“Officer, Some Noisy Kids are Playing Basketball in the Street!”

For those unfamiliar with Florida landscape, it’s mainly sand and, well, more sand – interspersed with ‘gator ponds – completely inappropriate for a basketball court. The only place for a Neighborhood Game is the paved street. Saw this type of setup everywhere in that state.

Awesome!!!

I wonder how that caller reacted when the cops started shooting basketball with the kids and especially after Shaq showed up the next day?

So proud of my hometown! And yes– Gainesville has public parks with courts, but not in walking distance of every neighborhood. What a great story!

what happened to the story about snow day school work?

David, I was thinking the same thing. The original caller must be looking out their window, scowling and harumphing.

A coworker at my former downtown Chicago job started coming in every day looking like she’d been up partying all night. She wasn’t the partying type, so we figured something must be going on. She finally admitted that when she got home in the evenings, there were kids (implied: black/brown kids) playing basketball in the alley and she couldn’t park her car in the garage, so she’d taken to driving around and going places until late at night after they left (midnight or later). We were rather shocked by this – you mean they won’t move when you ask them to? Well, she admitted, she’d never actually asked them to…. She would just see them when she would go to pull in the alley and then drive away. Just shocking how afraid people are of teenagers, especially ones of color.

Dienne,

That reminds me of a cousin that came to live with us in Toronto, from a small northern town. She was completely convinced that the proper way to drive in downtown Toronto is to always have your windows up, doors locked, and never drive in the curb lane.

When I was in high school some friends of mine and I congregated in a cul-de-sac a couple of times next to one of our cars just to talk and hang out. No one was drinking, doing drugs, or even being noisy, yet both times someone called the cops on us. One of them was a jerk and told us to leave, but the other one was cool and actually hung out and shot the sh*t with us for a while. We had a lot more respect for that one.

I’m not sure where I stand on this. Yes, exercise and socialization are good, but basketball is noisy, five o’clock is early dinner time, and streets are meant for driving, not playing sports. So, those kids playing basketball in the streets are disturbing families sitting down to dinner, people driving down the street (possibly coming home after work), and depending on how late the games go, they could also be disturbing parents putting their young children to bed. Now, when I was a kid, the big thing to play in the streets was ball hockey, but the kids always moved out of the way when a car was coming. Are these kids doing that? Did the neighbours call the police only after telling the kids to stop making noise and being ignored? Conversely, are the neighbours being reasonable in asking for quiet while eating dinner and putting young children to bed, or are they selfishly expecting complete silence 24/7 while living in a neighbourhood with other people? I don’t live on that street, so I don’t have enough information to determine who’s right or wrong here.

Wow, that is just so very cool! A day those kids will never forget and could impact the rest of their lives. Thanks for sharing this we all of us.

@Elin–I meant that five o’clock is often early dinnertime for families with young children, because those kids usually also go to bed early. A lot of older people eat early and go to bed early as well. I know five o’clock is still daytime, but there’s nothing about this neighbourhood having official “quiet hours,” so, if the neighbours said that the basketball noise bothered them, and the basketball-playing kids didn’t change their behaviour, that doesn’t reflect well on the kids. We don’t know if they ignored the neighbours, responded rudely to the neighbours, promised to be quieter but didn’t follow through, or made an effort to be quieter, but slipped back into old habits. If the neighbours went straight to calling the police without addressing the noise with the kids, that was unreasonable on their part, but if they tried other options without any success, maybe it wasn’t. The other thing is, even if five o’clock is still daytime, that doesn’t change the fact that the kids playing basketball are blocking up the street, and requiring drivers to slow down as they move their basketball nets out of the way (because full-sized basketball nets and hockey goals are somewhat cumbersome to move), and there’d probably be a fair number of people trying to get home after work. So, it’d be more considerate for the kids to move their game to one of their driveways, so they wouldn’t be obstructing traffic anymore. I guess what I’m trying to say is, “community” doesn’t mean “kids get their way all the time”; there should be some give and take and compromise involved. We don’t see any evidence of that here–either the kids were asked to be quiet, and didn’t listen, or the neighbours went straight to calling the police. Either way, the police joining the kids in their basketball game, isn’t going to work as a long-term solution.

@LJ–I don’t think it’s a black-and-white situation. Who moved into the neighbourhood first; the families with teenagers, or the neighbours who prefer to have quiet during the early evening hours for dinner/kids’ bedtimes/older people’s bedtimes/whatever? If the families with older kids who like to play basketball moved in first, then the neighbours who want quiet are asking the families with older kids to change, but if the neighbours who want quiet moved in first, the families with older kids are asking the neighbours who want quiet to change the culture of their neighbourhood for them. Maybe this isn’t worth calling the police over (unless addressing the kids directly didn’t work), but respect should be a two-way street (no pun intended), so I think the police are doing themselves a disservice by siding entirely with the basketball players, because I can see the neighbours getting even angrier, and taking their frustrations out on the basketball players even more. Also, noise isn’t the only issue here; there’s also the problem of traffic being obstructed by the games of basketball, at a time when a lot of people are coming home from work.

P.S., I have a friend who has a two-year-old son. He very much wants to be a “big kid,” and if he heard “big kids” playing outside in the street during the early evening hours, he’d probably try to join in, at the time when my friend is trying to get the dinner/bath/bed routine started. He’s also at his worst behaved during the early evening hours, so if he was told he couldn’t go outside, he’d probably throw a tantrum, which would throw off his whole evening routine, and make him tired and even worse-behaved the next day. I know, that’s not anyone’s problem except my friend and her partner (and possibly Toddler himself, because it’s no fun being tired and cranky), and it’s just one reason why I don’t want to have kids myself, but I don’t see a request for quiet as such a bad thing–the initial request (before calling the police) could have been, “Hey kids, could you please help us out by keeping the noise down during the hours between X and Y because of Z Reason?” Maybe the kids are looking at this the wrong way–they’re seeing it as “adults bossing them around,” when they could be seeing it as “an opportunity to be neighbourly.” After all, when these kids were younger, other people probably made concessions for them–they were probably once the baby or toddler fussing/screaming/crying in the restaurant/movie theatre/church service, but other people put up with it. Someday, when these kids are older, they’ll be the ones caring for small children or elderly parents who are on an earlier schedule than most, and they might appreciate quiet for their benefit. In the meantime, in just a few short years, a lot of these kids will probably be going off to college or university, which is designed for “night owls,” with classes, sports activities, and residence events that meet in the evenings, or even quite late at night–for example, when I was in university, there was intramural waterpolo that went from 10:30 p.m. to midnight or so. I didn’t join, even though I wanted to, because I had class the next morning, but for some people, this time slot was perfect for them. My point is, I don’t think it’s fair for the neighbours who want quiet to have their dinners and kids’ bedtimes disturbed every night, nor for the people driving home after work to have their access to their driveways obstructed every night, for the sake of the basketball players. Presumably, the kids could go to a park or something; they just don’t like that option, because the street is RIGHT THERE.

P.S., I meant, I think the police are doing the basketball players a disservice in the long run by joining in their game, not themselves. If the neighbours can see that the police aren’t going to help them, they might get even angrier at the basketball players, and create an all-out turf war, except without the catchy music and flashy choreography of West Side Story.

