Talk amongst yourselves, in the words of Mike Meyers.
105 Thoughts to “Open Topic”
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- You, Me and the Lamp Post
Mando, do you think the residents with the loudspeakers would have been so quick to run to Univision had HSM not created the climate that it had in PWC in the last couple years? Do you think that the police get tired or stressed by continual complaints in particular neighborhoods – particularly if the gripes are from the same complainants?
“Some here are ACTIVELY race-baiting. ShellyB is notorious”, couldn’t agree more…
Every issue is due to some white guy who dislikes brown people. It gets pretty old but it’s so predictable now it’s funny. If there is a thread about something like this you can bet your bottom dollar ShellyB will put her 2 cents in on how some racist (and/or) Greg is at the root of it.
“HSM not created the climate that it had in PWC in the last couple years?”
HSM didn’t create that climate. MSF, 9500Liberty, and all the other publicity leeches and misguided escalated the fear, and gave the paper tiger (resolution) its teeth.
But you can continue to blame HSM if it makes you feel better. You guys love to say how insignificant HSM is yet are lightning quick to attribute all the world’s ails on them.
“Do you think that the police get tired or stressed by continual complaints in particular neighborhoods – particularly if the gripes are from the same complainants?”
I want the police to continue to do their job.
“Mando, do you think the residents with the loudspeakers would have been so quick to run to Univision had HSM not created the climate that it had in PWC in the last couple years?”
I think their primary motivation and concern is that the woman’s going to be deported, and they want to raise heck and hope it gets her an “Amnesty” of some kind.
I wouldn’t be surprised if these people had run to Univision even if the resolution had never happened. There are always going to be some subset of people who are going to try to get into the news for sympathy or whatever. These people may very well be in that subset of people. They’ll try and turn any police confrontation into “police brutality”, etc.
Leaving the issue of how loud the music may or may not have been aside, I still say all they had to do is comply with the police request, and none of this would have happened. They are solely to blame for it escalating – it is just not credible that the police are going to whip out their tasers for what should have been a simple noise complaint/request to turn the music down. And now, they are the ones who will try and inject race into it – as otherwise this could have been a story about any house/any ethnic group playing loud music and having the police come and request it be turned down.
The fact they ran off to Univision to get it to go national speaks volumes.
I’m sure if someone keeps complaning about what is a non-issue, the police would eventually tire of it and tell that person to stop complaning, and/or stop responding to their complaints.
I don’t think the police would have asked them to turn the music down if it wasn’t very loud – that simply also does not make sense.
The fact the story has gone national – well who’s to blame about that? The people who reported it to Univision – that’s who.
I was down in Mexico City one time sleeping on the floor of a friend’s apartment. We got home at 3 a.m., and as I tried to go to sleep I heard the singing of Madonna obviously coming from someone else’s apartment and played quite loud. It didn’t seem to bother the people I was staying with. I heard someone say that in Honduras people aren’t expected to keep their music and party volume low that the social burden is on the neighbors to endure it although I know for a fact that some Hondurans belly-ache about their neighbors’ loud stereos.
A few years ago I went to a friend’s birthday party in a garden apartment complex in Arlington. The party was loud. We left at about 10 or 11 pm, and some people were just arriving dressed nicely anticipating an evening of fun and dancing. I couldn’t help but think of the other residents in the apartment complex. What was going on with them? No one complained.
But if loud parties and music is acceptable in Mexico or Central America doesn’t matter to me. I’m all for diversity. Bring your culture when you come. But in this country, the right to make noise ends at your neighbors’ wall. That non-negotiable. That’s one thing where new-comers will HAVE to adjust to our ways. No doubt about it. And if we have to tase people, then we have to tase people. They’ll eventually learn.
