We have an 83 or 84 year old neighbour who is said to have schizophrenia. I live with my mum and my brother and we live in the UK.
He has it in for my brother, accusing him of all kinds of weird things like “he’s stealing my water supply” “he’s blocking my TV” “he’s cloning my phone” “he’s going out into the garden at night making wolf noises to wake me up” (we have foxes visit our garden often, and you can hear them in the streets also).
Last year he started blasting his radio every day from 7:30 AM until 10:30 to 11:30 PM. Then, on most nights at 1:30 AM he’ll set off an extremely loud siren and then start screaming and occasionally throwing stuff at the wall/his room. My mum has cancer and she really does not need this.
I went over to his house about the noise, giving him the benefit of the doubt because he’s hearing impaired and has hearing aids, but then he explained to me he’s doing this on purpose to stop my brother from sleeping during the day because my brother is “going into the garden at night making these wolf noises to wake me up”.
We ended up calling the police on him last year, and shortly after that, he stopped and was silent. We had 8 months of silence and now he suddenly started again. The radio, the sirens and the screaming at 1:30 AM. We’ve done nothing to him.
My mum found out that the radio or TV (whatever it is) isn’t just in one room, it’s in EVERY room of his house (we live in a joined house). She found out that when it goes off, they all go off at once, so my mum concluded he has his radio/TV hooked up to some speaker system aimed at the walls. He knows my mum isn’t well and he’s been doing this for 2 weeks straight now. It’s so loud you can hear it over EVERYTHING, even games, films and music. I can hear it in the garden even. Constant low frequency noise that reverberates in every room in our house.
We did call the police Friday night and he hasn’t done the siren at 1:30 AM since but he wasn’t setting the siren off every night before that either. It’s keeping us all on edge. He doesn’t have a wife but his niece occasionally visits to tidy up his garden. We don’t have her contact info though. He apparently refuses to take his meds because he is the type of person to think he’s always right.
Sorry for the long post but I can’t sleep because I’m on edge about being woken up soon after going to sleep. Wasn’t sure where else to post this where I can get some quick replies.
Ok, I have been in this situation. I was the crazy schizophrenic neighbour.
This does not go well for you unless you avail yourself of every avenue to protect yourself. This person is mentally ill and their illness causes them to have delusions about your brother and your family. Whatever they are hearing is making them think that they need to react by terrorizing you. In their mind they are protecting themselves. It is very possible that this escalates to violence.
You need to communicate regularly with the police and ask if there is a community mental health liason officer who you can be put into contact with. You need to keep a journal of every communication back and forth and every action the neighbour takes against you. Over time keep building a case until you can have the police detain them under whatever mental health laws you have.
You also need to supply a constant stream of documentation of the behaviour to your landlord. They can take action to preserve their property in the face of a mental illness that very well might burn it down.
I’m really sorry this is happening to you. Feel sorry for your neighbour if you want but advocate for yourselves and your needs first here.
Healthcare professional with some experience in mental health and emergency medicine here: This is the way to go . Your problem is NOT the noise. The noise is a nuisance but not dangerous. The fixation on your brother is. Because there is a high risk here,that once “noise” doesn’t cut it from the point of view of the patient, he will resolve to other means.
As said before:
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Document everything, make a detailed protocol about everything he does or says towards you.
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Call the police, especially when he threatens you or your brother or claims he is intruding. Make sure that every member of your household is as polite as possible to the officers. If they refuse to do something accept this but kindly ask for their names or collar numbers and the name of their chief constable. Then write a very polite letter to the CC making it clear that you understand the difficulties the officers face but how you feel threatened and miserable and ask for help and advice to resolve this. (Why being polite? Because then it is nearly impossible for any copper to frame this as a *neighbours dispute" or anything - and coppers in the UK are far more inclined to help “members of the public” they see as pure victims themselves)
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Depending on where in the UK you live contact your “Single Point of Access” mental health team. They are, well, the single point of access for mental health and by definition also are the contact points for friends,family,etc. of mental health patients.There is a good chance of them already knowing him, so that might help. Also,if your mom gets sicker from the whole ordeal, call her an ambulance - more freely than normal, to get that on the file. (And yes,I know this is a moral grey zone)
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Call your council both in terms of mental health and nuisance laws. Be nice,but pressure them to do something.
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Find out who the landlord of the neighbour is (if he doesn’t own) and contact him as well as your own landlord.
Again,let me repeat: The noise is not your problem. The noise is just a symptom of your problem and when the noise goes away and the problem is not resolved something else will come up - very likely something worse.
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You’re probably already keeping a detailed log of every incident, and recording evidence - keep doing it
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Go to the local council environmental nuisance team
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They provide a noise meter (or sometimes app for your phone) to record proof
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After a few incidents they can serve him with a noise abatement order
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If for some reason they won’t, as long as you’ve followed the process above you can apply to Magistrate’s Court directly for a noise abatement order and both parties will get summoned to put forward their sides.