@Emily, to me it actually does seem as though that you are looking at this in a black and white manner…down to deciding who has the right to ask for what depending on when they moved into a neighborhood. Neighborhoods aren’t about who came first, everybody has the sqme rights as everyone else to live their lives as they see fit regarless of when they moved into their home.
Further, I just don’t see kids playing basketball, loudly at 5pm being worth a police call even if the neighbor asked the kids first to quiet down. I am a parent. I live in a neighborhood. My neighbors, including my family make lots of noises at lots of different times on lots of different levels. If I had endeavored to ask my neighbors not to make loud noises during my babies’ nap and bedtimes I quite frankly think I would have been an obnoxious and controlling neighbor. Not “neighborly” at all. Noise is part of life. I remember times when my children were woken by various noises or couldn’t settle for a bit because of neighborhood sounds but trying to control my neighborhood was not something I’d be willing to do. I soothed my babies instead and it all worked out just fine. Generally, neighborhood noise just blended in and became background noise. Plus, it’s just life in all it’s loud, not as planned, messy glory.
I will grant you that there is certainly plenty about this story we don’t know, specifically what exactly drove the person to make the noise complaint. However, in the end up the police talked to that person (that’s how they got there, right?) so I’m going to put my faith in the police making a good call and enjoy the fact that a sports legend picked up on the story and did a good turn for the police department and kids of the neighborhood.
Best to you and your friends with the toddler, that can be an exhausting time and it’s great that you are such a good friend to them.

@LJ–I phrased that badly. It’s not about who has the right to ask for what based on who moved into the neighbourhood first; it’s about who’s being inconvenienced by having the culture of the neighbourhood unilaterally changed on them.

@LJ–Whether the complaint was about noise, or traffic obstruction, or both, the police are essentially teaching kids that they don’t have to obey when adults ask them to do something they don’t like. Setting that kind of precedent can foster an entitlement mentality in kids.

@LJ–That’s a good point, but it brings us right back to where we started–when neighbourhoods change, which party has to adapt, and how much?

My kids have early dinners and early bedtimes, they are still young. Noise doesn’t bother me at all. Especially not noise like this basketball game (which is repetitive and therefore easy to tune out).

As for noise while kids eat… they are noisy enough on their own.

Yesterday my next door neighbour ran a grinder for half the day while he made modifications to a caravan (he is a grey nomad – not sure if that term is used in the US). I only noticed when I focused on it, for the rest of the time I was oblivious, and certainly not going to call the police to get some quite.

Back to disturbing kids… what really sucked is when they were young and still having day sleeps and people honked horns, or knocked on my door. I hated that, but it wasn’t anything that I could possibly prevent. This is suburban life, and I never expected the whole street to go into silent mode because I had a child.

Likewise, my husband and I have both done nightshifts in our lives, and we both learnt to sleep like logs through anything. My husband has been known to sleep through a rogue child banging on the piano outside our bedroom door (as in a 4yo visitor before we realised where she had been headed).

You adapt. I would rather adapt to kids playing outside like this… well then to most anything else.

@Emily
” Setting that kind of precedent can foster an entitlement mentality in kids.”

Well, somebody in that neighborhood has an entitlement mentality. And it ain’t the kids.

@Emily…I guess we will simply disagree. I think it’s entitled to expect others to not play/make noise at 5pm. And this is coming from someone who really enjoys quiet.
By saying ‘ all adapt.’ I’m saying in neighborhoods we will all experience things at times we do not like & we must cope – calling the police for non criminal behavior is not neighborly or a good use of that community resouce.

If this were a barking dog issue I might agree with the complaining neighbors. It’s kids having a childhood at a reasonable hour, so I don’t agree with the whiny neighbor(s) at all, and I totally applaud Shaq and the police.

The difference, to me, is that in telling someone to quiet their dogs, you’re basically compromising the dog’s quality of life in that the dog may have to have an anti-bark collar installed or be surgically debarked, it may have to stay inside, it may have to live elsewhere (with someone who has 50-100 acres etc to themselves). It’s one thing to do this to a dog, it’s another thing entirely to do this to a human being, especially a child. A child has much more right to a childhood than a dog has a “right” to a “dog-hood” or whatever.

Besides, a dog does not have to bark. It does not impede on a dog’s life much, if any, that they have to be quiet and stay inside. To impose such on a human being is a far greater imposition and unfortunate thing. You can’t even begin to compare the two.

I feel I need to say this because I agree with all the “it’s part of life” comments that people make UNTIL they start calling noisy dogs “a part of life.” I can tell you that, for me anyway, a dog barking a lot is very distressing, so much so that I think the owner of a barking dog should be sent to jail for inflicting their noise onto other people who’d simply like some peace and quiet in their private property. HOWEVER, it is unconscionable to restrict a child to the indoors all the time and never let them be a child. You adjust for a child, you don’t adjust for a dog.

Of course you can’t tell some people that, they think their dog IS a child. Sorry, but that’s a bunch of fruity nonsense. A freaking DOG does not deserve the same accommodations as a human being, child or otherwise. Kids–let them be kids. Dogs–keep them quiet.

@LRH–To put it another way, human children have more capacity to learn consideration and manners than dogs do. A dog might not know it’s doing anything wrong by barking, but human children know that they’re annoying the neighbours by playing basketball outside their homes after being told to stop. I think people have the right to reasonable quiet in their homes at all times, not just after 11 p.m. I remember one late spring/early summer afternoon when I was ten years old, and I fell and scraped my leg while Rollerblading in my driveway, and I cried. While my mom was helping me tend to my wounds, she admonished me for carrying on, because it would disturb the neighbours. I learned a very valuable lesson there–that, even when I was injured, it Wasn’t. All. About. Me. Far from feeling like I was having my “right to a childhood” taken away, I think I grew up a little that day.

{Emily} Sorry, but I disagree. A dog can’t rhyme or reason–frankly, I don’t care. It’s a dog, WHO CARES? Besides, the dog may not be able to reason things, but their owner can, so that’s that. But that aside, I agree with the others who say “get over it” with respect to the children making a little ambient noise playing basketball. Some noise is unavoidable short of taking a child’s childhood away from them. A dog making noise–yes, squelch that, because the OWNER does understand this and what does a relatively ignorant dog know from dip anyway? A child–totally different, you don’t squelch a child’s childhood because of people who are so sensitive about every flipping thing.

@LRH–I don’t think teaching a child manners is “squelching their childhood.” I didn’t say “no basketball, at all, ever.” Basketball can still be played at the park, on the school playground at recess, in the gymnasium at the school, or the YMCA or similar or in an organized league. At the Y, they charge on a sliding scale if money is a problem, and nobody is denied membership for financial reasons. My point here is, though, the object of parenting is not to raise children, but rather, to raise adults. Well, polite adults consider others’ needs before their wants.

