Well, it depends on how wrong what they're doing is, doesn't it? I tend to be on the low side of reporting. We have had neighbors keeping cars that don't run in their yards - still one three houses up with cars that have been there for years. I've wondered about reporting them, but never done it. I've seen mistakes at work that I should have reported, but just cleaned up the mess myself. Usually I don't even mention that to the person who created the problem. I figure they probably know, and are either wired to be embarrassed and wanting to better on their own, or wired to A) not care or B) care briefly but be unable to endure the anxiety and forget within a day. Either way, my comments aren't likely to affect them much. There have been exceptions.
Because folks are torqued off about not getting back to work, or play, quickly enough during the C19 shutdown they are extra upset about any suggestion they should be reporting their fellow citizens for inadequate social distancing or masking. References to Hitler and Stalin have become common, with more and more disapproval that any American should be turning in their neighbors for anything at all.
We discussed years ago that our Bible lessons take on a different flavor whether we think something is really wrong or not. Texan99 noted that we might not be so offhand about the easy forgiveness of Jesus forgiving the woman taken in adultery if it were a man who was sexually abusing his son. We no longer think what she did was all that bad. People who still take this very seriously, in fact, are regarded by others as being especially lacking in understanding the loving forgiveness of Jesus.
It's not evil in general to turn in your neighbors. It depends whether they are poisoning the neighborhood children versus going unmasked on a walk by themselves.
14 comments:
I'm someone people try to turn their neighbors in to, so I can get pretty jaundiced about it. My usual approach is to ascertain whether the reporting person tried to work it out first with the neighbor. If I'm pretty sure the neighbor's offense is really beyond what he should expect people to tolerate, it's easier for me to go talk to him myself, or sic the appropriate public officials on him.
It would take a lot to get me interested in someone ratting out a neighbor about the lockdown order. I find that advising people to call the sheriff tends to sort out the whiners from the people who genuinely believe they have a danger to report.
I run into the opposite problem, oddly enough. People tell me their neighbors are engaged in really serious criminal behavior, or credible threats, but I almost never persuade them to swear out a compliant with the Sheriff. I've noticed that it's hard to persuade people that laws aren't self-effectuating: it takes more than yelling than something's illegal and therefore automatically must cease.
Following that link and going down into the comments, I realized that in our day and culture, a repentant David Duke (Heavenly Father, please let that be) would be a constructive application of "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone", because it would be hard.
Having been on the Board of my HOA for over a decade, I have some knowledge of the interaction between the police and HOA residents. While it's not common, I know of a number of times that an HOA resident has called the police, expecting that the police would arrest the person being complained about, only to be disappointed that the police would do no such thing.In some cases, the police would reply that is not an issue for the police, but for HOA management. In other cases, suffice it to say that if A's complaints about B were true, B would have been arrested. Police are pretty good at detecting phony charges.
I have also "turned in neighbors." Three or four times in 3 decades, I have called the police about noise complaints. Police came within a half hour. Problem solved. There is a neighbor who has appointed himself the enforcer of condo rules- at least as he views them. (He has also called the police on neighbors, only to be told that his issues should be taken up with HOA management.)Shouting matches ensue. Having over the years made unsuccessful attempts at mediating such shouting matches, I decided to call the police the next time my neighbor engaged in such a shouting match. I called after 10 minutes into one shouting match.It must have worked, because long shouting matches stopped.
I don't usually trouble the police. I used to call 911 quite often when I was a post midnight walking struggling author who wrote his best dialog walking along Harbor Drive and Harbor Island but that was mostly for witnessing idiot burglars struggling to boost a stereo out of a car or a fire out of control in a canyon. After I moved from downtown I never troubled them again. How many times did I hear a women screaming and appear with most of my neighbors, all armed, to deal with the offender, about half a dozen times. Nobody called the police.
I have a lesson for people who object to really annoying barking dogs. Never ever call the police or animal control.
A big problem in my experience has been that people don't really know the difference between a civil dispute and a criminal offense (admittedly not always all that obvious, with some overlap). Even worse, they believe there is a public agency that enforces their civil disputes for them. No, you have to pay a lawyer to go to court for you--something none of these awful, not-to-be-borne civil complaints almost never turn out to be important enough for. Her cat pees in my flower garden! I don't like her ugly car in the driveway!
