That’s not really what this is about though. She’s not complaining that the neighbors didn’t speak to her first, she’s complaining about her interaction with the police.
You should checks the books in that jurisdiction. As I mentioned above, in NC it’s just a warning or ticket.
You pretty seriously misrepresented what happened above. You didn’t get arrested for loud music.
People call the police, specifically, so it’s out of their hands. Honestly, if I have some reason to call the police on you, I really don’t care if you’re going to get busted for other things as well. That’s not my problem.
This. I have never seen someone contact a neighbor in person about noise - they always either call the police or contact building management. We had an ongoing issue at one building I lived in where an anonymous tenant constantly accused me of blasting my stereo - except I didn’t own a stereo or television, and the building manager knew that; it was a 10x15 studio, you could see the entire apt from the door, and my decor was 500 books, a futon, and some free weights (my electric bill came every 3 months because they won’t bill you until you hit $20). We couldn’t figure out why the complainer kept accusing me, and they wouldn’t be convinced otherwise. I offered to let them see for themselves, but they never wanted to be identified.
Loud base booming through the walls (Hip Hop) at 11PM is annoying. I don’t care whose apartment it is coming from. It’s either call the cops or pull her circuit breaker when she refuses to be considerate of her neighbors.
Hey Shodan, you never did get back to me on what you meant in that other thread, and seeing as this is a pretty similar topic, maybe now’s a good time to remind you. What do you mean by this post?
As I said at the time: do me a favor, please make your point clear. Like, what, exactly, is the message you’d like us to take away from this? Please be explicit, I’m really bad at subtext.
Even with the assumption that the column was written to reflect the author in the best light (“I just learned I was pregnant and celebrating! I NEVER disturb ANYONE with my music because I’m super respectful!”) and the police officer in the worst (“His hand was by his hip! He asked me for ID!”), this sounds like a big yawner to me. And, if I had the full story, I’m sure I’d be even less impressed.
I know a number of people who would call the cops first for a noise complaint. A mixture of “I don’t want to get into a confrontation” and “This isn’t my problem to fix, that’s why I pay taxes”. And they’d be calling regardless of whether you’re deafening the neighborhood with hip-hop, southern rock, Taylor Swift or James Taylor.
She didn’t say his hand was on his gun. She said his hand was near his hip i.e. standing normally with his hands at his side.
It’s not a verbatim conversation. There’s no mention of a noise complaint, for example.
Exactly. She has such an aura of cluelessness about her. I wonder if the thought that if your neighbors can identify the type of music you’re playing in your apartment that perhaps it is too loud.
I’m genuinely curious as to how you conclude this.
Here’s the problem, people are dicks sometimes. I think people are dicks to black people more than white people, but you never know which particular incident is triggered by conscious or unconscious prejudice. I was once at a restaurant with a colleague. We’re both white. The place wasn’t crowded. We were dressed normally. The white server was a complete asshole to us. Not just slow, but she was actively rude. If we were black, I would have bet the house that she had a problem with black people There could be no other explanation. Since we were white, it was just unexplainable. (maybe her cat just died or something).
I’ve had cops act rude to me a time or two also. However, I have never worried the encounter would escalate to a point where I would be dead. That’s white privilege I suppose.
Anyway, the cop could have handled this better, but she needs to shrug it off. On the other hand, maybe after a lifetime of slights and rudeness, she is tired of it all.
Back about 10 years ago, I lived in a townhouse community with neighbors on four sides. Left, right, front and below.
The woman on the north side of me used a bedroom right over our mutual doors as her sewing room. She was a big fan of marching music (John Phillip Sousa*) and patriotic music and would listen to it during the day at high volume. Never at odd hours.
The people directly below me were a Mexican couple. One day I arrive home to find the police there and marching woman complaining to them about the Mexican couple playing loud music. She complained that it was “hurting my heart” because it was so loud, just as I was walking by. Even though we were on friendly terms, I couldn’t help but stop and point out that she listened to marching music at even higher volume than she could possibly hear from below, and if she had a heart condition, how did that work?
Then she turns full on racist and says the music is ‘in a foreign language’ and that she wouldn’t have any problems with it if it was Christian Music. :smack:
Turns out the woman below was practicing for her church choir and it was indeed Christian music. At which point racist as all fuck neighbor blows that off and complains that it isn’t in English. :mad:
Yeah, that’s the point where the police warned her not to complain about loud music at 1pm - in the early afternoon - and left.
As to the OP article, my question for the neighbors would be if they ever tried to speak to her about it and what her response was.
I’ve called the cops on two neighbors in my current apartment over the last 6 years or so, after attempting to speak to them on several occasions to no results.
I’ve had several who repeatedly refused to open their door when I knocked. For one of them, a party in the apartment below me where I never heard the adults but was being kept awake past 1am on a weekday by children slamming into the walls, after three attempts to knock on the door were ignored, I slipped a note under the door saying they had 10 minutes, then I was calling the police. The party broke up within five.
Sure. But even with her presenting the story, the cop doesn’t seem particularly dickish.
And I’m assuming that human nature prevails here and she’s presenting the story with her as the protagonist and the cop as the antagonist just as almost everyone does when describing a confrontation. So the cop was probably even less dickish as the events actually transpired and she’s probably not as wonderful and respectful as she thinks she is. But even if she gave an faithful retelling of the events, it’s still not much of a story.
In these days and times, I would think thrice before calling the cops for a minor situation involving a neighbor, and it does annoy me that not everyone has gotten that memo. We can’t count on cops to have the diplomacy, the self-restraint, or the common sense to manage conflict without escalating it.
Nowadays, it’s simply too much expect cops to say anything like this. If we can’t depend on police department to train basic decorum into their officers, it’s up to us to stop using them in situations that require decorum. It’s messed up, but anyone summoning cops needs to just assume that a bad experience is going to come out of it for someone, and ask themselves is it really worth it.
Well, let’s see - if my neighbor is playing her music too loud, and I call the cops, they might go to her apartment, knock loudly on the door, ask her to ID herself, check if she is alone, and tell her to turn the music down, and then she will write a stupid op-ed in the WaPo blaming it on racism. If I don’t call the cops, I have to listen to her music.
Perhaps you could shoot the neighbor, thereby becoming a kind of person that certain other people would like to have around? A person who knows how to deal with ignorant loud music playing people?
Leaving aside the rest of her piece, and acknowledging the well-known adage about anecdotes, here’s an incident involving myself and a cop:
He was my close friend’s brother. I’d seen him at her wedding but had not met him. I was at the courthouse where he was on duty, approached at a normal pace, and called out to him by name and rank. He turned, and his hand went to his hip near his gun. It stayed there until I mentioned his sister by name; then he relaxed and was pleasant. Mind you, there were other cops nearby and I had just come through a metal detector. It was clearly a reflexive move, either training or experience.
I also note that I’m a white woman, middle-aged at the time, and fairly well-dressed. I dismiss this statement as irrelevant.
A sidenote: At the wedding reception, he stood in a corner and swept the room with his eyes almost the entire evening. In a roomful of friends and family, he still couldn’t relax. That is, of course, just him and not other cops, AFAIK.