>>Emily, how exactly is it disrespectful for someone to choose not to do you a favor when you ask? Because that is all a request to be quiet at a time that you don’t have to be quiet is — a favor.<<

I think this is a "respect for elders/superiors" thing. If an adult asks another adult to do something, and those two adults are peers (so, not employer and employee), then the asker has to take either "yes" or "no" for an answer; the same as if it's a child asking another child, with a few exceptions (like if an older child is babysitting a younger child). Meanwhile, if an adult makes a reasonable request of a child, (not like, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours"), then the expectation is that the child will comply, because "yes" is the polite answer, and childhood is a training ground for adulthood, where the adults guide the kids towards the end goal of becoming polite adults. Telling children that they don't have to obey adults, or respect other people's needs and schedules, is pretty much a recipe for brats. So, if I was a parent living on that street, I'd probably require my hypothetical child to mind the neighbours, and not make noise after being told to stop. As for respect in itself, I think it goes beyond written rules–it's about accommodating other people's needs. If the neighbours have said, "We need quiet to do dinner/bath/bedtime with our young children," or "We need the street clear at 5 so we can get home from work," and the kids essentially said "We don't care," then that's disrespectful. There's plenty of time between school dismissal and 5 p.m. to play basketball in that street, and probably plenty of other places to play basketball besides said street (school playground, park, gymnasium, YMCA or community centre), and so, I think the kids are being a bit selfish. If their basketball game (or combination of basketball and music) is loud enough to disturb their neighbours inside their houses, it's too loud.

@Emily– As someone with a child myself, I think you need to get over yourself. <> Well, that’s the thing, they may be kids, but in this case, you are not in superior ground. They are playing on the street, and you could by all means ask them to please don’t make much noise, but in the end, it’s a public place, and they have every right to be there, even playing.

My son has trouble sleeping. As in, a lot of trouble sleeping. I won’t go into the details of why this is, but the point is, noise bothers him and yells, even from people outside, scare him. So when he sleeps, I’m not going to ask a group of teenagers hanging out in the street or in their own backyard to quiet down. They have every right to be loud. Instead, I do close my the window in my son’s room and put on some music for him. Can’t even hear the teen’s voices over that.

@Travis–I don’t have kids, but I don’t think I need to “get over myself” either. These kids are playing a noisy game in the street. The street isn’t meant for basketball, but rather, for driving. They’re playing right outside the neighbours’ houses, even after the neighbours have complained about the noise. Even if several of the neighbourhood kids are doing it, even if the police support it, it’s still rude. Also, when the police and Shaq came to join in the basketball game, they came in several more cars, parked helter-skelter all over the street, blocking the street even more than the basketball games ever did. I don’t even think ALL the neighbourhood kids are involved in the street basketball, because I only saw boys in the video, so surely there are other kids living in the neighbourhood who weren’t playing–girls, and also boys who were either elsewhere at the time, or aren’t into basketball. That’s another thing–does a child playing basketball in the street outside someone’s house and making noise, take priority over a child of the same age who’s inside the house trying to study?

If the streetlights aren’t on, it’s reasonable for kids to be outside playing.n even a little after dark this time of year, when the bits drops them off at 430 and is dark by 5. I would much rather be exposed to a little noise than kids going into town where the basketball court is, where they have to go through an area know for drugs. And as for the kids needing to respect adaults, what about the adults respecting the kids. It’s not a one way street. Kids have a right to play, get exercise, and have a life too. Plus, good kids or playing in the streets that know who their neighbors are are going to keep crime down. I’ve had plenty of times the kids have told me when they saw “someone funny” at our house and asked them who they were (my dad, my uncle when he first moved in, and one guy who told the kids to mind their own business and left quick). If you want to be free range, you have to accept a little less order and control of kids…you have to give them to be kids

“if an adult makes a reasonable request of a child, (not like, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”), then the expectation is that the child will comply, because “yes” is the polite answer, and childhood is a training ground for adulthood, where the adults guide the kids towards the end goal of becoming polite adults.”

Your first mistake is in believing that a request to stop doing a 100% normal activity for the hour of the day in a public space (or even private space since the same complaint could be made about kids playing basketball in their own driveway) to accommodate your personal schedule is a reasonable request. It absolutely is not. It is a completely unreasonable request. The world does not stop for your baby sleeping or your family eating.

Your second mistake is in believing that parents should in teach their children 100% submission to any request by any random adult at all times. So if an adult doesn’t like my child playing at the park alone and tells her to go home, she has to go? If my child is mowing the lawn and a neighbor tells her to stop, she has to comply and then get in trouble from me when I come home and the lawn isn’t mowed? You should probably stick to that idea of not having kids because this is just teaching them to be yes-men who cannot say no to any request.

“it’s about accommodating other people’s needs.”

You are very much confusing NEEDS and WANTS. Quiet from the neighbors during dinner time, baby nap time, small child’s bedtime is a WANT, not a NEED. Needs are food, clothing, shelter, love. Quiet from the outside sounds of daily living is a want. It is a want I’m sure that we all have at times, but that does not elevate it to a need.

“If the neighbours have said, ‘We need quiet to do dinner/bath/bedtime with our young children,'”

I am not sure why you insist that neighbors of ANY age need to comply with someone else’s self-imposed schedule. I am not sure where you get the idea that it is even reasonable to ask the neighbors to give up their own lives to comply with your schedule. I don’t have young children. I specifically made a choice not to have any more children because I don’t want to live life with a young child anymore – been there, done that, over it. Why should I have to live life as though I have a young child when I do not?

And, I want the world to cease to exist until I am ready to get up on Sunday (I like to lie in bed and read on Sunday mornings). Do I have a right to demand that your snot-nosed little brats who are up at the crack of dawn have to stay inside and play quietly until I am ready to hear noise? That you cannot mow your lawn in the morning, even though it is Georgia where it will be too hot to move by 10am? With an entire neighborhood of people with vastly different family compositions, vastly different interests, and vastly different schedules, when the hell are we supposed to do anything if we are all ceasing to do things because of other people’s schedules?

“There’s plenty of time between school dismissal and 5 p.m. to play basketball in that street,”

Huh? Our local high schools get out at 3:25. Our middle school doesn’t get out until 3:45. With travel time to get home, it will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 to 4:30 before they can even begin to play basketball after school. And that is only if mom and dad don’t insist that they do their homework before playing.

“I think people wanting to drive on the streets should take priority over people wanting to play sports on the streets”

I agree, and if the complaint was that the kids are blocking the road and are slow to move out of the way impeding traffic, I would be supportive of the complaints and think that the officers should have directed them to a better place to play, rather than joined in on the game. However, from the video, the cars moved freely down the road as all the kids got out of the way.

“people wanting quiet in their own homes should take priority over people wanting to make noise outside other people’s homes.”

And that is where you are wrong. You have no guarantee of quiet from the normal sounds of life outside at the normal time of day inside your home. if you demand that level of quiet, YOU need to move to where there is no noise. You don’t get to demand that others stop living their own lives to accommodate you. It is you that is being selfish to demand that people not play basketball at a normal basketball-playing time of the day, not the people playing basketball.

@Emily-
“So, my point here is, if the same group of people, all at the same life stage, needed different quiet hours at different times, then it’d stand to reason that, for different groups of people at different life stages, all living in the same neighbourhood, a “one-size-fits-all” noise ordinance isn’t going to work, and following “the letter of the law” may be legal, but it isn’t always polite or neighbourly.”

My sister works night shift (6pm-6am) and you are right, quiet hours DO mean different things to different people. She lives in a neighborhood brimming with kids. Her biggest complaint is not the noise of children, but lawnmowers, leaf blowers, barking dogs, and construction and trash trucks. So she wears ear plugs and has a white noise machine. She also puts a sign over her door bell- “Do not Disturb”. She does not have an unreasonable expectation to have quiet when SHE needs it.

