Altercation and reprisal

[Odinvalknir]

So, I just had an verbal altercation with one of my neighbors, their children (8 of them) are outside all hours of the night being VERY loud. To the point they can be heard from all corners of the house. We are talking about them being outside on a weeknight without any adult supervision. My wife had gone outside and asked them to please quiet down as our kids had gone to bed and we were headed to bed for work in the a.m. after the second time she went out there I heard one of them in their broken English call her a slew of names. I went out and got loud and told them they needed to be more respectful and perhaps instill some respect and such to their kids. The man, and his buddy were obviously drunk and proceeded to hurl names and words at me as well. I told them off and went back inside.


My only thought now is will these idiots try to either damage our property (vehicles). If so, what am I legally allowed to do about it? If I catch them in the act can I warn them off? Not necessarily with threat of deadly force, but I get the feeling these idiots aren't finished being jerks.

[Keith B]

Call the police and have them address the noise issue. You should steer clear of any altercations of this kind, especially armed. All they wold have to do is claim you pulled a weapon and you would be more than likely arrested.

[carlson1]

This is a situation that is best handled by the police. It is not worth getting into an altercation and then wind up having to defend yourself with deadly force. This isn’t any kind of problem like will start if you have to use deadly force. Trouble will have only begun.

[The Annoyed Man]

What Keith and Carl said. Going outside and “telling them off” was an act of escalation. You have to be smart enough to know when it is better NOT to get in the last word. Just collect yourself, shut your mouth, go inside and call the cops. That way, if there IS any reprisal from them, the cops can deal with that too. That’s what they get paid for. Whatever you do, DO NOT wave a gun around, or even let them see that you have one. (Once they know you have guns, they may just wait until nobody is home and burgle your house to steal them.) That gun shouldn’t come out until you are assaulted. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words are not an assault.....so don’t treat it like they are.

I realize that you’re probably REALLY irritated with these yahoos, and I can’t say as I blame you; but you’ve got to play it smart. Don’t insist on the last word, and let the law do your talking for you.

[Flightmare]

I was over at a friend's house on a friday night a few weeks back. The neighbors across the street and 2 doors down were having a great time in their back yard from what we could hear. It was about 10pm but it wasn't bothering us, so we didn't do anything. I suspect their next door neighbors on the other hand DID have an issue as a local LEO drove up. After a few moments, the voices and music had quieted down. I walked over to talk to the LEO and say "hi", and to confirm that it was just a noise complaint. Afterwards I walked back over to my friend's house and resumed our evening. Not 30 minutes later, the music and voices were back up to where they had previously been. The same officer made a return visit. It stayed quiet over there for the rest of the night.

As for the noise, you have attempted to settle this between neighbors. They obviously were not receptive to what you had to say. If noise is the immediate problem, most cities have noise ordinances. I would defer to them.

As for being concerned about them damaging your property? I would recommend installing cameras. Many members on this forum have added cameras to their homes, several even to their vehicles (dash cameras). It helps to provide police with evidence in the event a crime is committed. While it won't prevent a determined criminal from breaking the law, it may cause some to think twice.

[Allons]

What Keith and Carl said. Going outside and “telling them off” was an act of escalation. You have to be smart enough to know when it is better NOT to get in the last word. Just collect yourself, shut your mouth, go inside and call the cops. That way, if there IS any reprisal from them, the cops can deal with that too. That’s what they get paid for. Whatever you do, DO NOT wave a gun around, or even let them see that you have one. (Once they know you have guns, they may just wait until nobody is home and burgle your house to steal them.) That gun shouldn’t come out until you are assaulted. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words are not an assault.....so don’t treat it like they are.

I realize that you’re probably REALLY irritated with these yahoos, and I can’t say as I blame you; but you’ve got to play it smart. Don’t insist on the last word, and let the law do your talking for you.

[The Annoyed Man]

While it won't prevent a determined criminal from breaking the law, it may cause some to think twice.

And it will make it easier to catch them. Heck, even if they notice the cameras and damage or steal them, you’ll have it on video as they do it. There’ll be no question as to who did it, because it will be a nice “Cecile B. De Mille” closeup.

I purchased an Arlo system, and that works real well.

[Odinvalknir]

Yea I hadn't planned on using my firearm to do anything. I'm more worried about the damage to my vehicles. My wife did call the police after it escalated, and we talked to them and the cops to the neighbors. They were told to wrangle their kids and be more respectful (from what I could understand and gather, my Spanish isn't fluent) . Unfortunately we don't live in the greatest area, I got laid off last year and we had to downgrade to keep a roof for the time being. We are for sure looking to move out before long. For now I guess I will have to keep an eye out, and perhaps shell out for a camera to overlook my vehicle.

[Flightmare]

The Arlo camera system that TAM mentioned is fairly inexpensive and incredibly easy to setup.

[twomillenium]

Letting LE handle the situation will also make a record of such situation, make sure in the first call that you tried to discuss with them in a civil manner and the way they responded was why you were making the call. Remember, in many cases the first to call is considered the victim.
I have cameras up as well and took a page from a neighbor's playbook and installed dummies (plural) as well. Now if someone takes or tries to destroy the cameras, they now have to guess which one to start with and which one is not the dummy.

