The couple next door fight on the regular, most of it being him shouting at her. This happens every other day or so, but this morning it was more intense than normal and included the woman crying and begging and the sound of shit knocking around on the walls. Well, even being the pussy that I am I had to do something so I pounded on the door.
Guy who answered was about my height (6’0-6’1), white and skinny, short hair and glasses, physically unintimidating. I’ve seen him outside dressed in woman’s clothes complete with makeup: Not relevant but it adds a little flavor that was missing from the story. He’s immediately yelling at me and I try being diplomatic: I tell him that I don’t claim to know what’s going on but that this isn’t a good situation for him to be in and that he should probably go cool off. We go back and forth for a few seconds with my trying to calm him down and telling him that I’ll have no choice but to call the police if he doesn’t leave. He tells me that there’s nothing illegal about arguing with your wife and that if the cops came he’d just not answer and that without a warrant they couldn’t do anything. I tell him that I know they have kids there, so I’ve got no choice but to call if he doesn’t go. He acts as if I’d be wasting my time, but I can tell he’s trying hard to convince me not to.
I go and call the police and tell the operator everything, describing what they and the guy’s car look like. Cops show up a few minutes later and I can hear them pounding on their door. I go outside for a moment to tell them I was the one who called and that that was indeed their home. They tell me they’ve been called to this apartment before. I head inside. Eventually they’re demanding that the guy come outside with the woman and their kids so that they can confirm they’re OK. The man says that the woman’s naked (“You want to see my wife naked?!”) as she’s just gotten out of the shower (yeah, right) and from what I can hear tried showing the cops the kids through the window.
I couldn’t hear too much else but maybe fifteen minutes later the cops left. I can hear them talking now (“I tell you every day how much I appreciate you. … If you’d told me how much it meant to you I would have done it. … What are you talking about? Why are you so upset?”).
While in the middle of typing that out he came pounding on my door, saying he wanted to talk to me about “you being a cop-caller.” At a loss, I called the cops again, but this time they said there was nothing they could do.
I doubt anything I did made a difference, and now I can’t help but think that it in fact only made things worse.
No, just kidding. You did the right thing, killa, I’m proud of you. Dude will calm down and leave you alone. He’ll feel shame and want to pretend it never happened.
You just keep his beer cold and don’t burn the chicken.
And if it happens again, you know you gotta call the cops again.
In my unfortunate experience, you’ve got two options. Instead of heading over and pounding on the door, call the cops so that when they get there he’s in the act - they’ll typically remove the guy then, but not when things have settled down because you warned him. Consistently call it in, so that every time he knows he’ll be getting a visit and a ride. Don’t listen to any lame-ass attempts at diplomacy trying to stop you calling - I answer the door with a dumbbell bar in hand and a “fuck off” at the ready. Someone that hits women hasn’t got shit to say to me, ever, so there will be no talking things out.
The other is speaking his language. When we had a couple like this in my old building, a bunch of us jumped the guy and gave him a thorough beat-down. He moved out after the second one, though I suspect the girl moved out to follow him soon after. The second one was so stupid - we were beating him for beating her again and he said it was okay because he only hit her because we hit him. :rolleyes:
The tough part - ignore the victims. They’ll try to play peacemaker, make excuses, cajole. Make it clear that if she wants you to get along, he stops hitting her, period. Go ahead and be “that asshole next door.” At least she’ll have a go-to guy. I had a neighbor wake me at 2 a.m. to move her out when she finally got sick of him, and it was because I was the only guy on the floor that refused to get buddy-buddy with that asshole. It was surreal - I drove her to a relative’s at 3 a.m. in my Rolls-Royce, crammed to the brim with everything she owned…
I didn’t feel any particular empathy for him but I didn’t want to potentially make shit worse for her and the kids, something I’ve read is a concern when confronting abusive guys in public especially. As is typical in situations like this, I didn’t feel any fear during the act itself but I’ve got that prickly sort of worry now that I can stop and think about it.
I know that someone was slamming things around, as I mentioned in the OP. I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it wasn’t just an argument.
Just remember, this is exactly the kind of fear that abusers rely on. You did everything perfectly. When you start to doubt, ask yourself two questions: “will this guy be less likely to hit the wife/ kids if no one ever calls him on his bs?” and “will the kids be better off if no adult ever intervenes in the violence?” I think you know the answers, and you know that you did the right (HARD!) thing.