It is not polite or neighborly to call the police on children playing basketball and the noise they generate. It doesn’t matter if the neighbor asked them to stop making noise. Who gives her the right to tell kids to play silent basketball? Does my sister have the right to demand peace and quiet during all daytime hours because she works night shift? NO, and she would never place such a request on healthy, normal children who NEED sunshine and exercise and outlets to socialize with other kids. That would make her selfish and irrational.

P.S., I said Donna when I meant Lollipoplover. My bad.

>>So if an adult doesn’t like my child playing at the park alone and tells her to go home, she has to go? If my child is mowing the lawn and a neighbor tells her to stop, she has to comply and then get in trouble from me when I come home and the lawn isn’t mowed?<<

In that case, your daughter would either tell the neighbour that she was mowing because you'd asked her to, or she'd stop mowing, and then relay to you the neighbour's request for quiet, and then you and the neighbour would talk and sort it out. Maybe there was a reason for the request; for example, a sick child trying to sleep.

“So, my point here is, if the same group of people, all at the same life stage, needed different quiet hours at different times, then it’d stand to reason that, for different groups of people at different life stages, all living in the same neighbourhood, a “one-size-fits-all” noise ordinance isn’t going to work, and following “the letter of the law” may be legal, but it isn’t always polite or neighbourly.”

First, again, it is a want for quiet, not a need for quiet. Second, the difference is that you are making comparisons to things that all happen in one “house.” Nobody is saying that (a) people don’t have different wants for quiet, and (b) that you don’t have a right to enforce your own unique quiet times inside your own control zone (dorm, house). My father went to work at 4am so he went to bed at 8pm every day. Friends and family all knew that 8pm was quiet time at my father’s house and he and his wife expected their quiet time to be observed by visitors to their home (I was an adult and not living there). They did not expect that the neighbors would observe their quiet time. There was no expectation that everyone else’s life had to cease because they had the misfortune of moving in next door to someone who worked weird hours.

“That’s where the neighbours have to talk to one another and communicate their needs.”

Absolutely agree that neighbors should talk to each other an communicate their WANTS and that neighbors should do their best to honor such wants, if they are reasonable and honoring them doesn’t negatively impact their enjoyment of their own life. That doesn’t mean that the neighbors have to acquiesce to unreasonable wants or wants that negatively impact their own lives. It is perfectly acceptable to say “I sympathize, but that is an unreasonable request” or “I feel for you, but that just doesn’t work for me and mine.”

“If the neighbours told the basketball players and their families that the noise bothered them, and the basketball players disregarded this, then that’s on the basketball players.”

No, the neighbors have to deal with the fact that the basketball playing is not going to stop, alter their expectations and find ways to meet their need for quiet in ways that they can control. Playing basketball in a public area at 5pm is a perfectly normal and acceptable, pro-social behavior. If it bothers you, you can certainly ask them to stop. But if they choose not to do so, you have to deal with it because you are the one being unreasonable, not them. Expecting people to not engage in enjoyable (to them), normal, acceptable behaviors to accommodate your schedule is unreasonable.

Now if a neighbor had just died and the entire family was in the house distraught and THAT is why they asked the kids to, on this one occasion, stop playing basketball, I would agree that the kids were being disrespectful. But expecting a sustained “basketball is never acceptable after 5pm because my baby has go to bed” is simply ridiculous and self-absorbed. Even my mother, a complete narcissist, understands this and that is why she lives in the country.

Emily,

Time to take off the rose colored glass and return home from Carebear County.

I have had neighbors complain to me during get togethers about the street hockey games, in different neighborhoods. All agreed that they moved out of the way for cars, but the homeowners were pissed about the noise. And I will tell you the same as I told them.

You don’t like the noise of kids playing outside? Shut the hell up and suck it up or move to an adult only community. Either way I don’t care.

Nowhere in any piece of legislation does it say that you have the right to make others conform to your lifestyle or schedule.

Early dinner? What makes someone’s early dinnertime more important than kids play time?
Putting a young one to sleep? What makes that kid anymore important than the kids playing?

Basically it is people like you that need to move to a child free island somewhere. Because you could justify enough BS reasons, that eventually kids would never be allowed to play outside.

Oh and just for the record. Anyone ever on our road ever makes an issue out of the street hockey, and they will regret it. I will call the authorities be it police or by law enforcement, each and every time that rat even things of violating anything.

Emily,

As for the neighbors telling my kids to not do something like mow the lawn………..the neighbor best hope my kids ignore them. Because when I get home, I guarantee you the neighbor will not be happy to see me.

>>Early dinner? What makes someone’s early dinnertime more important than kids play time?
Putting a young one to sleep? What makes that kid anymore important than the kids playing?<<

Well, for some families, dinner time is family time, and the basketball noise would be disturbing the only time they might get in the day to catch up with each other before the "second shift" of homework, Scouts/music/sports/dance/whatever. I'd say that family time and kids' playtime are both legitimate needs/wants, but you could flip it the other way–what makes the kids' playtime more important than the neighbour families having dinner in peace? Also, the kids' desire to play basketball in the street is, by definition, less important than motorists' need to drive down that street.

As for putting a small child to sleep, that's simple–sleep is a biological need. Basketball is a game, and therefore, unless you're a professional basketball player, like Shaq, it's non-essential. Yes, young children (and older people, and the chronically ill) need more sleep than the rest of the population, but for that young child trying to sleep (and the parent trying to put the child to bed), that basketball noise is probably as annoying as the guys playing rebound Frisbee (throw the Frisbee, bounce it HARD off the floor, other guy catches it, repeat in reverse, keep going ad nauseam), on the floor above me in the university residence at 2 a.m. In both cases, having sleep disturbed has consequences the next day. For me, I remember being less alert in rehearsal, and being reprimanded by my teacher and ensemble-mates over it, and for the small child, they could be tired and cranky, behave badly, and, say, throw a tantrum in the middle of Wal-Mart, disturbing everyone else there. None of that would have happened if the guys had chosen a more appropriate time and place for Frisbee, and if the kids had moved their basketball game to a park. In my case, the university was able to set definitive quiet hours for the residences, because they knew that most people there would be between the ages of 18 and 22, attending classes during the days, and sleeping at night. In a neighbourhood situation, that isn't the case, and sometimes things need to be adjusted according to people's different needs. I think it's better if the neighbourhood residents talk and communicate with each other about this, rather than calling the police right away, but we don't know that the neighbours wanting quiet didn't speak with the basketball players' families first.

@Emily-
“I grew up in a time where, when adults told us kids to be quiet, we obeyed. If I’d had the neighbours complain about me making noise and disturbing them, let alone call the police about it, I would have been punished by my parents; not rewarded with a visit from a celebrity.”

Kids should be taught to respect their elders within reason. I don’t want my children blindly obeying “authority”. They have rights as human beings to play games outdoors with their friends, not act as the subservient lower caste that must obey adults. Respect goes both ways. It should not be forced.

They teach basic civics in 2nd grade. Laws should be reasonable and enforceable. Children should obey laws and be taught to act responsibly and respectfully, however, It is NOT reasonable (especially when we teach indoor voice outdoor voice) to complain to the police about the noise of a basketball game nor is it a violation of any law at 5 pm, quiet family dinners be damned. You know what noise bothers me? Weed whackers. They go on and on and I’d rather hear nails on a chalkboard or One Direction songs on repeat. I would love a law against weed whackers but it’s not reasonable, it’s just my peeve.