[RPBrown]

I agree with all that was said above. A few weeks ago we had a slight altercation with our new neighbors. They had set up a portable basket ball goal against our connecting fence. First day they had 4 balls come over the fence. Second day after the second ball came over and broke a planter I took the ball next door and handed it to the "adult" male of the group, informed him that they had broken a planter and asked if they would move the goal elsewhere. He proceeded to tell me that they were just kids but an old man like me is just plain mean. I said yes, I understand being just kids but they need to be more cautious of other peoples property. He said yeah, and the goal is on my property. Okay, that went nowhere. 2 hour later they had another ball come over the fence and land in our pond after bouncing off my head. I got the ball out of the pond and put it in a metal barrel in our storage shed. We had just finished planting some more pots to go around our pond and another ball comes over knocking a pot into the pond. Pulled the pot out, fixed the plant, pulled the ball out and put it into the metal barrel and closed the shed door. We went inside but I have purchased some plug in cameras for my business and decide to install one watching over the fence between the houses. Little while later, about dusk, our dogs started barking and I pulled up the camera and the 2 kids had climbed over the fence and was trying to pry the shed door open. I called the police and went outside. They started scrambling back over the fence. Police show up, I tell them what was going on, show him the camera and he went next door. A few minutes later he came back and asked if I would let him borrow my phone with the video on it. I gave it to him, he went back over there and then came back. He asked if I would mind giving the balls back if they moved the goal to another part of their yard. I handed him the balls, he took them back and then came back. He said the "adult" male of the house tried to say it wasn't his kids in my yard. The LEO showed him the video and said now, do you want me to arrest them for attempted burglary or do you want to move the goal.
All of this leads to the point that although I had my EDC on me, at no time did I even consider pulling it. However, had it been darker and I not see the age of the boys when I went outside, I may have had it in hand. Just don't know for sure on that point.

[The Annoyed Man]

All of this leads to the point that although I had my EDC on me, at no time did I even consider pulling it. However, had it been darker and I not see the age of the boys when I went outside, I may have had it in hand. Just don't know for sure on that point.

And THAT, gentlemen, is how we do that! Well done.

I’m very glad that I installed the Arlo system at my house, I currently have 3 cameras operating, with the ability to add two more - which I will be doing soon. I currently have camera #1 mounted at the east side of my house overlooking my driveway and garage. My back yard is reasonably large and subdivided by a north/south fence into two halves - east and west. I have the second camera mounted near the dividing fence, monitoring from the fence to the west, and the third camera mounted near the dividing fence, monitoring from the fence to the east. Both of those cameras cover the yard and all of the rear access points to the house. Additionally, I have a video camera doorbell as part of the alarm system - very similar to the Ring doorbell we had at our old house. My home has a large wrap-around porch on the front and east sides. The doorbell camera monitors nearly all of the front side of the porch. Arlo camera #1 which overlooks the driveway is mounted on the east side of the porch but doesn’t monitor the porch itself. However, it does monitor one of the two access points to that side of the porch, and the doorbell camera monitors the other access point. I’m going to place a 4th camera in a tree that is in my front yard, pointed back toward the front of the house from the southwest corner of the property to get a broad view of it. That will also give me coverage of the west side of my house, which right now is not under surveillance. The fifth camera is going to go on the far side of my garage, where there is a blind spot between what cameras #1 and #2 can see.

I live in a very low crime area, and it is pretty quiet and all of my neighbors seem to be genuinely nice and peaceful people. I am more concerned about my neighborhood being seen as easy pickings by outsiders with bad intent. I realize that none of this is going to actually stop a determined thief, but it gives a high probability of identifying both the thief AND his vehicle for police. Between the two gunsafes in our man cave, the gun cabinet in my bedroom, and the top shelf of my son’s closet in his bedroom, we’ve probably got 40 or 50 guns in the house......not to mention jewelry, cash, and other valuables. I don’t want any of that stolen, so even though we have a pretty decent burglar alarm system, those cameras add a great deal of peace of mind.

Although I can manually monitor any of the cameras any time I want to using my phone app or by logging into the Arlo website, I’ve also set the system up to automatically start recording any movements it picks up between 10pm and 7am. So part of my morning entertainment each day is reviewing all of the short little videos that were recorded during the night. The cameras operate in color mode during daylight, and go to night vision automatically after the sun goes down, so they see little thing that happens. So far, all the criminal activity has been limited to possums, stray cats, and a trio of neighborhood dogs that gets out once in a while. If one of those cameras will pickup and cleanly record a possum skedaddling across my driveway at 3am, it will surely see and make clearly identifiable any human sized critter wandering around my property at night.

The system sets up very easily and the instructions are very strait forward. It was designed for nimrods such as myself to be able to use. There’s a dedicated base station that plugs into your wifi router, and then the cameras synch to the base station via wifi. I will gladly recommend an Arlo system to any home owner. There are probably better systems for security professionals, but for the homeowner who just wants to protect his property and get some peace of mind, the Arlo camera systems are pretty darn good. This is the system I initially bought: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LWS96JV. Now, I got mine at a discounted rate from my home security company, so I didn’t pay $498 for it. IIRC, I paid $299 because I was signing up with a new monitoring company when I moved into this house. Even so, if I had not had that steeply discounted price, for the peace of mind that came with it, I would gladly pay the $498.

[BBYC]

I think I would have told the cop I would be happy to return the balls if they pay to replace the broken planter,. Furthermore, if they move the goal and keep it moved, I won't press charges for burglary and criminal mischief at night.

[JakeTheSnake]

This is why I have these.

[Mike S]

This is why I have these.

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Jake,
Which model of PTZ do you have? That's amazing clarity...