Mando, 9500Liberty followed the story. They didn’t create the story – other than in their documenting what occurred in the neighborhoods and meetings. MSF may have pointed out the pitfalls of the resolution for the Hispanic community. Letiecq’s spin did much the same which was to create fear in many older,white residents. If the older, predominantly white residents weren’t fearful, just what were they talking about at the marathon BOCS meeting? They’d been whipped up by Greg L.
Why didn’t Greg harness the anger or fear to strengthen funding for the police or Neighborhood Services instead of concentrating on immigration status? Wouldn’t that have been more productive/cost effective for the citizens of this county? It wouldn’t have garnered as much publicity for him or enabled him to suck up to so many microphones is my bet. If you doubt the control freak aspect of Greg’s character, question why he refuses to relinquish control of the presidency of HSM. That organization may have fared better a couple years ago with someone else at the helm, someone not tied to an inflammatory blog. He puts Greg Letiecq above everything else – above the harmony that could have better prevailed in this county, and ,very recently, above the best interest of politicians he’s worked with in the past. He doesn’t care what he brings down on their heads -some of the criticism well deserved, some not- as long as he maintains control. I have no respect for HSM because apparently the members of it have no respect for opinions that don’t jive with Greg’s. Minions. Cult.
I agree with Censored. Cult. For all the reasons she gives.
Now, having said that, I also agree with Guapo. I have the right not to hear someone else’s music. I can be real patient on graduation night or Sat. afternoon at a birthday party. After that, turn it down. It isn’t even that I mind hearing a tune in the background–it is the windows rattling and my dogs hiding that bothers me.
The ones I called the cops on all the time were white with very red necks. They were incredibly stupid and shot fireworks onto roofs also. They waited 5 minutes after the cops left to turn their music back up. They begged to be tased and I would not have shed one tear if it happened. Some of them might have been pregnant also. I could care less. 2 am is too late to blare your music. I seriously often could not hear my own TV.
Mando, you will hear many voices here. We don’t all walk alike or talk alike. We will agree on some things and disagree on others.
@Last Best Hope
MH, thanks for the correction on the Fox video. I never think of them as local. My error.
LBH, you put a complicated question out there that I can’t answer. I have no idea if this family “sunk so low” as to use race the race card. But I AM saying yes to the first part of your post–that our history has exacerbated a tension that always exists in a society of difference people. Had we addressed the problem from a neighborhood standpoint instead of trying to take on immigration which has bled into intolerance of Hispanics, I don’t think this family would have gotten so much media attention.
Incidentally, did anyone go over and ask the family to turn down the music before the cops got called?
We had some neighbors move in next door. We live in a townhouse. They were good neighbors. Sometimes music could be heard through the walls. It wasn’t late at night. It was always in the day. Having spent four years living in a college men’s dorm, it didn’t bother me. You could barely hear it most of the times, and it wasn’t very frequently, only once in a while.
However, it bothered the heck out of Mrs. Guapo. She went over there to complain. They just didn’t get it. After a couple of times she started calling the police. An officer explained it to them. They eventually got it. After a while you never heard a peep coming from over there.
The moral of the story is that, with a little encouragement, they learned. There’s hope.
Whew! Please excuse all the typos in that last post.
@El Guapo
El Guapo, I think what you are saying is reasonable no matter who lives next door.
While I was out running after work today, I was celebrating the fact that I no longer had to embrace the culture of leering catcalls from the large group of men who were running a pool hall in the garage up the street up until a few months ago, and that my teenage daughter can now walk the dog in peace without harassment. The whole lot of them moved out, the house was completely gutted and renovated, and a very nice family has now moved in.
What woman (or teenager) in her right mind would approach drunken pool players and politely ask them to pretty-please stop sexually harassing her when she is out alone running or walking a dog? And since we don’t speak Spanish, of course we called the police. And of course the bad behavior continued until the jerks moved out.
You make it sound so simple, Pinko. It’s not.
