Police Complaints about Noise

Learn How To Deal With Police, and What Police Involvement Brings.

Not knowing how to properly interact with the police hurts us when we finally resort to filing noise and other complaint charges against our neighbors. I so frequently hear, from people who contact me about their police dealings when attempting to resolve neighbor disputes, utter dissatisfaction with cops and the system. I've been there, and early in my own battles I found the same frustration.

Not being criminals, we of the good-neighbor underclass don't typically associate with police officers enough to become familiar with their sometimes peculiar mentality and unique perspective, the political landscape they must navigate, or how the legal system works as it relates to the police. Most ordinary citizens lack the backgrounds and involvements that would intimately acquaint us with local officers and "the system," so a crash-course is called for.

Expect low police response priority. Most police systems don't view noise offenders as criminals, so the non-emergency nature of the complaint pushes it down to the bottom of the list. In a heavily populated area police response time is so long the noisemaker may enjoy his infraction through its end by the time officers arrive. Don't blame officers for this -- response priority is part of a management system way beyond their scope of responsibility. Late on a Saturday night can be the busiest time of all for police -- that's when the young are out and about, speeding, driving drunk, crashing their cars, getting into fights in bars, etc. It's also when most neighbor noise complaints come in.

Police don't view noisy Neighbors From Hell as criminals. Cops don't often become aggressive in defending the law until an offender is outwardly aggressive in breaking it. In most areas, an offender of any municipal code can be arrested at an officer's discretion, but agreeable, apologetic offenders won't face such fascism. Too much paperwork. Noisy neighbors who apologize to responding officers and say they'll keep it down, typically, get little more than a smile from cops who have a list of calls backing up on their computer displays in their patrol cars.

Realize the limited impact police involvement may have. When police do take the matter of a noisy neighbor seriously, the offender often learns the system designed to protect us is quite impotent. Involving the police is the right thing to do -- much more so than making threats and getting into physical fights -- but doing so shows our hand. If the Neighbors From Hell aren't going to sufficiently suffer for their offenses when we involve police (for example, if they're not ticketed for violating a noise code), they come to know how much they can get away with. Insist on ticketing if that is an option officers have; expect a run-around from most officers, who often aren't given proper ticket books for noise code violations, who don't want to take the time to serve us some justice, or who just don't appreciate their breaktime being cut short so they can deal with "petty neighbor squabbles."

Even when dealing with repeat offenders, understand that in areas where police are kept busy, the responding officers are usually visiting your neighbor for their first time, since there are so many cops working rotating shifts in different communities. So the bad guy knows all he has to do is appease police. Sorry, officer. In smaller towns, the same officer might come to recognize a repeat offender, but may be sensitive to the damage an arrest record does to his small-town constituents, and doesn't want to write tickets to people he also serves. Take officers' names and cite their visit dates when future calls are made and the arriving officers are new to the case. This shows the current officers you're serious and taking notes (and names), which may strengthen their strict adherance to policy. This also demonstrates to future responding officers that the neighbors are bad guys, disobeying previous police orders.

Complete a police report or file a complaint for each offense. Indicate the specific law being broken, who's breaking it, where he/she lives, and when the lawbreaking typically occurs according to your own trend analysis of the noise log and other violation records. Show your paper trail to officers and offer to provide them with a copy. Your complaint should become part of the roll-call lineup for officers about to begin the shift during which your neighbor will likely violate the noise ordinance. Ensure this is the case by making a call to the local police, and speaking with a roll-call sergeant or other senior officer if possible.

Lack of evidence makes it hard for authorities to discern who's being victimized and who's being unreasonable. As stated earlier, experienced noisy Neighbors From Hell may create a disturbance just long enough to bother us, knowing we'll call the police -- it's a talent that belongs on their resumé. When police don't hear any disturbance around the home of the address phoned in, and a knock on the door is answered by someone feigning having been waken up, the cops radio back to the dispatcher that the complaint was unfounded as they leave the scene. You can chase the officers and insist your call was founded, but it's your word against theirs when no noise remains audible. Officers say to call them back if the noise returns. Don't look for them to come back on their own.