Currently going through this, the council wrote the order, took it to my neighbour, who promptly talked them out of serving it. Said he’d be quiet. Wish it worked like that for parking tickets.
This guy councils.
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If calling the police gave you 8 months the first time, I’d say calling them again is a logical step. It clearly had an effect last time.
Call them every single time. Press charges. If he can’t/won’t learn to behave and the cops never arrest him, then you might need to switch to a lawsuit. I didn’t know how the laws work in the UK, but it sounds like you need to go full (legal) agro. Maybe there’s a law that can get him locked up in a mental hospital; talk to a lawyer.
If it was me I’d personally call the police every single night that the neighbor does this. 2 things will happen. 1. The cops finally take more drastic action and the issue is solved. Or 2. The cops tell you they can’t keep responding to this and tell you to stop calling them. Either way, i would call them every day and see what happens. I think that’s really all OP can do realistically do, other than moving…
If I was calling every day about a legitimate issue (blasting an alarm in the middle of the night is legitimate), and they told me to knock it off, not only would I keep calling, I’d start calling every elected official at every level - municipal, county, state, federal (I’m in America). The police chief, the mayor, my city councilman, my county commissioner, my congressman, and my senator would all be getting daily calls and emails, and I would make sure to inform them that the reason they are hearing from me is because local police officers (name them if possible) refuse to do their jobs and address the problem.
The issue would be resolved within the week.
Fair enough, however I personally have little faith in local government and law enforcement so your milage may vary on that one.
Eventually you’ll get someone who will figure out that the best way to get you off everybody’s backs is to deal with the old fart next door.
Second this. Keep calling. 8 months at a time… With 84 years it’s not that many times isn’t it?
If its actual radio, you could get a small bluetooth radio transmitter (you can buy them at best buy to connect your phone to car selecting the frequency, don’t know if you will find a strong enough one to broadcast to his place from bestbuy though) and then you can choose what sounds come out of his speakers, your favorite music, audiobook, porn, silence?
This might be illegal if you’re transmission is too strong, check local guidelines
oh boy would this trigger his delusions
“This is the voice of God. I am giving you a divine order to go seek mental health treatment at an intensive inpatient care facility immediately.”
(/s, obvs. don’t do that lol)
It also wouldn’t work, nor would it likely trigger his delusions any more than not doing it. My understanding is that fundamentally, schizophrenia is when someone’s running internal monologue gets cross wired and confused with external input. Your stray random thoughts gain as much, or more, validity as actual events that you can see, hear, taste, touch, etc. Sane people know they have imaginations and random BS thoughts, and we have the ability to distinguish those from reality… but even so, sane people can be disturbed by their own random thoughts too. Now imagine if you physically COULDN’T distinguish them, or even a subset of them.
Adding additional external inputs isn’t going to do jack shit when the problem is actually the internal inputs. Not unless your external inputs are really able to make him start thinking, and thus generate more internal thoughts.
The correct approach would be to keep calling the police/making a complaint every time it happens, build up evidence etc. perhaps speak with someone with legal knowledge. Complain to local authorities.
Or fight back, the way I imagine doing it is to get a huge amp pressed against his wall and blast death metal for all hours he’s trying to sleep.
Also glitter bombs/dog poop/piss disks through his door until he gets the message.
Pay someone to steal his speakers.
Don’t pay someone to steal something. The police will treat conspiracy to commit theft much more harshly than blasting music.
Perhaps I should have put a /s, agree, dont pay someone to do it, they can sell the speakers afterwards anyway
/s
You’re right.
If you’re going to do that, don’t get caught.
Yup, keep calling so you can make a paper trail. Cops don’t know it’s an issue unless you tell them, so keep calling and keep making reports. Once enough stack up, they’ll be able to take action. But you need to prove a pattern of behavior, and that takes more than a single call. Get police reports, even if they don’t take any action. Take video when it’s happening too, if you can.
At the very least, start a notebook of dates, times, and any disturbances or interactions you have. If you talk to him at all, write a summary of the conversation in the notebook. If he is blaring his siren, note the time and approximately how loud it was, (refer to other references, like “rock concert”, “lawn mower”, “whisper”, etc if you don’t have a dB meter. Get a dB meter and audio spectrum app on your phone and note hard numbers, if you can. If it ever goes to court, that notebook will be admissible as evidence. And in court, the party with the paperwork wins. Again, your goal is to prove a pattern of harassment, so having documentation will go a long way.
Keep things legal, so he doesn’t have any ammo to use against you. Also, provoking him is likely an awful idea; He has already proven that he is hostile and unstable. You don’t want to give him any reasons to get more aggressive.
I don’t know how it works in the UK, but if possible I’d look into getting a protection order against harassment. Definitely gather whatever evidence you can (a security camera might be a good investment), but with someone like this they may very well tell on themselves if it goes to court. A reasonable person wouldn’t be doing something like this in the first place, so they may well make it readily apparent that this is the sort of thing they think is acceptable in a court room. Especially if they’ve admitted to you to doing it on purpose.
