Hi, Officers, haven't seen you in weeks!

My son was his usual self today.  Loud.  Slamming his bedroom door, kicking the walls, slamming the fridge, freezer and dishwasher doors. (See previous blog post where he broke my new oven by slamming the oven door.)  First of all, it’s extremely annoying for me.  But that’s not the half of it.  What’s worse is the feeling of dread, waiting for one of my neighbors to call the cops, like that ever accomplishes anything.  (Please see previous posts for the history of the neighbor-police drama.)

There was a knock on the door.  I tiptoed over to the peephole and saw a woman with her hands on her hips.  I was already on the verge of tears because of Todd’s behavior, so I couldn’t answer.  I wasn’t in the mood to get yelled at.  If she wasn’t there to yell and just wanted to patronizingly ask me to control my child, I probably would have snapped and verbally ripped her a new you-know-what, so I didn’t answer to door because I didn’t want that to happen.

There was a second knocking on the door.  I called my husband at work.  He suggested I call the police and tell them what was happening.  What could they do? Call the police to report someone knocked on my door?

The ironic part was that each time I finally got my son calmed down, the door knock would get him all worked up again.

Finally, there was a loud pounding on the door.  I knew who it was before I looked through the peephole.  Officers! Hi guys!  Wow, slow day, they sent three of you to deal with my criminal 5-year-old.  This time, they were very kind, compassionate and understanding.  Not confrontational, judgmental, accusing, as they have been in the past.  I told them I understand they have to respond to all calls.  However, I personally would only contact the police in regards to a crime and I felt my tax dollars were being wasted by their trip out to my home when they could be out actually doing their job by oh, apprehending actual criminals.  I told them all they were accomplishing was making me feel worse than I already did and they were sympathetic to that.  I told them I had given my son some melatonin and was waiting for that to kick in.

No crime was committed.  The noise ordinance in our village states that in order for it to be a nuisance violation, the noise has to be willful and wanton.  Legal Terminology 101:  For it to be willful, I would have to be encouraging or making my child be noisy.  Wanton implies it could be stopped, but I’m choosing not to stop it.  Neither is the case here and I confirmed that in my meeting last month with the Chief of Police for my village. (See previous blog post on that.) I understand noise is annoying to others, but I’m doing all I can, really!  Calling the cops is just selfish and malicious – it accomplishes absolutely nothing.  Have I made it clear it accomplishes absolutely nothing?

I assumed the people who called were the renters next door who call several times a week.  The police told me, believe it or not, this time it wasn’t them.  This only leaves our neighbors upstairs, who are usually nice and are moving July 18^th.  All this time they’ve never called and now they can’t suck it up for 17 more days?  They’ve even told me before that they would never call on our kids because we’ve never called about their noise.  They have a dog that yips all day.  They are young and blast their music a lot. One time, the wife was out of town.  At 2:30 a.m., we heard power tools going in their unit – woke up the other neighbors too – we were all out in the lobby and you could get a contact high from the pot smell wafting out of their condo and reggae music blasting that was louder than the power tools.  No one called the cops that time.  But my autistic 5-year-old?  That somehow calls for police action.

Devil’s advocate – maybe the wife was truly concerned when we didn’t answer her knocks and wanted to make sure we were ok.  That’s what the cops said, “we want to make sure everyone is ok.”

My husband was so upset over all this, he ended up going off on a customer at work and was sent home without pay. 

What are we going to do?  We’ve been for sale for over 2 years.  Can we sue for harassment?  I certainly feel like we’ve been subjected to mental cruelty and emotional distress. 

I have wonderful friends and the positive feedback was helpful when I was bitching about all this on Facebook.  I wondered if I really should share so much on Facebook, was I putting too much out there, but decided I have to.  If people don’t want to hear about it, don’t read my posts.  But I really feel I need to put it out there – let anyone know who cares to know what our family goes through.  We aren’t the only ones – I know families of my boys’ school friends who go through a lot as well.  I want people to know what our experience is like so they hopefully won’t pre-judge others they come across that are like us and hopefully cut them some slack.