Many of my neighbors are justifiably irritated to find that, even when something ostensibly is a matter for criminal citation, it's the kind of enforcement that they and their middle-class neighbors are very vulnerable to, but the scofflaw down the street barely notices, because the citation and the warrant are barely bouncing the rubble for him in his desperate, chaotic life. All that due process that protects us solid citizens from harassment often means that the skid-row guy out in unincorporated area of the county is almost immune. We don't really want it any other way, so sometimes we have to tolerate the chaotic life of the guy out in the county.
If you want a lot of control over your neighbors, you pretty much need to live in an area with real estate covenants, or with intrusive county ordinances, or live within the city limits. There are trade-offs. The other solution is to live further out in the boonies on a bigger piece of land, so your annoying neighbor's crimes are further away. Or cultivate more indifference to the annoying things neighbors do.
HMS Defiant
I have a lesson for people who object to really annoying barking dogs. Never ever call the police or animal control.
Good advice. I have found that asking that the dog be brought inside usually does the job. As the HOA has patios, not yards, it is not common for a dog to be outside very much. If I lived in a neighborhood with yards or outside the purview of an HOA, I suspect my requests might not be so readily followed.
Three decades ago, in a neighborhood with good-sized yards, there was a dog that barked nearly all the time, which most of us found rather annoying. One morning the dog was found dead- apparently poisoned. I had my suspicions about who had poisoned the dog- a friend BTW- but said nothing. The less I knew, the better. In any event, the suspected poisoner is long deceased.
Texan 99 made a good point about many not knowing the difference between a criminal offense and a civil dispute.
HMS Defiant - We forget things so quickly. Iour comment reminded me that I went over to a neighbor's late one evening just this year, with my phone out because there was a lot of threatening yelling and a woman crying. I figured I wasn't the best choice to be going over, but I was the one that was there, and you go to war with the army you have, as Donald Rumsfeld said. This family has been a problem for at least 35 years, but less so the last ten as the children have mostly left, leaving the crazy old man alone. Their surname has been notorious in New England for centuries, and used to even be a slang term for child molester. (I've got one in my family tree myself, as well as a couple of work friends who were decent folk, so I won't say they are all problematic. But the admission files I can pull up on the computer at the state psychiatric hospital show a disproportionate number of patients with that surname. Wonderfully, there is a famous psychologist with that name, one I dislike. But that's another story.)
I was hoping there's be more than one of us for a show of force, and figured I'd be able to get in a 911 before having to wade in myself. Happily, the police arrived as I was getting there, instructing the man to get on the ground. He assured them that everything was under control and they could leave now. Unsurprisingly, the Goffstown police did not accept his assessment of the situation.
Predictably, once he was down on the ground and the woman was being questioned she cried more loudly, insisting that he didn't mean those terrible threats he had made. (They were terrible, and graphic, BTW.) No fun being the police. This is why they hate domestic violence calls. Nothing is clear and everything you do is wrong.
People do love to enlist third parties into their quarrels, especially if they can induce them to stick around to keep the fight was getting too physical while they provoke each other.
I have called police for only two things:
1) An occasion when an intervention seemed necessary to save the life of someone (e.g., the time an obviously drunk driver nearly ran his car through the storefront to buy more wine, and I noticed he had a kid in a carseat in his car);
2) To help me catch someone's cattle that had gotten loose into the road (a semi-regular feature of rural life, but a potentially lethal peril to drivers).
In retrospect, both occasions were mistakes. I really should have stopped that guy with the car myself, because the police didn't get there in time to stop him from driving off. Maybe it would have been right to call them and hold him for them, but really he'd have been better off if I'd have just knocked him out cold and let him sleep it off. That would have kept his kid out of the system, too, in which I have no faith.
And in general I've caught the cattle and herded them back into the fence before the cops showed up. We might as well not have bothered them.
Ya'll (I've taken your commentary to heart, Grim) are making me feel real good about my neighbors.
I shine internally with pride, Donna.
I live out in the country. My neighbors raise turkeys. They're noisy, but they're far enough away to be not a problem. My problem is the deer trespassing on my property. (Wife tosses them apples when she sees them.) At least they're not drinking and singing and carousing, and leaving cans and bottles in my yard.
@ Sam L - not yet they're not. That comes next.
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