Emma, I’ve lived in some pretty bad places. I know it’s not easy. But I WOULD like to know if the neighbors at least made the attempt to talk to the party-throwers. Like I have said before–the fair thing to do is talk to your neighbors first. Even if you don’t know Spanish (if that is indeed the problem), you can signal “loud music” and “turn it down” pretty easily. Besides that, I would be surprised if not one person at a party knew English.
Back to LBH’s topic–let me add something. People who provide public services will always feel the brunt of racial tension in their jobs. Cops, therefore, have had to bear the brunt of the immigration resolution since it was introduced in its original form. From day one, Deane warned what this resolution would do in immigrant communities and guess what? He was right. And this stuff doesn’t go away just because the resolution was changed. It is continuing. It is going to take time to turn this around, and it will only change if people change the way they handle problems like these.
Cops will always be on the receiving end of tension, anger and violence when their leaders (and ours) make stupid policy decisions, but cops will feel it in ways most of us won’t.
BTW, Emma, I’m not talking about sexual harassment. I’m talking about the loud music thing. Sexual harassment? By all means, call the cops.
How can you possibly say that this situation had anything to do with the Resolution when you don’t know all the facts? You see a butchered, one-sided video and make an awful lot of assumptions.
Using your crystal ball, how should this have been handled? Isn’t it possible that the people were drunk and belligerent, and possibly posed a danger to the police? Is it possible that they have shown prior hostility and disrespect to their neighbors, so why bother to approach them and ask nicely?
Anything is possible when you don’t know the facts.
Oh I agree they could have been drunk and belligerent, Emma. And the cops could have been unduly forceful. We have no idea, and you are right that the video doesn’t mean anything.
What I am talking about is the way things get blown up with the tension is already high. For example, we had neighborhood problems. So HSM steps in with an extreme agenda (among other things). An election is coming up and poof! We have the resolution. Had the neighborhood problems been addressed, GL and company never would have made it as far as they did.
Now…we have a climate of fear and racial tension that was higher than it was before. Hence….the cops are more on the defensive and so are the residents.
This all could have been avoided by addressing the real neighborhood issues, but Pandora’s box has been opened, and lord knows how it will be shut again. In the meantime, PWC looks like some horrible place to live where people cry racism and/or cops tase innocent people. Our reputation and image goes further down.
Professor Gates cried racism, and he doesn’t live in PWC, but in a nice, sheltered, upper-class enclave.
@Emma
Oh that…well….I would have to find my assessment on that case. I’ve posted in three places on that already.
That sounded like a case of two very agitated people going head to head with both needing to give each other a sincere apology. And why do we have problems like that? Because our country has had a history of racial problems. Had we all started off on the same footing (i.e. without a history of slavery), we wouldn’t be seeing stuff like this. But the fact is, slavery existed and so did the Civil Rights movement. This stuff doesn’t go away easily, so when we make policy, we have to think, “How is this going to affect us socially?” Problem is, our leaders don’t think of this. They think money and re-election. And some of them think, “I don’t like people who are different. Let’s get rid of them.” Sorry, but some people really are like that.
This type of call happens all the time for the PWCPD – loud party complaints. Regardless of the “size” of the speakers or the “ethnicity” of the party hosts, the actions taken are the same. The officer has to identify the owner or manager of the property, then for the first call, issue a verbal warning to turn down the music. If that person refuses to co-operate and a violation is visible, the police, by policy, will take action. In this case, the person they were speaking to was intoxicated in public (yes, the only place you can be legally intoxicated in Virginia is INSIDE your residence or a friend’s residence (with permission to be there), not your front porch, not your yard.
So in order to prevent a second call (which takes time and costs all of us money and does not solve the problem quickly), they arrested the uncooperative, intoxicated person.
If you see someone being arrested, don’t get involved, because then YOU are going along also. If its a legal arrest, you have no authority or constitutional right to prevent it. If you simply touch an officer to intervene, you have committed assault on a Law Enforcement officer. You will not win that confrontation.