Good on you for being willing to get involved. In the future, I think it would be better to call the cops rather than confronting him, unless there is actual violence in progress.
Edit : So I read half of your post, and posted the above. Then I saw, later in your post :
So you’re a guy who beats up abusers and helps their vitims move in the middle of the night, in your Rolls? What’s it like partying with P. Diddy and fucking mad bitches back at the 4 Seasons, while bathing in Cristal? Fun?
He heard “shit knocking around the walls.” Something physical was happening. That’s usually my catalyst. The girl downstairs argues with her boyfriend every week (ironically, she’s yelling at him as I write this), but I’ve never heard it get physical. And the couple next to the guy we beat-down was always arguing, the guy with his girlfriend Wanda - I got so tired of hearing “Wanda, why you listen to their liiieees? They’re jealous 'cause I love you so much!” but we never saw a need to get involved.
Years ago, I called the cops when I heard the asshole in the apartment below me smacking the snot out of his girlfriend on a Saturday night. They’d get drunk , argue, and he’d start wailing on her. He was removed, released and within days, she was back with him. Rinse wash repeat the next Saturday. By the third Saturday, I just left and spent the night with my boyfriend.
Yeah, you might want to cut down on the hip-hop videos. Most Rolls-Royce owners are fairly ordinary. Heck, there are maybe 5 members under age 60 in the local chapter, and there’s one other black guy. My other car at the time was a 1983 Porsche 911 - that didn’t seem like the more practical option…
What was surreal was her crying, yet laughing and saying “Damn, this is a nice car!” I think leaving the guy in a RR struck her as pretty wild…
When I was about 14 years old, I was at my GF’s house when her drunk parents started fighting. There were waving kitchen knives at each other and the mother begged me to call the cops. I went to the neighbors and called. The end result was the father was pissed at me and the mother always sided with him. So, I became the bad guy. It was very confusing to me. Most times it is better to stay out of these situations.
Good on you! From now on, call the cops quickly, and don’t stop doing it. They want to intervene, but need your help to give them an excuse. Likewise the woman and the children need that outside influence giving them the message that this is not okay, it’s not normal, and there’s no hiding it.
Don’t get discouraged and stop calling. If he is beating the woman or children they will eventually see a bruise, and have what they need to act.
One day a lifetime ago someone like you saved my life.
My husband had never been violent until that day but I realized later he had been slowly separating me from my friends and isolating me with him. Thanks to the slow response of the Canadian Armed Forces to our request to be posted together after our marriage we were living in different cities and I had a roommate. She was “only” a reservist so he didn’t think that she would have an impact on my life.
She was a great girl but definitely in the party time of her life and there were often people in and out of the apartment. My ex arrived at our apartment to “surprise” me and discovered Liz in the living room with two guys who lived on the main floor. He lost his everloving mind.
I came out of the bedroom where I’d been reading and told Liz and her friends to go downstairs that of course I would be okay.
20 mins later the neighbor I’d never met was standing outside our locked door banging and yelling that the police were on the way as my ex tried to beat me to death with the phone he’d ripped out of the wall as I tried to crawl to the door.
The neighbor wasn’t a large man but he stayed in that hallway until my ex left and then he stayed with me until the ambulance arrived.
Kicker 1 was when “our friends” visited me in the hospital to tell me how horrible I was being by ruining his life that way.
Kicker 2 was the crown attorney who suspended the charges because “The country has invested so much in his security clearance”
The awesomeness was that I wasn’t far enough under his spell to even consider staying. Other than in court I never saw him again.
I don’t care if the crashing was the shattering of a knickknack against the wall, he heard physical violence. Throwing shit is the last step before hitting–it shows both inability to control anger and disregard for consequences. And while all ‘throwers’ don’t become ‘hitters,’ it’s usually a flashing neon sign to get the fuck out.
There’s no reason to believe anything was thrown. In my experience arguments have two constants: raised voices and slammed doors. Heavy handed treatment of furniture is also commonplace.
As for the OP, he heard some perfectly normal marital discord and thought it was his right to bang on someone’s door and demand that he leave his own home for parts unknown for the foreseeable future, and threatened to call the cops unless that demand was met. The OP is entirely in the wrong. Then the neighbour came around to shout at him and knocked on his door, and he called the police again. Serious crime to report! Someone’s knocking on my door! The OP was wrong in every single decision he made and action he took, as far as I’m concerned. A curtain-twitching busy-body.