the posts were toast. Luckily there was a irrigation trench in front of the mail boxes so I think the SUV got damaged a bit. I noticed a big white SUV down the street with scratches on the hood, so I called the cops. They wrote my brief story down and drove down the street to the SUV. That SUV engine was cold so the cops came back and told me it was the wrong SUV. They said it was probably a drunk driver and they might get him or her later at 2am or so if they were still driving around. Sounded fine to me, but never heard from the police again.

2. The neighbors across the street used to yell at each other more than they do today. A few years back the mom was visiting across the street. There was a big yelling match and I saw the daughter try to push the mom down the stairs. So the mom drove away and called the cops on her daughter for "trying to kill her". The cops never came over to ask me anything, but all has been quiet over there since then. I heard that the husband across the street is a gambler, so maybe the mom came over to lend money to help them and they had a fight ? Who knows.....

3. One time at 4 am the police knocked on our front door. They asked if everything was ok. We said fine. They said they got a 911 silent call from our house. Turns out it was one of our cordless phones had dialed it as the battery died. Unfortunately we had two cordless phones at the time. So I put the oldest cordless phone in the closet and replaced the batteries in the newer one and we shall see if the police come again. (^:

Jonathan

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laconic1

Back in the late eighties every house on my block except for my parents and my next door neighbors got broken into. My neighbor and my dad were talking about that one day and my neighbor told my dad he was looking into getting a dog since we had a fairly intimidating dog at the time and they didn't. The next day the neighbor's son was arrested for breaking into another house. The neighbor never bothered getting a dog.

Willy

When I lived in Phoenix, AZ I was in an apt complex that always had helicopters with spotlights going through it. Once there was a home invasion robbery 2 doors down where a couple guys with shotguns knocked on the door and then just charged in and robbed the guy. They allegedly got over $1000 in cash so I'm guessing the guy was a drug dealer and the robbers knew it since most people living in $500 a month apartments don't have $1000 in cash laying around.

Either way I'm glad I don't live in a place like that, and I never told my Mom about any of it hehe.

Pip

The police action diminished considerably in the neighbourhood when we moved in. The guy who lived in the house before us was a pretty shady fellow who got a lot of visits from angry people who he owed money. There was actually a clearly visible pathway in the backyard lawn from all the times Mr. Shady had snuck away from angry guys wanting to "talk" to him. It took almost two years to fade.
We got a visit from a plainclothes policeman within a week of moving in. He was very nice and friendly and gave us plenty of advice on how to act if any of the angry guys showed up, and he gave us his direct number too. There were a few cars driving by in a strange manner, but since we were new to the neighbourhood we couldn't tell if they were legitimate locals or something worse. There were a few phonecalls and a bunch of letters from debt collectors, but that was it. Hell of a way to feel welcome in a new place though.