Build a relationship with local officers and request that the aggressively noisy neighbor is checked up on regularly and cited whenever in violation. Calmly express how damaging the noise is to your life, how you've tried in vain to work things out on your own. Realize they can devote little time to our problem because no one is getting hurt in a way they understand (no blood is being spilled). Don't resort to hyperbole, don't yell and don't act in the presence of officers as though this noise situation is the end of the world. Incredibly disruptive and anxiety-producing as we know it to be, cops don't understand that. Cops like cool cucumbers -- people who calmly and clearly describe the problem and what they believe will solve the problem.

Understand the context of cops' lives. Why don't they take noise complaints seriously? Some do, some of the time, but after just being on the scene where a cohabitating couple had a fight over drugs, one pulled a gun and the other held up a toddler to shield himself, and the kid got blown away, noise is not the end of the world to them. Some cops become irritated with calls to shut down parties where no one is being physically hurt, and some even identify with Neighbors From Hell. I've heard of officers even joining in the belittling of the complainant for calling the cops over a little thing like loud music.

Sufficient use of police as our allies eventually wears down the Neighbors From Hell. Once I found myself in the midst of war, every time I heard their loud music during several consecutive months, I called my local police station and filed a report. This achieved two things. My persistence, patience and appreciation for officers put us on a first-name basis -- I became friendly with one officer who made it her business to spend lots of time with the offenders whenever she was called to deal with them. She'd want to see identification, would ask them if they were using narcotics, and would write up a complete report. The second achievement was that it wore down the Neighbors From Hell. Each time they decided to enjoy blasting their music and disturbing their neighbors, they found it came with a price. Even though tickets weren't written, their time was taken up, and an officer pummeling them with the same accusatory questions became demoralizing. Eventually.

Police officers don't serve you alone. Do not make the mistake of thinking the police are your employees because you pay taxes. Officers represent law and order, not the individual desires of any particular resident, so when speaking with them treat them as the authoritative, respectable helpers they endeavor to be. Focus on the laws that are being broken - not the personality quirks of the Neighbors From Hell. Cops don't wish to be arbiters of neighborly behavior - they simply enforce the law.

I come down rather hard on police systems in this book, and how some officers can more readily identify with the bad neighbors than with we who complain about them. But most officers genuinely want to help us in resolving the conflict. Always thank officers who respond to your calls.

Get political. Angry about the lack of ticketing or other consequences for my Neighbors From Hell, I approached my neighborhood civic association leaders about starting a committee to combat nuisance noise. I needed a position from which I could alter police culture. This gave me access to local lawmakers empowered to beef up noise ordinances and fines, and lent me credibility among local police leaders (who naturally didn't want the head of the area's nuisance noise committee unable to combat his own neighbors' noise). Working with the Philadelphia Police and City Council, my committee convinced the people in charge that nuisance noise was a big problem and that fining offenders would bring revenues into the treasury. That second part got them listening. In my former neighborhood alone, police ticketing of noise offenders (mostly pull-overs of cars blasting their stereos) brings in over $10,000 a month in fines. Cops often then make arrests for other crimes (drugs, alcohol, stolen goods), which they learn about only through investigating the noise complaint.

It's also important to understand that involving police raises the hostility level between us and the neighbors, no matter what. Even our neighbors who look and act like they belong on the "Cops" TV show don't much appreciate having the police show up at our behest. The decision to involve authorities is often the wisest move a good neighbor can make, for a number of reasons. But to the neighbor we're calling on, it's perhaps the deepest line in the sand that could be drawn. It's worth noting, for the benefit of any reader too naive not to realize this, that officers called in won't stay for long, won't typically return for routine checks, and generally won't be around to protect us.

However, it's equally worthy of noting that police involvement in a neighbor dispute over noise or other matter is most often the beginning of the end of the problem. That end may be quite some time off, but in cases where one-on-one conversations with the neighbor have dead-ended and problems continue and worsen, calling the cops produces the first sign of light at the end of the tunnel.