People have to get over their peeves and learn to get along or move. Calling police and wasting time and energy on unreasonable people is what brought attention to this story, and Shaq. We WANT and NEED our children to play outside. I hope every kid who watches this video is inspired to shoot some hoops.
Neighbors who called the police on kids are the problem with this story, not playing children not obeying a completely unreasonable neighbor. The police handled this beautifully. They want kids to stay out of trouble, it makes their jobs easier. They respect the kids right to play and these kids will in turn learn to respect the police. It goes both ways.

@Emily,

“that basketball noise is probably as annoying as the guys playing rebound Frisbee (throw the Frisbee, bounce it HARD off the floor, other guy catches it, repeat in reverse, keep going ad nauseam)”

Also, no. Stop comparing your bad experience in college with this situation. A dorm on the fourth floor is not a “reasonable” place to play rebound Frisbee because then it’s like they are on your roof throwing stuff on top of it as hard as they can. These kids are playing /basketball/ on the /street/.

The street is a public place where the noise can be sealed off by a window. Your roof is not a public space, and you can, by all means, call the police because someone, anyone of any age, is up in there. Particularly if they are making noise, which you probably wouldn’t be able to escape from.

“I grew up in a time where, when adults told us kids to be quiet, we obeyed.”

My kid grows up in a house were she needs to obey REASONABLE requests to be quiet, but has no obligation whatsoever to obey curmudgeon neighbors who complain unreasonably. I am more than happy to call my kid out if she is being a jerk, but an adult is not entitled to be a jerk to my kid simply because she is a kid.

P.S., I forgot to mention, the noise from rebound Frisbee was so bad that the girl living in the room below mine, on the first floor, called me to ask me to be quiet, and I told her that the noise was coming from the third floor, not the second. If memory serves, she and I then went up the third floor together to tell the guys to knock it off.

Emily,

” they were on the third floor, where their rooms were, while I was in my own room on the second floor. So, they weren’t trespassing”

I know they weren’t trespassing. I did read your comments. But I’m saying that, in this particular case, you and the girl on the first floor were in the right to ask for quiet, because their floor is /your roof/ . And if they are banging something against your roof, which is a noise that can’t be smothered out, then of course you can complain. Same if you had been in a hotel or an apartment. It’s not the trespassing, it’s that it is a reasonable request to ask someone to stop banging stuff on your roof.

If they had been playing rebound Frisbee outside the dorms then the noise wouldn’t have bothered you nearly as much, and you could have closed a window to cancel it out.

We’re talking about reasonable requests.

“This meant that, if someone asked you to be quiet at any time of day or night, so they could sleep or study, you had to be quiet.”

Sounds like the Obedience Curse placed on Ella Enchanted.

>>”Kids win, neighbours lose.”

The kids are also neighbors.<<

I meant "neighbours" as a short-hand for "the neighbours who wanted to quietly enjoy their own homes and properties," because it'd take too long to type (or read) all that each time. But, I still think that those people's desires to use their own properties, and the street, as intended, should supersede the kids' desire to use the street as a basketball court, and to make sufficient noise so as to disturb the neighbours. Everyone should have the right to do as they wish, until it negatively affects someone else. The kids had options here–they could have played basketball elsewhere (like in a park), or they could have played a different, quieter game in the evenings, that didn't involve the constant "thump, thump, thump, CLANG!!!!" of basketball (and then maybe played basketball at a time when it wouldn't disturb people), but instead, they chose to continue to play basketball in the streets, blocking traffic, making noise, and disturbing the neighbours.

As for closing the windows to block out the noise, well, some families like to eat dinner on their patios. My family had a patio set-up, but we were often disturbed by the noise from various waterfront festivals that went on all day, every weekend, all summer. Our house wasn't even that close to the waterfront; it was a good three or four blocks away, so we're talking LOUD, music with a pulsing bass, and a lot of drums, screaming from people on various thrill rides, and, on major holiday weekends, there were fireworks too. Finally, I wrote a letter to the editor of our local newspaper about it one summer, and it got published in the newspaper, and there was a fair bit of press about it (one guy wrote a letter in response agreeing with me, and the newspaper wrote an article about it that ended up on the front page, in which several other residents were interviewed and agreed with me as well), but the city didn't change anything, and the waterfront festivals continued, all day, of every weekend, of every summer. So, for people living even four blocks away from the waterfront, they have a choice between sitting inside on summer weekends, leaving town, or putting up with constant noise. Even if people (usually tourists) enjoy the waterfront festivals, it's not fair to the residents, and anyway, the waterfront has plenty to offer even when there are no festivals–there's a beach, a playground, a walking path and a bike path, volleyball, mini golf, a marina for boats, a fishing area, a snack bar and an ice cream stand, and a splash pad. But, the festivals continue, and the constant noise along with them. When I was younger, the festivals were only on major holiday weekends, but it got to be more and more each year, so that, if I remember correctly, by the time I was in late high school or early university (and coming home in the summer), there was something on every weekend. So, again, this is the same debate, over whether some people's fun should supersede other people's quiet enjoyment of their own homes and properties.

Emily – I believe you said you don’t have children? Maybe that is part of the issue. Kids simply don’t need absolute quiet to sleep. If they do, usually they’ve been trained to need it, which is the problem. Most of the baby books I remember reading specifically said don’t make your house completely quiet when putting infants and small kids to bed. That comes back to bite you later on. And if for some reason, you have a kid that cannot handle any noise, get those double pane windows, a white noise machine, or a pair of earplugs.

As for quiet time during the dinner hour? So, communication is so difficult that the outside must be quiet in order to have a conversation over dinner? You definitely don’t have kids, because the dinner hour in our house could be and often was noisy – with laughter, political and current event discussions, lessons on manners, etc. I doubt I would have noticed anyone playing basketball outside, and our next door neighbor installed a permanent hoop right next to the street and in between our houses (no sidewalks here).

Unless your house is made of paper, you should be able to handle a pickup basketball game in the street. Close a window, if you must. But don’t expect everyone to conform to your unrealistic expectations.

“The kids had options here—they could have played basketball elsewhere (like in a park),”

Do you know for a fact that they had any ability to get to a park with a basketball hoop?

“(and then maybe played basketball at a time when it wouldn’t disturb people),”

So now kids have to poll their neighbors to see when they can play certain sports? How about music? Do we have to ask when we can play instruments? Laugh? And what if everyone in the neighborhood can’t agree on a time for every activity that the kids want to play (because I guarantee that that will happen)? Do they simply not get to ever engage in that activity? And do we have to all agree on times when other activities need to be done (lawn mowing, weed whacking, hammering, drilling, tree cutting, home improvements)? What if we are not available to mow our lawns at the designated time? Will the collective mow our lawn for us free of charge? What if nobody can ever agree on a time for us to mend our roof? Do we just let it fall in?

Basically, you want to turn neighborhoods into communes. That is not going to happen. If we all wanted to live in communes, there would be a helluva lot more of them around. Instead, we all buy our houses individually without having the opportunity to interview our neighbors as to their sleeping schedules, eating schedules and plans to procreate. Even if we did such interviews, life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans (John Lennon). Jobs change. Babies surprise us. People become seriously ill. Time passes and our families age and our needs change. Expecting everyone else to modify their life because yours has changed is simply ridiculous.

