A little concerned here, could use some practical advice on what hubby and I should do. Hoping someone around here has had an experience with a similar thing, or has experience in law enforcement and has some general ideas.
Details get a bit long, please PLEASE bear with me, as I really would appreciate any thoughts on this.
We moved into a townhouse style apartment building last summer. On the surface, it seems like a really nice neighborhood (and indeed there are some good, wonderful people around).
We live in a circle. There are two older fourplex apartments facing the circle road and each other as you come into the circle. Then there are three newer townhouse style buildings at the back round part of the circle, one with three apartments and two with four apartments. We live in the one at the very middle back of the circle which has three apartments. Even though these three buildings look similar, they are each owned by a different landlord.
Our apartment is at one end of the building. There is the middle apartment, which is on it’s second tenent since we moved in. Both families seemed nice, but weren’t/aren’t home really often. The people living in the east end apartment were a youngish couple, no children. They, unfortunately, have prooved themselves to be far from nice.
Had a wierd/creepy gut feeling about them from the start, but on the surface they seemed friendly and decent, so I just figured I was being silly and overly paranoid.
When we moved in, we disvovered that the cable was hooked up. We just figured the cable company was slow in disconnecting from the last people who were here, so we gave it a few weeks. Still connected. So we called the landlord and asked if cable was part of the deal and she had just forgot to mention it. No, she knew nothing about cable, she wasn’t arranging for anything. So we called the cable company, told them about it, and asked them to come disconnect it as we don’t watch enough to make it worth keeping and didn’t want to be charged later down the road for something we didn’t order.
Aparantly, they had no record of any cable service at our place. It was hooked up illegally from the people before. They said they’d be out to shut it off.
To make a long story short, the cable company ended up cutting the wires because all three of the apartments in our building were hooked up illegally. The couple at the end had a fit, accused us of vandalizing the cable box and cutting the wires and how he’d used to work for the cable company and they “never cut the wires like that”. He called the landlord complaining, we talked to the landlord and they said not to worry that they didn’t take his complaint seriously. The couple at the end were doing some major manipulation and bluffing, “calling” the cable company to ask what was going on right there in front of us and acting like he coudn’t get through (it was pretty obvious he was faking) and hubby called and got right though and offered the guy the phone to talk to them but the neighbor refused.
The disturbing thing was how upset they were that we had cared whether or not our cable was hooked up illegally or not and that that had resulted in theirs getting shut off to. (“If” it had been hooked up illegally which they only half way adimited to that it was.) They made it clear that they didn’t think there was anything wrong with having the cable hooked up illegally and that we were “wrong” for not going along with it. 
That was the beginning.
Then there was their music which they would turn up so loud that it would boom though and vibrate the building, rattle the windows and even wake up my napping baby at times. I called the city and asked what the law was on that. I guess it has to be heard from the street for it to be considered a “disturbance”. The inside walls of our building are rather thin and the outside is a lot of brick which makes the sound muffled more from the outside, so you didn’t often hear much from the street but it was sure loud on the inside of the building. Then of course, both of their cars were equiped with major sound systems which they turned up so loud you could hear them coming way before you saw their cars.
The music was nasty to, the kind of rap with the REALLY bad lyrics which made me feel sick every time I got a clear earshot of it past the deep boom of the bass. 
Got tired of it, after multiple times of the baby being woke from napping and visitors to my home commenting on how bad/loud it sounded, sometimes asking where it was coming from (when was from inside the building, car being rather obvious) and being surprised that it was that loud from two doors down. 
I wrote a polite note asking them to please try to keep it turned down a little and why. (Really nice, no threats to call the police or anything.) Stuck the note to their door.
In retrospect, I wonder why I thought that would help. After that, they would play their music for shorter periods of time but as loud and louder. Thought of calling the police, but the periods that it was that loud were almost always short enough (5-15 minutes) that I wondered if the police would get there in time while it was playing and what was to stop them from seeing the police turning the corner and just shutting it off? :roll:
Then they got a big black dog. They would leave this dog tied outside in the heat of summer with little to no shade and not nearly enough water. We felt so sorry for it, we’d go over and refill it’s water and it would drink it all up so fast being really thirsty. 
The dog had nothing to do, would dig holes in the lawn, killed two nearby young trees by chewing on them, and would chew through it’s tie out and get loose running all over. I caught it several times and tied it back up, leaving a note to let the neighbors know it had been loose (and needed more water). Didn’t help. Called animal control. They came out and left a warning, which helped for a while. Then winter came and they started leaving it out more again.
