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

[meadowlander]

95. Maybe luck of the Irish

(assuming that's why you're ginger ).

Again, we don't know that they haven't tried to talk things out in the past and been ignored. And we don't know anything about the relationship between the woman and her neighbours (or their relationship with past tenants who they may not have been aware moved out). And we don't know what her response would have been to a neighbour knocking on the door. She might have told them to "fuck off I'm a doctor and I'll celebrate if I want to".

We tried talking to our country music loving neighbor, multiple times, and his attitude was "it's my property and I'll do what I want". There was no getting through to him. And at a certain point, it stops being my job to make my neighbor obey the law. I don't have the tools for that - but fortunately I pay taxes so that someone else does.

I had about the same amount of luck with a neighbour I shared a balcony with who liked to use my potted herbs as his ash tray. Rude oblivious people tend to remain rude oblivious people even when you bat your eyelashes and say pretty please.

I also called the cops on some neighbours I suspect were dealers who locked their dog in an abandoned van all night every weekend resulting in hours and hours and hours of having to listen to the dog's high pitched distress yelping and howling. As a single woman living alone, it's not my job to bang on the door of a house where motorcycle gang members live and tell them to stop abusing their dog.

I know another case where a Muslim family was living next to a group of young construction workers who would sit on their balcony and throw beer and used underwear at the 18 year old daughter as she tried to walk up the shared driveway to her house which went under their balcony. They would have raves all weekend every weekend until three am, puke on the neighbours driveway, throw beer bottles at their house, etc. It's not that family's job to confront a pack of people who have no respect for them.

It's not about having guts or not. It's about judging whether or not you, on your own, are going to be able to get the point across in that particular situation. And there are lots of situations where perfectly "gutsy" people are not realistically going to be able to make any headway on their own. Nor should they be expected to. That's why we have cops in the first place.