Comments on: Love thy neighbour, or mind your own business?

By: Anne

Anne — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:43:20 +0000

Just remember if you call the cops don’t turn on any lights in the house. It was a piece of advice that was given to me when I called the cops to the house on the corner as things were getting out of control.

By: Kerryn

Kerryn — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:57:15 +0000

There is such a thing as too Nosy,

We have a neighbour who tapes us with a video camera.

I’d like to think it’s for our safety but in reality they are probably JUST plain weird.

By: Ami

Ami — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:36:14 +0000

I’m still thinking about this incident 2 days later and I agree with both of you, Jodie and Ben. I’d rather be a nosy neighbour than someone lose their life, but I would only do it anonymously for fear of your example Jodie, that someone would then know where I live and get violent towards me or my family.

Ben, I do think that maybe we should have called the cops, maybe to deter him from doing it again, and there was definitely an issue, with the language and his behaviour, so there was no worries about calling the cops for no reason.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I can tell you now if there’s a repeat performance, I won’t hesitate calling the cops from the get go.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:06:56 +0000

Its an interseting question isn’t it? When do you get involved????

Ami you said if it had gone on any longer you would have called the cops…what if it had got violent before that point??? do you then feel guilty for not calling them earlier??? or what if you call the cops early and it turns out that there was never an issue and it was just a general arguement that we’ve all had at some stage in our lives???

Its one of those awful positions that complete strangers put you in, that you have a high chance of getting wrong. However me, personaly i would like to think i was the type of person that stepped in early rather than later. Better off looking like a nosy neighbour, than somebody getting hurt or killed.

By: Jodie at Mummy Mayhem

Jodie at Mummy Mayhem — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:50:41 +0000

Getting involved in domestic issues is tricky. Our old next door neighbour had a huge fight with his brother one night. There were bottles thrown and raised voices and some not so nice language shouted. We called the police because it went on a bit, and were worried if it scared our boys. We asked the police not to say it was us, or knock at our door.

We knew a guy who confronted some drunken guy outside his house one night. The guy left and came back minutes later with a knife and stabbed him several times. Fortunately, he survived.

Food for thought.