Nope, you aren’t the only one.
Anyone who has ever been needlessly harassed would think twice about doing this. It’s not fun to have the cops bust in on you when you are completely innocent. And they aren’t really apologetic when they don’t find what they’re looking for. They just leave your door in pieces and let you deal with the fallout. But, I digress…
Argh, no, there’s people in and out all the time and there’s ball playing.
That’s what you know.
What you SUSPECT is that there are people buying smack and looking out (apparently because of people playing basketball in the neighborhood, and not quite giving the neighborhood pick up game the attention you think it deserves.)
Prezactly. What the hell does congregating and ball-playing have to do with drug dealing? It’s the Gladys Kravitz Syndrome. No good can come of it.
Lets make this easy…it is well within Zsofias rights to contact the police if she feels uncomfortable in her neighborhood due to the activity she has witnessed.
It’s also within her rights to move to a neighborhood where people don’t play ball or have guests over. :rolleyes:
So unless they personally harass her and make her uncomfortable, she should just shut the heck up?
I disagree.
Naturally. That’s why it’s appropriate for the police to check them out.
Maybe we should have the police check EVERYONE out. That’s in essence what you’re saying. Why don’t they check out Ms. Kravitz. After all, she exhibits signs of being a peeping tom.
Well, that’s basically how civil people operate, isn’t it? Live and let live. If someone’s not bothering me, I see no reason to harass them by calling the cops on them.
There is a very strong corellation between illegal drugs and violence. cite cite (pdf)
It is disingenuous to pretend otherwise. In my neigborhood there are houses with activity similar to the OP. I have personal knowledge that illegal drug transactions take place. In these houses there have been shootings, threatening brandishing of weapons, and, in one case, a murder. The exact same pattern of vehicular traffic (cars stopping out front for a few minutes and then driving away after a brief meeting with an occupant of the house) is present there. Sadly, the police are either unable to do anything, or insufficiently concerned enough to try.
I agree that the prohibtion against marijuana is a bad law. However, some people believe that the prohibition against sex with underage children is a bad law. Should we help “the man” (drag yourself out of the sixties, dude) enforce those laws?
Phone the cops from a pay phone on a different exchange than yours (their instant-trace ID wouldn’t work), and don’t give them your name. That way, there is no danger the cops can let slip who called. And don’t tell them you’re suspicious because you can see them from across the street.
I should have said ((their instant-trace ID wouldn’t lead back to your phone).
Because once they bother her, it’s too late to recover the damages. I lived next door to a house with the exact same pattern of behavior: random visitors, hollering and honking, and kids being used as lookouts. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t realize what was going on. I just thought they were very social people who happened to have a large social circle of sketchy people.
Then my house got tossed and I had $600 worth of stuff stolen, and I came home to a trashed house with all the lights on and all the doors open. They make a big mess so you can’t take inventory as easily, so that you take longer to file a report with the cops.
When the cop showed up to take the report, he said “You should keep an eye on your neighbors and let us know if anything suspicious is going on. We’ve had an eye on them for a while now.” He knew exactly who did it, and couldn’t prove a thing, and I had to shell out my $500 renter’s insurance deductible so the insurance company would make up the last $100.
I agree with everything you’ve said but this. Diogenes should stay in the sixties. It’s one of his most charming facets. 
I am also moderately uncomfortable with the idea of reporting someone for what **ZSofia ** deems as “suspicious behavior”. At the same time I understand where she’s coming from. I dunno, though, she seems awfully nosy at the same time.
I wonder if some of the things I do could be considered suspicious, and if so, is someone going to report me to the police? Ultimately I think she should live and let live.
Your comparison between weed and underage sex makes no sense. The latter has a victim, the former does not.
The OP has seen nothing illegal and has not been bothered. Whatever happened to minding our own business instead of peeping at our neighbors through the curtains taking notes. Some kids are playing basketball? My god, how shocking.
I’ve lived next to dope dealers on more than one occasion and never had a problem. I found them to be good neighbors. The assholes are the ones who try to involve themselves in everyone else’s business and police the whole neighborhood.
I personally would not feel like I being treated unjustly if some police officers came by and asked me a few questions. I would probably be happy to see that they are doing their jobs.
Basically I feel there is nothing wrong with Zsofia expressing her concerns to the people whos job it is to attend to her concerns. Some of you need to get out of the 60s and drop the “live let live” bs. I dont feel that is a very safe way to look at the world today, unfortunately.
Well, that just sounds like more paranoia.
Violent crime is typically lower today than it was in the 60s. Couldn’t find anything right off for south carolina from the 1960’s, but this link (PDF!) says, “the murder victimization rate declined from 1.18 per 10,000 in 1977 to .74 per 10,000 for 2000.”
And here’s North Carolina’s murders from 1960 to the present, also declining (in rate, of course, not number).
I’d expect the people who think the OP should call the police with her paranoid suspicions to also say things like “I don’t feel that is a very safe way to look at the world today.”
Unless you’re talking about compared to 1890. Of course, I just read that Manhattan was on pace to have fewer than 100 murders this year, the first time that’s happened since 1880 (if I recall the exact date correctly).
Just keep repeating those media-created fears to yourselves though. That’s a real fun way to go through life. . .peaking through the curtains at the basketball players and imagining that they’re lookouts.
How about the guy murdered in my neighborhood during a drug deal. Any victim there?
Is it only victimless crimes that are abhorrent? Or can we pick and choose the ones for which we will provide support to the police?
No comment on my cites relating violence to drug use?
In rather think my experience with drug dealers trumps yours. Can you really extrapolate from your case that in all cases illegal drug dealing is OK? One might as well argue that drunk driving is OK, based on the fact that he drives drunk every night and has never hurt anyone yet.
Are meth dealers OK? Crack dealers? Heroin dealers?
Maybe you like suspicious authority figures questioning you on your own turf, but it’s an invasion of privacy to the rest of the world.