They rarely cleaned up after the dog, which made the nice area of lawn around our building unpleasent for my son and the neighbor kids to play (between that and the ankle twisting holes.) The landlords didn’t seem to care too much. Then there was this dogs barking. They’d leave it out there alone so long and it would bark at everything… very loudly.
Enter about this time a new landlord… and a while later the people in the middle moved out and a new family moved in.
The new landlord cares more and started trying to clean up the place (cutting out the dead trees, keeping things really trimmed up nice, etc.) They got after the neighbor about cleaning up after their dog, which helped for a while, but only a while.
The new landlord hired the neighbor to do some landscaping at one end of the property where lawn and sprinklers had never been put in as the neighbor has told the landlord that that is what he did for a living. Hubby works in home construction and sees people put in lawn and sprinklers all the time. His obeservation on the neighbor and the couple of guys he had helping in regards to what they did in putting in lawn and sprinklers was that they didn’t have professional equipment, that they didn’t act like they knew what they were doing very well, and that he (hubby) could have done just a good of job or better with what he knows about it. (Why I mention this? It connects later.)
Around the first of the year, after a night where they left their dog barking outside for an hour around midnight (woke both of my kids, had to move them into our room where it was quieter to get them back to sleep as the dogs barking could be heard so clearly from their room, the dog was nearly under our back windows) I wrote another note. Very simple, informing them their dog barks way too much, too loud and that they need to keep their dog in more, especially at night or we’d file a complaint with Animal Control. (At this point they’d stopped cleaning up after their dog again as well… major mess all over.) 
We got a real hostile, bizzarely irrational letter back from them (why should I have expected otherwise at this point, but felt like we had to at least try something.) Basicly it told us to stick it… however, they left their dog out less often after that.
(Incidently, we are not the only ones who have complained about the dog and the loud music. That we know of, our middle neighbor has, and a neighbor in the end of the building across the way have as well.)
I wouldn’t be typing this right now, if all it was was the cable thing, loud music, and a noisy dog. I just mention them to help better illustrate the personalities of these two people.
Neighbor mentioned to hubby (before we got on the neighbors bad side) that he owned his own landscaping company. Another time he said that he worked for a local landscaping company. Then another time, (he was complaining of the chalk drawings my son and the neighbor girls did out front) that he has more than thirty thousand dollars worth of customers come through here (his apartment in regards to his “landscaping business”) every six months. (And that the chalk drawings were messy, the kids noisy, and that he didn’t like them playing around like that, created an unprofessional impression for his customers.)
So his dog’s noise and mess and permanent destruction to the yard was okay, but kids being kids playing around outside, being less noisy by far as the dog, no permanent damage- chalk washes off- was really bad. Oooookay then. 
Another thing that struck us odd was that if he had his own landscaping company and was running it out of his home (customers coming through his home as he said and talked of all the actual hard work said he did in peoples yards putting up fences, putting in lawns, etc.) then why did we never see any evidence of him actually doing this sort of thing? Nice little clean car and a bronco that had no room in the back for any sort of tools (was full of stereo equipment.) Nice clean clothes all the time, no evidence of dirt or hard outside work… except for that one time he put in the lawn for the landlord, then he was dirty all over. Kinda odd. 
A little last summer, and as time has gone on we’ve noticed the following more and more (a lot over the last couple of months). People coming and going at all hours, sitting huddled on their (this neighbors) doorstep or hanging off around the side of the building near the door if no one was home, just waiting. Sometimes, people coming to the door, but not going in, an exchange at the door (conversation and ? hand in and out) then gone, shut door. Often but not always coming in cars, some walking on foot, waiting if no one is home. Cars pulling up, driving away quickly, sometimes flashing their lights.
Lots of different cars, only a small handful of recognizable regulars. Gatherings with lots of cars parked out front (people inside) and staying really late into the wee hours of the morning three to five times a week… People coming and going not only out of the neighbors apartment, but out of the middle apartment (one apartment for sure, possibly both middle ones) in the building next door just right close to the end where the neighbor lives. Seen people go from the neighbor’s apartment to the middle apartment in the next door building and from the next door middle apartment into the neighbor’s apartment, hubby has also seen flashing lights from an upstairs bedroom to a car and back from the one middle next door building apartment… so it appears that whatever the deal is that there is a conncetion between our unpleasent neighbor and some folks in the building next door.