If you are illegally here, it has been made clear to avoid contact with the police in which you are wrong. 287(G) at the jail is no secret. If you assault an officer, you’re going to the magistrate’s office and then jail where your immigration status will be checked.
The people were tased because the officers have been trained to use the taser in place of physical force. When an officer uses physical force such as “hands on” or their steel baton, someone is getting hurt, including possibly the officers. A person recovers from a taser use almost immediately. The officers are trained to use the minimum use of force, first verbal, then taser,then the more powerful weapons they possess. But when possible, the weapons with the least potential for injury are used first.
This is not a tragedy, nor a black mark on the County, the Police or anyone else except the people who got arrested. Obey the laws, cooperate with the police when they arrive and don’t interfer with them and you will be just fine.
I have no reason to assume the neighbors in this PWC were “like that.” All I know is that the neighbors were bothered by noise, and police responded to the call. And my impression of Professor Gates is that it was more a question of class warfare than race–why should HE have to put up with something so plebeian as to have to show an ID to ensure his home wasn’t being robbed?
@Lucky Duck
“This is not a tragedy, nor a black mark on the County, the Police or anyone else”
I agree….which is why I say the only reason this is in the news is because PWC has had a recent history of racial tensions in the news! Now, everything and every one is being questioned because we created our own environment of potential liabilities.
I’ve experience loud music, non-stop barking dogs, and the shooting off of illegal fireworks at 2 a.m. by people of all different ethnicities. It happens in all neighborhoods at one point or another. The teenagers next door to me lit a bonfire in the backyard when their parents were on vacation! That was a nail biter! My husband took care of that situation, with a friendly, “Hey guys, did you think we wouldn’t notice the bonfire? You do know we have your parents cell numbers right?” 🙂
It is sad that the media is latching onto this as a cops vs. hispanics story. It was a loud music complaint turned into drunk/disorderly situation from what I have read and seen so far. This happens a lot at parties in general when alcohol is in the mix. (That “liquid courage” gets people into trouble.) We should wait for the police dept.’s investigative report before second guessing the officers as the video doesn’t show all of the situation. In the meantime, I do feel for the officers as the news media’s tag lines are “cops out of control” (fox 5) and things like that. I worry that the pw officers will feel a lack of support and it will affect morale.
Excellent point, IWK. How much of what Pinko is attributing to already-high tensions is simply incited by a media that is hungry for a juicy story about racist, out-of-control cops?
Maybe we should all learn from the President’s recent CF and wait for the facts to come out before slamming the police who risk their lives for us every day.
I was not about to go talk to my neighbors at midnight or any other time of day. I didn’t know them and had nothing in common with them. We shared about 2 feet of property line. They weren’t good neighgors and the million gazillion kids who lived there weren’t either. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who had it in for people who blasted their neighbors out of their beds every weekend. Every time I called I was told an officer was already on his way, which speaks volumes.
Drunks always want to be right and rarely take correction or direction well. I expect this sort of thing happens frequently.
Thanks for the details about how these cases really work, Lucky Duck. Also thanks for the advice.
Liquid Courage. As long as I have been a drinking woman, I never quite heard it put that way. ..well perhaps that is what the Eagles were saying.
@Moon-howler So MH you NEVER addressed any problems with your neighbors, even at the start? You seem so vocal.
Pinko, would you directly address drunks who were sexually harassing you? Playing loud music at 2 am? I have a job to go to at 6 am every morning, a family to take care of when I come home, hobbies and friends after that. I’m not going to walk up to loudmouth drunks and expect them to treat me with respect and consideration. I’m not going to try to play cop, I will simply call them to do the job for me. This ain’t Mayberry.
I suggest Pinko become the ambassador of drunken, load party suppression and give her cell# so we may all call her to peacefully quell these situations.
@Moon-howler
I agree. Doesn’t matter race or color. Douche bags are douche bags. Just so happens around me and in Westgate the douche bags were Hispanic.
