Maybe this is a regional thing, I don’t know. This is a small town. We gave up a lot when we left Chicagoland. I loved doing things there that are not possible here.
But instead, here we have peace and quiet. This town has very little crime, and serious crime is rare (our neighbor’s offenses happened in another city).
Our neighborhood is especially quiet. There are only 50 houses back here, surrounded by woods.
I don’t want to be a gated community, I don’t want to tell people how to live or maintain their property.
I just don’t want to live amongst criminals. It’s a luxury, yes; it’s a luxury I want.
Have any of you guys, ya know, talked to the neighbors?
I haven’t seen any threads about this before this one, so I don’t know the background. All I know is that I read the OP and found it creepy that you were stalking the fuck out of your neighbors.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that chances are that at least one or two of the people who are creeped out by what you’re doing have kids. It’s looking stalkerish, sorry.
Yup - a little boy and a teenage girl. The boy is five, and not unsupervised outside for standard reasons. The girl is allowed certain freedoms, like walking a few blocks, right past the “felon house”, and go to the downtown stores. This will increase as she gets older.
What am I supposed to do, exactly? Bar my daughter from ever leaving the house alone? Seal up my doors and buy an attack dog?
And, you are obviously surprised by what’s “typical” - but that doesn’t always mean “bad”
I can’t answer for Sateryn76 but I do have children. Young children.
Having children isn’t an excuse for acting like a paranoid wing nut. Take reasonable precautions, which you should do anyways, and stop obsessing about it. You can’t control it. You can’t make them move. You’re working yourself into a frenzy because you have an ex-convict and a “bad driver” living in the neighbourhood. Well, guess what? If he had been convicted of an offence that didn’t result in him being put on the sex offender registry, you’d never know he had been convicted of a crime. You don’t know that there aren’t other people in your pristine community that haven’t been convicted of or committed violent crimes. There are probably even other people in your neighbourhood who have driven drunk.
I can pretty much guarantee that this guy has absolutely no interest in you or your children at this point. As I said in the other thread, if you continue snooping into his past and gossiping around the neighbourhood, he’s probably going to be irritated, and rightfully so.
I get that. It’s just that even criminals have to live somewhere. Obviously you don’t want him, but I doubt anyone is saying, “Awesome, I get to live near a rapist!” As others have pointed out, there are rapists and sex offenders everywhere–but a lot of them aren’t convicted or even known. They just live among us.
You can report the guy for reckless driving–but that’s something he’s actually done.
And I’m not seeing why you need to be on the wife’s FB page. It’s legal, yeah, but I’m glad I’m not the only one getting a skeevy vibe from it.
I’ll put out the obligatory, no, I don’t have kids. Still creeps me out.
Oh dear. So, he raped a 40 year old woman, which is awful, but he’s obviously not a pedo. Kids are fine.
Speeding tickets? I’ve got like 5 of those. I also am a Catholic school teacher part time. Should I not move into your neighborhood? (Need answer fast).
DUIs? Shitty, yeah, but I think everybody knows a person or two who fucked around earlier in life and has a DUI or two. I’m not saying it’s ok- I certainly don’t have any, but I’m surprised by how many folks I encounter that do.
His son committed one crime in his mid 20s. Again, shitty, but it seems like that was a on time thing. People make mistakes.
Sure, lock your door. Don’t take up neighbor’s offer to give you a ride home from the bar. Other than that, chill the fuck out.
Like I said before: go talk to them. Maybe they are people who made some mistakes, learned from them, and are trying to live an honest life. He sped through the neighborhood- fine: bring it up when you talk to him (“Hey, there are a lot of kids around here, so I just wanted you to be on the lookout when you’re driving- I’d hate for something terrible to happen, ya know?”).
There IS no perfectly safe place. Your illusion of such has been dinged, and that’s a bummer, but that’s all that’s really changed. You have no way of knowing (and never have) that there’s not an UNregistered sex offender on the other side of your house.
If you’re interested in keeping your kids safe then teach them how to protect themselves and keep an eye on them. Gathering information on this guy is not a good use of your time, and as “things to teach your kids” go, I’d skip the torches and pitchforks.
So several years ago a family moved into my suburban neighborhood of “above the median price” houses in the suburbs of relatively crime free St. Paul, Minnesota. There were cop cars there a lot. Turns out that he used to be a gang leader and turned state’s witness. Lots of teenagers around, don’t know if they were his or hers or what. Had one daughter that was the cause of a lot of the cop visits. Didn’t dig too much, just avoided them beyond nodding if I walked by while they were outside. Although our kids played ever so slightly with their youngest (outside, and in our yard).
They moved - house got foreclosed on about eighteen months ago. Never caused a lick of problems for any of the neighbors, except being “undesirable” and leaving the house in a shape where it was very difficult for the bank to resell (the bank eventually let it go for a song, a new couple moved in and fixed it up, moved out six months later, and sold it for a profit.)
If you don’t like it, YOU need to move. However, there is no guarantee the next neighborhood won’t have similar issues.
This could actually end up being a good thing for your kids. Learning that some people in this world are jerks but that they have the same rights as everyone else and, while we should go out of our way to avoid them if they make us feel unsafe, they should not be treated badly. After all, you wouldn’t want your friends and neighbors to treat you badly over things you’ve done in your past, right? This also gives you a reason to explain to them that you should be nice and respectful to everyone but your personal safety trumps nice so if you feel like you are in danger you need to run and scream whether or not it will hurt someone’s feelings.
You’re coming off as irrationally paranoid, at best, and borderline psychotic, at worst, in this thread.
Instead of letting these people live inside your head, why don’t you just get on with enjoying your life and taking the sorts of reasonable precautions that everyone takes regarding issues of crime? I’m not saying you need to forget about the neighbors altogether; just stop acting like their presence is the end of the goddamn world, ferchrissakes.
I find this comment amusing. We used to live in a gated community - one that had a reputation in our city as one of the best, most prestigious places to live. Beautiful houses. Pristine lawns. Golf course and clubhouse that served fancy dinners and had wine tastings. We had a guard house that was staffed 24 hrs and where you had to check in if you wanted to come in. If the person whose house you were visiting hadn’t called ahead, the guard wouldn’t let you in.
For a long time, there was a peeping tom roaming the neighborhood at night, looking in the windows at women. He’d take his dog for a walk on the golf course and use that as a cover to sneak into people’s yards. We had a pretty good idea who it was, as some of the men in the neighborhood caught him in action and chased him for awhile, but they couldn’t prove anything. It was a guy who lived there. Then there was the time that one of our neighbor’s house was raided because he’d been smuggling illegal weapons and was using a falsified passport. That was exciting - we were on the evening news! I wouldn’t even want to hazard a guess at how many people there had had DUIs - there was a serious cocktail culture there. Buncha hooligans in those gated communities!
I strongly agree with this part of what you’re saying. You are right. We do practice being on our guard when we visit Chicago (and we avoided getting mugged by not being “nice”). I hate that we have to do it at home now, too.
And it cracks me up that you guys think I’m being a stalker, when the advice in the other thread was to find out what I could about him.
The reason I even looked on the sex offender registry in the first place was because a volunteer from the sheriff’s office was at the mall reminding people to use it. And everything I learned is from public records and newspaper articles. Except the picture of the two of them, from her Facebook page.
Thank you for your kind intentions, those of you who had them. ;)
I’m going to go call home security system companies and see what that entails…
It cracks me up that you think being “nice” generally results in getting mugged. Seriously, what happened to you in Chicago that made you seek a magical place where nothing bad could ever happen?