Emily,

Where are you planning on living your life of silence? Because it won’t even happen in the country. Hell the coyotes here are louder in the middle of the night than kids playing basketball in the city streets.

Let me educate you. Here in Ontario excessive noise is covered off by Bylaw Enforcement as it is not an actual crime. And the best that even those officers can legally do is ask you to tone it down. The last time one threatened to ticket friends of ours, he informed them that he was looking forward to seeing them in court. Without a certified sound technician on site to measure the sound levels, the ticket is invalid.

Also, word of advice. Don’t move here. Start complaining like you are, and noise will be the least of your problems.

Emily,

“When I screamed (as I did, often), we both got in trouble. After all, regardless of what he was doing, I didn’t have the right to scream, because it would disturb the neighbours.”

Wow. No, my good woman. You had every right to scream, particularly in that situation, and it was only your brother that should have gotten in trouble. If anybody touches my kid that way and he screams because of it, he most definitely is not getting in trouble, the other person is.

But yes, now I definitely know that it was your own childhood that made this… warped-up mentality you have about noise in the street.

Warren, I live in Ontario too, and I have nothing against kids playing outside, but in that situation, on that street, it bothered the neighbours. I only think the kids were in the wrong if the neighbours approached them and were ignored, or treated rudely, (or if the kids promised to be quiet and didn’t), before calling the police. I probably wouldn’t have called the police over basketball noise, but in this particular situation, on this particular street, it was a problem. As for noise being impossible to quantify without a decibel-measuring device, you’re right. That’s why I think it’s even more important to be considerate, because most people don’t have such devices in their homes, so it’s all subjective; for example, “I could hear the noise over my TV/stereo/piano/family dinner conversation/blender/whatever.” So, the goal here isn’t to be under some arbitrary decibel count, between some arbitrary hours, but to simply try to avoid making sufficiently loud noises to disturb others. The kids didn’t think the basketball was that loud, and they didn’t think 5 p.m. was an inappropriate time to be playing basketball, but the neighbours told them that it was bothering them, so in that case, the kids needed to be quiet, or move their games of basketball elsewhere. It’s not like the neighbours were telling the kids what they could and couldn’t do on their own property; they were asking them to stop making noise adjacent to theirs. Again, they were out of line if they called the police without speaking to the kids and their families first, but we don’t know that they didn’t. So, if they went for the “nuclear option” right away, I’m siding with the basketball players, but if they voiced their concerns to no effect, and then called the police, then I’m closer to the neighbours’ side on this.

Emily,

You are completely unrealistic, and somewhat off your rocker.

First you are assuming the idiots in the neighborhood approached the kids before calling the cops. I can pretty much guarantee you they didn’t. Those idiots that called the cops would be too afraid to be known as the ones that called, and complaining to the kids first would tell them who called.

Secondly, by your logic, then everyone in their neighborhoods need to be inside, quiet and calm as to not offend anyone.

Third, 5pm is still within business hours, so if you are bothered by noise at that time, then you have a problem that you need to seek help for.

Last, even if the idiots talked to the kids first, the kids are under no obligation to follow their requests. Sucks to be the idiot neighbor. There are certain times when quiet is expected by most. 5 pm is not one of those times. Hell Emily I have worked 36 hours straight came home and went to bed. Not only did I not expect my community to stop what they were doing for me, I also didn’t expect anyone in my house to do it either. My schedule, my needs, my responsibility.

Also, let’s say someone complains to my kids at 5pm about street hockey. My kids would come to me, and I would go to the neighbors. They would be politely told to back off. Should it continue, then they would be told not politely where to go. You know I have no problem getting up in anyone’s face. And it has yet to fail me.

@Donna–One thing I’m surprised that nobody has brought up is, while the neighbours might have complained at 5 p.m. on that particular day, that doesn’t tell us when the basketball games started or ended. Had the kids been playing for hours already, and the neighbours were getting fed up? Did the games routinely go late into the evenings? Saying that the neighbours complained that the kids were playing basketball at 5 p.m. could mean that the neighbours were complaining about the kids playing basketball at 5 p.m., or it could mean that, at 5 p.m., the neighbours complained about prolonged, frequent, or (legitimately) excessively late games of basketball that disturbed their family life. It’s easy to paint the neighbours as the villains here, and the kids as completely blameless, but I doubt that that’s how it actually was. The police and Shaq joining the kids in their basketball game might have been good publicity, but it wasn’t a long-term solution, and siding with the kids completely, really wasn’t fair to the neighbours.

No, Donna, playing basketball in a driveway only creates a noise pollution problem, but playing in the street adds the traffic obstruction problem. Ideally, the kids should have gone to a park or something (where they would have been more likely to be able to have a proper game anyway, because basketball courts have nets at both ends), but making loud, repetitive noise, and blocking the street, and expecting the neighbours to be okay with this happening every day, is a bit much. The neighbours would have had less grounds to complain if the basketball games had taken place in a driveway, but I think the combination of the noise, the frequency, and the traffic obstruction, were probably what sparked their complaints, even if the overall complaint was about the noise.

Emily,
Even if it is all day, everyday, doesn’t matter. I is commonly accepted everywhere, except in your little fantasy world, that daylight hours will have noise.

You are stretching and making assumptions about so much in effort to defend your defenseless position. Get off the go to a park crap. First there may not be a park, the park may not be available, and why should these kids have to vacate THEIR neighborhood, because of some uptight idiots.

Since I first came here you have always had this fantasy of being able to make everybody happy all the time. This is not so. In the real world it does not and will never work that way.

My favorite saying is, “I only have the ability to make one person happy per day and today ain’t your day.”

Again, I only think the neighbours’ actions had merit if they’d addressed their concerns about noise with the kids and their families before calling the police. I don’t know whether or not they did, so I’m only on their side if they tried to resolve things internally before going up the chain of command. If they didn’t, they were in the wrong.

Warren, I’m not against the kids; I’m just not going to automatically side with the kids. Yes, I did watch the video (both videos, actually), but there’s probably more to the story that can be shown in a brief video clip. Reporters like to spin the news to tell the story they want to tell, so in this case, in this story, the neighbours were the villains, while the kids got rewarded with a basketball game with the entire police force plus Shaquille O’Neal. Everyone here is quick to point out that the news is biased when it’s about a safety rule or a law that’s inconvenient for free-range kids and families, but nobody really mentioned it when faced with a story about free-range play that disturbed other people in the neighbourhood. I’m all in favour of the Free-Range movement, but you have to take the good with the bad. Yes, kids should be free to play and explore, but they should also be held responsible for their actions when they have a negative impact on others. In this case, the basketball noise disturbed the neighbours, and the police basically told the kids that they could ride roughshod over the neighbours’ concerns. Bringing Shaq to play basketball with them and the kids might have been a good P.R. move for the kids, but the police are supposed to serve the entire community, not just a gaggle of kids playing basketball. This probably made the neighbours even more upset, and they probably got even angrier with the kids in the days that followed. Like I said, when my brother and I were kids, we weren’t allowed to play loudly enough to disturb the neighbours, and if we’d been involved with the group of kids playing basketball in this story, our parents would have given us a natural consequence, such as banning outside play in the evenings for a specified or unspecified amount of time (since we couldn’t be trusted not to make noise), and having to write apology letters to the neighbours. After all, free-range doesn’t (and shouldn’t) mean “free from consequences.”