No, Pinko. I called the cops on them. Why would I want to go crawl across a couple of back fences to talk to a bunch of drunken rednecks who would probably shoot me?
Vocal has big pay backs. I am not saying that people shouldn’t try to talk out neighbor problems. However, it is stupid to try to reason with partying drunks in the middle of the night.
DB’s come in many colors, Mando, I agree with you on that one. I lucked out. I had some Hispanic ones 2 doors down who always had something going on. I didn’t call the cops on them because I never heard whatever was doing down. I just saw the cops over there every weekend. Both groups left, mercifully. Whoever moved in is quiet. That’s all I ask for: no loud parties all night and no fireworks on the roof.
Emma, CF = fuster cluck or am I taking too much poetic license here?
I’d be willing to bet these people would have run to Univision with the story if the resolution had never happened. I don’t think you can blame the resolution at all for what happened over the weekend. Some people are just going to be argumentative with the police (especially when alchohol is involved), and then are going to play the “victim” card when they are arrested. That woman should have known better, that you shouldn’t be interfering when a police officer is making an arrest, as you’ll just end up getting arrested too.
This is just another instance of people trying to play up the race/victim card, coupled with the news media going for headlines as they like to do – whenever they think there’s a case of police brutality. Unfortunately, the people who had the party and the news media – they are the ones guilty of causing these headlines, not the resolution.
As far as talking to the nieghbors first: if you are asleep at 2 AM in the morning, then all the sudden loud blasting music comes on – are you going to get dressed and go to the offending house in the middle of the night? That’s a recipe for disaster – who knows what might happen. It’s much easier (and safer) to just call the police. Also, it establishes a record of incidents at that house, which I think is a good thing.
I’m sorry, people ought to know better than to blast a stereo like that in the middle of the night – and since they lack any consideration for their neighbors – why should I give them any consideration or respect by first trying to ask them myself?
It’s easy for people to imagine that’s what they would do in this kind of situation, but I bet if they were woken up at 2 AM in the morning by loud blasting music, they might just do what I would do – call the police. Besides, in my case, when these people moved in – they wouldn’t respond to a friendly wave or a hello – they’d just look back with sort of angry stares. They had to know the word “hello”, or know what it meant when someone was waving to you. If they weren’t going to respond to that – what makes me think they would respond to my request to turn down the noise in the middle of the night? Of course, after awhile so many people had come and gone out of that townhouse – the original occupants weren’t there anymore. Just the same, I wasn’t about to tempt fate and see what kind of reaction I’d get to going over there in the middle of the night to ask them to turn down the noise.
What GainesvilleResident said.
The onus is on the one planning the party to inform his/her neighbors of what they are planning. If you are planning a party involving loudspeakers you better be knocking on some doors hours in advance. There’s no way in hell I’m going to be considerate when someone is blaring music through loudspeakers after 10pm. I’m calling the cops.
I believe it is totally appropriate to have some regulations on the books as far as loudspeaker use in residential areas.
@GainesvilleResident
“if you are asleep at 2 AM in the morning, then all the sudden loud blasting music comes on – are you going to get dressed and go to the offending house in the middle of the night?”
That’s what I have done. I’m not dead yet.
@Moon-howler
“no fireworks on the roof.”
Had similar problem. Talked to them. They moved the show though they were drunk.
I would not suggest anyone do anything I have not already done. But I don’t judge people who don’t want to confront sexual harassers or people in brawls. That’s different from loud music players and firework shooters IMO.
I am not climbing over the fence to tell a bunch of drunks to not shoot fireworks onto roofs and tree tops. Hell they would have shot me with fireworks. Pinko, maybe you could start an ‘I talk to drunks’ service.
I have talked to enough drunks that I know in my life to know you just don’t get very far. If you got people to change their drunken bad habits, it was definitely a lucky night for you and you should have hopped a plane to Vegas.
Motto: Moon doesn’t exchange with drunks!
