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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   4088 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

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Our neighbor's son has (apparently intentionally, because he fixed it for about a week) damaged his muffler and gotten an unusually early job, such that he roars off, waking us up each morning at 4am. Since we are not on good terms with these neighbors in general, we don't have any plausible way to bring it up, other than calling out of the blue or yelling down the street. We can't even reasonably leave a note (no box), or knock on their door (it is way behind their gate). Also, they would be unlikely to care if we did bring it up, because they have shown themselves to be inconsiderate in general, then lie when called on it.

The neighborhood is generally quiet and dark, and we do not want to sleep with earplugs just for this one five minute disturbance.

What should we do? It's starting to mess up my husband's sleep, especially, he's been having increasing trouble getting back to sleep.

I think it's a dick move to go straight to the police without mentioning it once. Polite note on the gate.

Are you on good-to-neutral terms with any other neighbors who might share your sentiments? It might be more effective if police are receiving complaints from multiple sources.

It really saddens me how little importance is placed on noise ordinances. There's probably a decent societal level productivity loss from concentration and sleep disturbances by having that one asshole on every block.

We had a similar issue with a neighbor playing loud music, which we resolved thanks to a bit of luck. This won't map perfectly onto your situation but may give you some ideas.

First we texted, and we also walked over a few times, asking them politely. We suspected the neighbors were inconsiderate but we started with polite and direct confrontation anyways. After that didn't work for a few weeks/months, we'd text once asking them to turn it down and call the police with a noise complaint when they didn't. This worked out great, because the neighbors (being inconsiderate assholes) had some friends over and decided to start revving their motorcycles in the driveway very loudly at the exact same time the police came by because of the noise complaint. That ended up getting them a court date, which we learned about after they complained to us about it.

Whatever happened in court, they no longer blast their music late at night.

Life fuel. I've never managed to get neighbors to quiet down in my life.

Anonymous call to the police. And I mean anonymous. No phones linked to you directly or indirectly. Not your voice. Not on camera. No details giving away it's you.

Or an anonymous threat. Leave a note that gets his attention somehow. Maybe track down where the kid works. Offline sleuthing. "Fix the muffler in a week or else." And then start slashing tires if he doesn't. No prints on the note. Don't get your face or vehicle caught on camera.

No easy answer. Some people only respect force.

Be like the Swiss and complain to the police?

I could try that, though my mental model of the police around here it that they wouldn't do anything unless he was still here when they arrived (and this is as he's leaving, so he wouldn't be). That might be wrong, and I could ask them about it.

My parents have a neighbor who, after people started complaining to the police about him blasting rock music in his yard, now blasts rock music in 15 minute intervals, so it's no longer blasting by the time the police get there. They are especially unhappy because his relative, while staying in the house, shot an elderly neighbor (he did go to prison for this) and threw a flaming item through their window, breaking it and burning their stuff. This is not in a bad part of town. They never received any compensation.

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