“NOBODY COMPLAINED ABOUT TRAFFIC BEING OBSTRUCTED(!!!…)

Ever?

>>Had they been playing a boom box loud enough to rattle windows, we’d want the noise ordinance enforced.<<

Well, like Warren said, and I agreed with, most people don't have any substantive way to measure noise. So, one person's "loud enough to rattle windows" is another person's preferred listening volume. In this case, no, the kids weren't playing a boom box loudly enough to rattle windows, but they were playing basketball loudly enough to bother their neighbours. So, regardless of who's right or wrong, that's a problem, because the kids' actions had negative consequences for others. I don't think that that's such a terrible lesson to teach kids; that the choices they make can affect others besides themselves. In fact, we talk a lot about "community" here, and I think that that's a big part of it. Kids who aren't brought up with that concept grow up acting like they live in a vacuum, and then wonder why the "community" is upset with them when they play their music too loudly, or slam Frisbees on the floor at two a.m., or strew take-out food scraps in the stairwell so it goes rancid and makes a smell, or smash beer bottles all over the street, or don't follow through on commitments they made to others. "Community" isn't always just a happy picture of a group of kids playing basketball with the police force; it's people taking responsibility when others are counting on them to be quiet, keep common areas clean, look out for their safety, play their role in a group situation, et cetera.

” the basketball noise disturbed the neighbours,”

First, you insist that they were impeding traffic although their wasn’t any reports of that. Now you are insisting that multiple neighbors were disturbed. It very easily could have been a single curmudgeon old lady sitting in her house who complained and none of the other neighbors are bothered in the least. Everyone has to change their behavior for one unreasonable resident?

Yes, I am guilty of assuming that the Gainesville Police Department doesn’t hire police officers who are so feeble-minded as to get a call for a traffic obstruction, forget why they are going to the location while en route and make up a completely different reason to cover it up. It is the home of the Florida Gators so my local brethren will likely say that I am giving them too much credit, but I still think it is a fairly safe assumption.

>As for closing the windows to block out the noise, well, some families like to eat dinner on their patios.

Yes, and some kids like to play basketball at 5 o’clock. This is an example of a conflict that needs to be resolved by compromise, not by granting one party the authority to rule the other by virtue of age.

As for teaching kids to obey adults – what? I’d think it would be far better to teach kids (who are old enough to understand, at any rate) how to live in a community. When someone makes a request, if it is reasonable, you should accommodate it. If it is unreasonable, you should explain why you think that and open a respectful dialogue, not check birth certificates to decide the matter.

Also, your comments annoy me, but I am responding to them with arguments. If you persist in your belief, I’m not going to call the police to try to force you to change your mind – yet. Do you see how it’s not actually respectful dialogue and discussion if it actually works out to “either you do as I say or I’m going to call the police over this not-crime-thing?”

As to the idea that, well, it’s not a crime, but the police should still stop them from playing – in polite societies, we only send armed agents of the state to stop things that are actually crimes.

“So, one person’s “loud enough to rattle windows” is another person’s preferred listening volume.”

When my children were babies, our retired neighbor used to rattle our windows when he revved the engine of his classic car in his driveway. As I put him down for his nap, he used to say “vroom vroom”. He actually liked the noise, it soothed them. Those cars make a lot of noise. They are also fascinating to young toddlers who love cars. Had I approached the situation by calling the police with a noise complaint because of the excessive noise level, I probably would not have a very neighborly relationship with this retired Vietnam vet. He looks out for my kids and would never call the police on them. He relies on them now that he and his wife are in poor health.
We also now have a classic car of our own.
Good neighbors learn to compromise and not call the police. Period.

What about these noise disturbances?

Screaming toddlers in a sprinkler on the front lawn.
Kids yelling “You want to buy some LEMONADE?” to every passing car at a lemonade stand.
Classic cars or motorcycles revving their engines.
Packs of electric scooter-riding tweens, sounding like a swarm of gigantic mosquitoes

Will you send the toddler inside for laughing too loud and enjoying a cool sprinkler because a neighbor complained? The ensuing tantrum will cause more noise. I guarantee it. Because even a toddler realizes an unreasonable request.
Children make noise. It’s natural and healthy. It’s very clear that you don’t have children because the golden rule of kids is when they get suspiciously quiet, they are usually getting in trouble. That’s why the sound of kids playing is a GOOD and healthy noise. Most reasonable adults know this.

Emily,

Seriously, are you off your meds or have they changed your meds recently? Listen to yourself.

Yes, we understand that your parents were oppressive and basically aholes when it came to noise. But you carrying on with their ways is even worse, because you should know it is wrong.

And I agree with Donna, this has all the markers of one old person, that just basically hates kids, most likely sees all black teens as gangbangers, and called the cops. I would even bet money that it wasn’t even done for noise, blocking traffic or any reason at all, other that a hateful old person being a jerk. I would believe that scenario over the kids being the problem.

Now Emily, go back to your doctor and have them re-re-adjust your meds.

Emily,
Okay that settles it. You need help.

Hearing aids? Protest? You have officially gone off the deep end, around the bend, bonkers or however you want to say it.

As for making it a peaceful neighborhood…………..too damn bad. I will not give in to a cranky old coot or unreasonable people just to keep the peace. No, I will fight them tooth and nail, and physically should it come.

There is a time to be nice, and there is a time to not be nice.

P.S it’s probably already been said, but please DON’T move to the countryside if you don’t like noise. The county I grew up in has been having problems with city types moving out to small blocks to enjoy the country lifestyle, and then moaning because the farmers around them are milking at 5am, or the pig farm is smelly, or the tractors are too loud, yada yada yada. Newsflash..farms are primarily businesses like any other, animals, especially cows, can be noisy, trucks etc definitely are. If you want a quiet environment, try the Carmelites…

@Hineata, we’re not talking a regular level of loud music here; it’s rock-concert level volume, with people screaming on thrill rides as well, and this goes on from about mid-morning until 10 or 11 at night. Also, remember, it’s on the waterfront, and sound carries across the water. Other residents in the area have complained about the noise as well, so it wasn’t just my family. We’d still eat dinner on the patio; it was just annoying.

@Warren, I think what the kids and the police force and Shaq were doing was essentially a protest, because it fits the formula–“You don’t like us doing X Activity in Y Place, but we feel we have a right to do X Activity in Y Place, so we’re staging an X-in.” In this case, it was basketball. We don’t know if it was one neighbour who complained, or several, we don’t know if there are extenuating circumstances at play (older people, young family with a colicky baby, someone with a serious illness needing more sleep than most, et cetera), but knowing that information would give us a better idea of how reasonable or unreasonable each party was being. As it is, none of us know, because we’re all outside the situation. However, one thing I do know is, the basketball game with the police force and Shaq (along with most of the neighbourhood kids) was more noisy than the original noise the neighbours were complaining about, thereby escalating the situation. So, it stands to reason that the neighbours’ anger would escalate in the days following the game with the police force and Shaq, and further divide the neighbourhood. You say you don’t care about keeping the peace on that street, but that’s awfully easy to say when you don’t live there. If the neighbours called the police as a first resort, that’s wrong and cowardly (and it cuts off any opportunity for them and the basketball players to talk and find a solution), but if they asked the kids to stop making noise and they didn’t, then they probably see the big basketball game as “retaliation,” and from the police at that, who are supposed to serve the entire community.