That’s too funny MH. Actually, in my own case I had some crooks living next to me – after all they broke into my house and stole stuff. I can just picture the reception I’d have gotten from them if I had gone over there at 2 AM in the morning…. I tend to think calling the police at that time is the safer/more prudent thing to do.
In any event, I don’t see why people blasting music in the wee hours of the night, shouldn’t expect to have the police show up! They aren’t showing their neighbors any consideration, and I don’t see why their neighbors should show them any consideration in return. It should be common sense not to blast music in the wee hours of the night, and it just tells me something about the kind of people who are willing to do that, and part of what it tells me is they don’t deserve any respect. the other thing it tells me is they are just very inconsiderate people. They can’t be that clueless as to believe that they aren’t bothering anyone with music playing like that. Of course, I have no doubt they may be a bit hard of hearing, as otherwise I’m not sure why anyone could stand having music played that loud inside a house – so loud that the entire floor of my house is vibrating, and I can hear every word being sung in the song as clear as if I was listening to it myself.In fact, when this was done in the daytime (which was often), I’d have to turn up the TV to even have a chance of hearing what was said on my own TV. Some people just don’t care, and for those people, I think having the police called on them is exactly what they deserve.
Not to mention the fact that the person being kept up/woken up is probably not in the best frame of mind to try to negotiate with a bunch of drunks. I know I wasn’t. In my case, it was best for everyone involved that the cops handled it.
Thoughts of taking out an electrical meter with a few shots from a 22 crossed my mind. That’s when I knew it was time to let the authorities handle it.
Yea funny how the later it gets, the more irrational you become. I think cops would be the first to tell you to just let them handle it. They are the experts.
GR, I checked out your old home place. Things are looking better.
How will the cash for clunkers program affect the used car market? I can get more trading my car in than having it squashed. Will there be a tax on selling or buying a clunker that wasn’t declared a clunker?
“How will the cash for clunkers program affect the used car market?”
Depends on how carried away they get with this abomination.
Obviously they’re stealing customers away from the used car lots, so that segment of small business is going to take a hit. Can’t salvage the engines, so used engine prices will go up. Also, consumers on the lower end of the wage scale that depend on low quality/price cars (clunkers) are going to feel a pinch.
Glad to hear the old place is looking better, MH. That’s a bit enccouraging – and resale prices seem to be higher lately too! That’s good, maybe I can unload it for a decent amount of dollars in about a year and a half, when my 2 year deal of guaranteed rental income expires.
I’m with Mando regarding the 2 AM thing – at 2 AM with not much sleep, I’m very angry and cranky, and I think calling the police at that time is best for all parties involved! My mind isn’t too clear either at that time of the morning, and as I have a low tolerance threshold for idiots, I could just see myself saying something I shouldn’t – and the situation esclating into something bad. Better for the police, who are hopefully trained in how to deal with a simple noise complaint, to handle it! Look what happened this last weekend anyway – even with trained police the situation escalated! That further tells me the best thing to do is call the police and let them handle it. What does anyone think would have happened if one of their neighbors went over there this weekend to complain? I doubt they would have met with any more cooperation than the police had when they went there!
Gainesville, you make a good point about escalating a situation. I have a mouth like Mando so I know I would just escalate the hell out of things.
Mando, I knew all your code. Didn’t even have to stop and think about it. POS is right up there with the top 5.
In my impetuous youth, I have been told by police officers to stay home and let the professionals handle it. Good advice. Fools rush in…and get tased or…if they prefer, shot.
@Moon-howler
LOL!! Okay. Hire me, and I will talk to drunks. I need the money.
Hang that shingle out! The drunk whisperer!
Apparently Univision is giving this a lot of publicity in the Spanish-speaking community, so that’s one good upside to this. At least, as far as I’m concerned.
Since this is an open thread, on another topic – I highly recommend that movie “Orphan”. It’s truly disturbing and really quite a movie. The trailer for it made it look thin and silly but the movie itself is something else.