If you’re able to request police body camera footage, it might be worth it to do that after calling in a noise complaint, and if you share a hallway you might be able to record the interaction yourself if not. If you rent and do share a hallway, consider asking your landlord to install a camera in a shared space so that you can get footage that way. Make sure to check the laws in your area regarding consent for recording. If you’re allowed to record secretly, maybe you can get them to admit it again on camera.
I had a similar situation to this with a transphobic neighbor who was doing this for about 6 months. A court date got it squared away, because she told on herself to the police while on our hallway camera. It might help in your situation too.
Do they still sell those novelty toy mics that broadcast and speakers pick it up?
I’m not telling you what to do with that, but there are many options.
I’m really sorry this is happening it’s fucking rough. I’d refer him to social services as well, he needs MH treatment but won’t do it himself. He may be bad enough for them to section him IDK.
He’s also likely with your local doctors I’d ring them too.
Keep calling the police. If they don’t want to do anything I’ve found that telling them if they don’t help you that saying something like “okay well me and my mates will ‘sort him Jim out’ ourselves” kicks them in to action.
I did something similar 2 years ago when I found the address of a guy who stole my bag. They didn’t want to help until I implied I might confront him myself, possibly with a weapon.
I don’t really have any experience with situations like this, but I’d be cautious of suggesting such things to the police. Worst case they don’t do anything, and something happens to the neighbor and suddenly you have a lot of trouble waiting for you.
I know here in Germany you can create a log of all the occurrences of your neighbor being loud, and if it is excessive a court can order your neighbor to be silent. If your neighbor then breaks the order, the police will actually do something. Not sure how things work in the UK tho
Start going out in the garden at night and making wolf noises. This sounds like an untreated mental health issue. If no one (council, cops, ambulance) is going to respond to the current levels, try to increase them. Consider calling in a welfare check rather than a noise complaint.
Shit advice.
Escalating the situation will not improve it.
Ok the only people that can help you are the council, noise complaints are the responsibility your local council unfortunately, given the cuts that have happened over the years this means that they are underfunded. What you need to do is get the local noise complaints number and call it every single time it happens. This is what is called a statutory noise complaint. Just Google it. At the same time you need to start a noise complaint diary,
the columns are date, start time, end time, severity*, weather, and details.
Severity is on a scale of 0 to 4, with 0 been nothing and 4 been OMFG argh. Details need to include what type of noise it is and most importantly how it affects you. Headache? Lack of sleep, emotional distress? Got to town however remember that this is going to be a legal document that could get used in court eventually. Also important is to do it daily even if there is no noise. Include if you are away on holiday etc if it regularly happens on a weekend etc. The council should send you this info after the first couple of incidents
Now for the nighttime banging on the walls and screaming, if it just randomly starts in the middle of the night that sounds to me like someone is or could be having domestic abuse. I apologise in advance if this upsets people. You should contact the police and let the know that.
If any of your neighbours are affected try to get the in on it as well, it’s much more effective with multiple people.
Eventually you will be asked to place a “noise recording device” in the room that is most affected, at this point you know something is finally going to be done about, eventually…
If you have any remote possibility of moving house in the next year or so don’t go down this route as i believe that you have to declare it to the next house buyer
The problem we have in the UK is that most of the laws, procedures and police are built around people not wanting to be complete knobheads. Unfortunately the people have realised this and also realised there are no consequences for their actions
Disconnect his apartment from electricity. Maybe his breakers are outside. His main water valve is definitely outside, close it frequently. While he showers. Make him tired, fond out when he sleeps then ring his doorbell, call his phone, knock the door, etc…
Schizo accelerationsim. Don’t know if I approve but either way it’ll be interesting.
If you want to go the unethical route, tell the police that he’s wandering naked in his yard waving a knife and yelling threats.
Maybe after enough calls, he’ll get committed, which it sounds like that’s where he needs to be.
This is the best idea in the thread and will yield immediate results. If the neighbour is unwell enough to harass a random family then getting them committed might actually be doing them a favour.
Somehow I read it as your brother having schizophrenia and got really confused.
Continue to involve authorities, but u fortunately mental health funding keeps getting slashed. There may be a social worker centre you could reach out to for more information.
A friend of mine had a similar issue. Also UK, West London a guy was blasting his car stereo every night in front of his garage, often till 8-9 pm, in some cases during the night while having some weird people over. It was very loud, walls vibrating, etc
Various neighbours called the police on him at least 5 times but nothing happened, he turned off the music for a while, ignored the cops and turned it back on after they left.
They told them they need hard proof to do anything, this would involve getting a regular recording of the music and they should measure the decibels and vibrations to prove how disturbing it is to start anything. It was just the most bizarre way of telling people the local council and police will do nothing. Who the fuck has this kind of equipment and knowledge to do this?
Needless to say nothing happened. My friend moved to another place because of work within 6 months.
I do hope in your case the local law enforcement will be more competent, I wish I could give you an actual advice instead of a story :(