One car in paticular I thought odd. A really nice sports car, saw the neighbor driving it once, but the rest of the time I saw another fellow, and he was here a lot at all different times of day and night. What I thought was odd was the licence plate. Every plate I’ve seen has some kind of marking telling what kind of plate it is. For example, government cars often have a little GOV on them. Each state has their own plates at least indicating what state it is from. This plate was plain white with dark letters and numbers but the part that would say the state and perhaps have a little decoration on it, as to indicate what state it was from… that part was really carefully covered up with a white patch that blended exactly with the license plate. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that, just thought it was odd though… just plain white with only the plate number, why would someone go to such trouble to cover up part of their lisence plate?
So the last few months, the new landlord has been trying to get this neighbor evicted. Aside from the property damage the dog continued to do much to the landlord’s annoyance, they were having problems not paying/being really late on rent and refused to talk with the landlord about anything unless the landlord came to the place and caught them here. There was more, not sure exactly what though, but enough that the landlord got his lawyer and the courts involved.
So this month they finally had to get out. They were supposed to be out a few weeks ago and told the landlord they would. But the date came and went and they didn’t move anything… even though they told the landlord they had moved a lot of their stuff. This last week, the Sherrif posted notice on their door saying they had to get out. Then and only then did I see them start moving stuff. Sports car guy showed up several times, hauling off a few boxes in his little car… never mind that there was ample room on the huge trailer they were using to move.
They were supposed to be out Saturday and when they were done, the landlord told them they were to leave the keys with us (which they never did). :roll:
Late Saturday night there was the car party thing with lots of people around the two apartments again. There were people parked out there til really late, and the neighbors car was out there all night long and still there in the morning. Landlord had to go out of town, so couldn’t let him know. Neighbor was back in and out of there Sunday morning and night. Landlord got back in town and called us, asked about the neighbor and we told him they’d still been in and out of there.
Landlord called the police, and they came out to have a look. Come to find out, the neighbors dog is still in the apartment, and barks like mad at the police through the door. They leave and come back later… to find a “friend” of the neighbor’s show out front and the dog gone. Hubby overhears the conversation between the friend and the officers… the friend lies saying that “oh, they’ve been out a long time, don’t know where they are exactly, they told me Salt Lake… dog? Don’t know anything about a dog.”
Hubby approaches the officers after the guy moves off and informs them that the guy was lying and that the neighbors were in there that morning and had only just barely moved their stuff out and yes, the dog that had been in there belonged to the neighbors. The police didn’t seem at all concerned, didn’t do anything or say much… just said, “well, we’re just going to wait and see what happens” and left soon after.
That night both him and her show up, each in their own car. (Couldn’t miss them, she was shining her brights right in our front window and reving the engine, music going.) He goes into the apartment for a minute, she gets their mail, leaves. Very short, but very obvious.
Next day, landlord comes out, checks out the place. It is completely trashed. The dog totally destroyed the carpets. They clean up a bit and had someone change the locks.
That evening the police are out again… this time they post a warning on the back and front doors of the apartment. No one to enter without permission of the county police. Also, another notice directly warning our neighbors by name to keep out was posted on the front door. Anyone actually seeing these two trying to get into the apartment are to call the Sherrifs office… giving the name and the number of the deputy to contact.
Hubby talked to the landlord again yesterday. Apparently, both him and her (the neighbors) have warrents out for their arrest. Landlord told hubby that if he sees them to not approach them, that they could be dangerous. He said he has just found out about the warrents and how bad these two people were… wouldn’t tell hubby what it was they had done but the landlord appeared pretty shook up and disgusted about it. They are coming out to do some cleaning up in the apartment this weekend, so perhaps hubby will be able to learn more from them then. We’d kinda like to know, since we’re not exactly on our old neighbor’s good side.
They’ve demonstrated that they are irrational, hotheaded, manipulative, dishonest, engaged in illegal activites and like to push things to the limit of what they think they can get away with. 
Are they dangerous? Exactly how dangerous? Dangerous enough to warrent a change of our locks? (The old landlords used these neighbors to show the apartment to people when we first looked at it before we moved in. They had the keys to our place, and ample chances to make copies should they have wanted.) Dangerous enough to take other precautions? Anything we should/shoudn’t do? Or perhaps we way over concerned?
Last night I went grocery shopping. I came back about eight when it was dark and noticed the upstairs window was open and the blinds were open so as I could see into the neighbors apartment. The light on the stairs was on and I could see it illuminating doors both upstairs and down. The landlord had been out earlier and we knew that he had left the porch lights on, the upstairs window open a bit to air it out, and the blinds open. I figured he either purposly or accidently left the light inside on, I always accidently leave that one on, it’s high up in the stairwell and easy to not notice during the day.
