I think most of us can relate to having some less than savory neighbors. The house kitty corner from us was sold and low and behold a bunch of 20-something young men moved in (a bit out of place for our neighborhood).
I wasn't sure what to think, but figured I'd give them the benefit of the doubt and approach the situation with cautious optimism.
Aside from them being home all of the time (do any of these guys work?), they apparently have aspirations to participate in the X-Games because their constantly practicing on their inline skates in their driveway (sometimes the street). Still not a huge bother, just annoying sometimes.
Well, the fun started several months back when they had a party and some of their intoxicated friends woke me up at about 1am while driving across my front lawn attempting to make a U-turn.
I talked to them the next morning and they became agitated (borderline hostile), so I informed them that if they couldn't be courteous neighbors their next conversation would be with the police. That conversation ended with some choice words in my direction and a slammed door. I kept my cool and didn't yell or retaliate in any way.
Fast forward a few months...they decided to have some friends over and skate in the street with flood lights shortly after midnight. Normally I'd go out and say something, but there were 5 or 6 of them and I didn't know what level of intoxication I would be dealing with. I called the police. They showed up in short order and informed our neighbors that they needed to turn off the flood lights and pack it up for the night. After the cops left I heard a lot of choice complaints from them through my open bedroom window.
Finally, one week to the day after the skating incident my wife and I were sitting on the couch talking. It was about 10:30 pm. Beautiful spring weather, so the windows are open. We all of the sudden hear screaming, crashing, yelling, etc. I immediately get up to see what is going on. My wife encourages me not to go outside. It turns out that our friendly 20-somethings (about 6 of them) had a disagreement and were now threatening to kill each other. One had a knife, two others had shovels, and people were running in and out of the house with the aforementioned racket.
Here's the question...what would you do in this situation? They aren't on your property, several people (most likely intoxicated) are involved, some are armed visibly with knives and blunt objects (who knows what else), and someone may get severely injured or worse.
Here's what I did:
I called 911 and relayed everything I had seen, heard, and was currently seeing. I let the 911 operator know that I was armed, but would not respond unless the altercation moved to my property. We spoke for a couple of more minutes on the logistics of the situation and I was then asked to call again if anyone left or if the conflict escalated further. Police arrived in force (5 squad cars that I saw and at least 6 officers) shortly after I hung up. The broke up the fight, made a couple of arrests and since then things have been pretty quiet on our street. Would you have done anything differently?
