I'm a black doctor. My neighbors called the cops on me for listening to Biggie.

[moriah]

94. Maybe this is my "ginger female" privilege speaking, but....

... I've never had to call the cops for noise complaints. And yes, I worked nights for five years.

Why do I think it could be privilege making me never have to resort to it?

1) The whole ginger stereotype of a temper. I do have one, but learned through observation of family that four-letter words and yelling did very little, while the reverse -- especially when actually extremely angry -- worked wonders because it apparently led to an appearance of being a ginger about to snap (heh, puns). When I am not actually angry, just mildly annoyed, perhaps people fear I'll go from zero to SuperBitch and so they take a "friendly request" as getting off lucky.

2) Being female, I'm not likely to be perceived as escalating a situation by my intervention as much, especially if I use the folkways learned growing up as one. We're socially conditioned to learn the art of smoothing things over. We certainly aren't likely capable of causing physical harm to someone we approach directly vs getting a cop/manager to do it -- and maybe it's the gingertude, but I am not afraid for my *own* physical safety knocking on someone's door, or walking up to someone in a parking lot working on a car, etc. Most people are people, and "Hey, I know it's daytime and all but **insert reason here why noise is bothersome**, so could you turn it down?" is not that scary to say. At least for me.

Yes, I've called the cops when domestic disputes escalated -- fights between men that got physical, or yelling matches heard between men and women where I feared for people's safety more than the noise concerns. But when it was just display yelling between men and I saw no blows being exchanged, I walked outside and simply said, loud enough to be heard, "Is there a problem? Do you *need* me to call the law?" I'm sure I sounded annoyed -- I was. The person causing trouble left, and the neighbor thanked me for demonstrating to that person that such doesn't fly here.

I just don't understand why people don't have the guts to simply talk things out unless there's a legitimate safety concern. According to this account at least, not a single person of the many he must have been bothering so much bothered to knock, and the noise wasn't happening when the cop showed up. If nothing else, a *faster* resolution certainly would have come from a knock on the door by a neighbor vs waiting for a cop -- whose presence was essentially useless once he did get there and his time was wasted.