I was pretty tired last night and wasn’t paying attention dealing with a sick baby, but hubby noticed a car that he’d never seen before, pull up to the mailboxes, get mail out of our neighbors box, then quickly leave. A short while later another car pulled up on the other side of the circle, that almost looked like our neighbors car but it was so dark and with the angle, he couldn’t quite tell. The odd thing was that when it turned the corner into the circle, it turned off it’s lights and slowly pulled up to park. Hubby got in his truck and drove out and around and back in. The car had no plates or license of any kind displayed… but it wasn’t our neighbors and he didn’t see who got out.
Then a truck pulled in, doing the same trick of turning off it’s lights as it turned the corner, pulling slowly up next to the building next door where it was hard to see. It was really late by then, and hubby had a gut feeling that perhaps he should call about it, but he was so tired and not even being sure of who these people were, parking near and going into neighboring buildings he brushed it off and fell asleep.
This morning, as I came back from taking my son to school, I noticed that the upstairs window that was open last night was closed and the blinds were shut so no one could see in. No other windows had been messed with, except the screen loose in the corner on the back downstairs window like it had been popped out but not quite pushed back in all the way and the front window one has some damage like someone has pulled it off and on (whether these were loose from long before or just recently I don’t know). The notice on the front door saying to them by name to keep out was gone.. ripped off.
Hubby called the landlord. Hubby said that the landlord told him that yes, he’d left a window open and all the blinds open last time they were there and would look into it.
Landlord came by a bit ago and talked to me, saying “don’t worry about it, no one broke in, we’ve been messing with the blinds, they (the neighbors) are gone, sure they won’t come back, doors are locked, no way they can get in.” Kind of felt like he was patting me on the head like “There, there mam, no need to worry your little head about all this.”
Our landlord is kinda like that, older and old fashioned type gentleman. I was sweeping the step and he insisted on holding the dust pan for me. Just that sort of guy, so I could see him not saying anything to me and perhaps limiting what he said to my hubby, not wanting to worry us or get us involved.
But we are involved to some extent anyway and I am a bit worried. There is still the matter of the folks in the neighboring building who are conneceted to our old neighbors and were involved in whatever they were doing… and there are still cars coming and going over there. Traffic is down a lot, but still there. The idea that our old neighbors might show up and be in and out next door in an uncomfortable one. 
Then there’s the matter of the warrents. The police who were out there that day (one was the deputy involved) didn’t seem like it was of much concern and didn’t appear to care that they’d just been lied to. But if there was a warrent for these guy’s arrest, and they’d been notified several times that these folks were coming in and out of there, especially after dark and such… why didn’t they just come back later, hang out in a shadowy place and wait for a little while? They could have arrested them already!
What about all the activity that has gone/is still going on? All the police would have to do is swing by at night, watch for a while and see the wierd light flashing and strange activity, which might lead them to checking a few licence plates and faces coming in and out of there, which might lead to, well… stopping some activity that from this end looks pretty suspicious. Perhaps there are some laws and stuff that prevent this sort of thing, I don’t know how this sort of thing works, but it seems they ought to be able to do something. Perhaps this sort of thing isn’t worth putting too much of their effort into? Perhaps we are making more of it than it is?
It just rings alarm bells with me is all, reminding me of some neighbors I had as a teenager when we moved into some apartments in town. Same sort of thing… loud music, parties, cars and people coming and going, flash of lights… They were arrested on drug charges eventually. Hubby says it reminds him of what he has heard about drug traffic/illegal activity as well.
Don’t know what to do… police seem aware that something is going on (warrents), but haven’t seen much action or concern from them that I would have expected. There are still the folks in the building next door, and that our old neighbors still have connections so close by and are having someone pick up their mail troubles me. Don’t know if we should call the deputy and talk to him a bit more about it, or if they would even care, or perhaps they already know and are working on it, or perhaps they have bigger fish to fry. Don’t know if this is something dangerous that we should/could do something about, or something that we should just ignore and leave up to the landlord and authorites to work out.
Don’t want to bother the authorities if they are already dealing with it, or if it’s not as big of a thing was we’ve made it out in our mind to be.
Got a family to look after, kinda worry/wonder about these sort of things. Wish I’d known about the warrents earlier, we might have pressed the issue more, get wondering if we should/could do something earlier… this has come to a head and really only grabbed our attention and clinched it in the past month and a half or so as to how serious it might be, but still.
Any sugguestions?
Thanks for your patience reading, 
I know it got long… sorry, just worried is all and could use some advice or perhaps just some reassurance.
Thanks!
Sara
Sara
Sara