Sick children generally don’t need quiet to fall asleep either. And as Warren rightfully points out, they’re a family issue, not a neighbourhood issue. Gee, if the neighbours had been quiet during all of El Sicko’s ongoing episodes, we’d think we were living in a mausoleum…

This has gotten out of control somewhat, but I will jump in again, and I am going to take Emily‘s side just a little bit mind you. I do not mean with respect to this particular situation, because with respect to that I disagree, but in overall terms otherwise.

With respect to this situation, I side with the children playing basketball and the police’s response to it. Kids are going to be kids, and they should be able to have a childhood. To a certain degree, if something bothers you, but in enforcing your standards lots of other people have to give up their lifestyle, that’s wrong. You are just going to have to deal with it.

Now, that being said, I will say that many times people who have issues with noise are told “get over it” or such, and a lot of times I think that’s wrong too. I’ve had struggles in that area at times, and I absolutely think that there are times (again not in this situation) where instead of such a person being told “get over it” I think some respect should be shown. I wasn’t, and I think it was wrong that such was the case.

In my case, I really hate the noise of barking dogs. Now, if someone has a dog or two and it makes just occasional noise every now and then, so be it, that’s on me to learn to deal with. However, if someone has a Yorkie type of dog that yaps its stupid head off periodically throughout the day at a bunch of nothing, owing typically to it being so territorial that it thinks the entire block is its “territory,” I think the owner of such a dog has a moral obligation, upon learning that the noise is bothering someone, to handle the issue in a considerate way. It may mean keeping the dog inside, installing an anti-bark collar, hiring a trainer, or flat-out getting rid of the dog and getting another dog with a quieter disposition. You wouldn’t dare tell a parent “get another child,” but I’d have no problem telling someone to get another dog (or cat, or whatever) which was being a nuisance.

Then there are things like noisy car engines. That many municipalities have banned cars with noisy mufflers, this speaks to how aggravating this can be. I’m sorry, but how much sense does it make to make your car deliberately noisy? I’m sorry, but that’s stupid to me. I fully agree with city ordinances which deal with that sort of thing. And come on, what’s with “warming up” the engine on cold days and revving it 82 times as you do so? It’s not necessary to warm up a car that way. If it were, then OK, but it’s not, and it’s aggravatingly noisy.

Loud stereos, revving engines, persistently barking dogs, sawing wood at 3 a.m.–there are noises which understandably are a bother to people, and I think when such is the case it should be dealt with vs ignored and people told “get over it.”

Someone mentioned “if you don’t like noise don’t move to the country.” Well that’s funny, when I lived in the city and complained about people’s noisy dogs I was often-times told “if you hate noise, move to the country where people aren’t so close together.” Now that I’m in the country I’ve heard some say “in the country you’re going to hear guns going off, animal noises etc, if that bothers you then move to the city.” Well gee whiz, where CAN you move if noise is distressing to you? Mars? Jupiter? Saturn? At times I think it’s actually fair to ask “do people HAVE to be so freaking noisy with EVERYTHING?”

In the country, I have the freedom to pop firecrackers all I want. No laws forbid this, and I am glad of this. However, what if I had someone close by who, owing to PTSD, couldn’t handle all the popping? Do I continue to pop firecrackers etc all I please because, well, “that’s how we do things out here in the country” and “there’s no law against it?” Or do I, instead, think of where the person with PTSD is coming from and see if maybe I can pop such firecrackers during times when I know he’s not home? I mean, if I had PTSD, I’d hate to have to purchase 500 acres or such to get away from gunshot and firecracker noise.

My point is this. Some noise can’t be helped. Some noise is the product of such normal and healthy activities that to ban the activity towards the goal of noise control would be unfortunate. I definitely feel that is the case here, for sure. To tell kids they can’t play basketball because (probably) one person can’t handle a little “thump, thump, thump,” I’m sorry but you don’t do that. I also agree that it would be silly to, say, move immediately next to a construction firm and then complain about the industrial noise.

However, at the same time, I do think sometimes we fail to take noise pollution seriously enough. It is a legitimate bother, and the presence of noise ordinances dealing with things such as barking dogs or sawing wood at 3 in the morning speak to that. If it can be helped, I think sometimes some changes are good vs just telling someone “get over it.”

Emily,

The solution to the idiot neighbors going ahead, is to charge them with making nuisance calls to the police. End of story.

But for the sake of gits and shiggles lets go with Emily’s idea. We meet with all the neighbors to see what’s what.

We start with for the sake of argument, kids get home from school around 3 pm.
The lady next door puts her infant down for an hour nap from 3-4 pm.
The guy across the street works nights and sleeps until 5 pm.
The elderly couple next to him eats an early dinner at 5 pm.
Kids eat dinner at home at 6 pm.
Two other families with small children put their kids to bed at 7 pm.
Older vet. with hearing loss has powerful hearing aid.

Results.
Kids get to play basketball from 11 am to 12 pm every second Sunday when the hearing loss vet is in group therapy. And basketball is not allowed any other time.

Or we could join the real world, and deal with our own crap.

LRH,

Why does my ’67 GTO have to be so loud? Because that was the way it was built.
Why does my buddy’s Harleys have to be so loud? Because they are Harleys.

When we lived in town we used to go to show and shines on weekends with the GTO. Then a bunch would come back to our place for BBQ. Middle of the day on a Saturday. All the cars were loud and powerful, with anywhere from 10 to 30 parked up and down the road. One old man always complained. But his wife was always out looking at the cars, talking to the owners, and enjoying the BBQ. Telling us don’t mind him, if he isn’t complaining he isn’t happy.

You all talk about basically give and take. Well you have it all backward. The give and take is simple. I have the right to make noise, you have the right to make noise, and we both have the responsibility to tolerate each other. That means you shut up when I am making noise, and when you are making noise I do the same thing.

Even now out in the country. I don’t get going about the farm equipment you hear all the time. Heck we had a guy somewhere that played the bagpipes quite often. My closest neighbor and I wanted to hunt him or her down, just to find out who it was. We didn’t care about the music, we were just extremely curious as to who it was. We called him the Phantom Piper.

Hunting season is always fun. From dawn to dusk gunshots ring out. Oh well, that is life. Midnight to 3 am, the coyotes are vocal beyond vocal. Can always tell when they got a sheep. And they drive all the dogs nuts, in all the homes. Oh well that’s life.

Snowmobiles and ATV’s all hours of the day and night all year long. Oh well that’s life.

Lawnmowers, snowblowers and plows all year long. Oh well that’s life.

People need to get over themselves. They are not that important that any of us have to adjust or change our lifestyle for. Don’t like what I do, how I do it, when I do it, you have the right to complain to me all you want. I am more than willing to listen to your complaints. If I don’t listen to them, how can I laugh at you later for thinking I give a damn.

As for bringing in Shaq, it is clear from Shaq’s comments that this is the ‘hood. If a visit from Shaq motivated even one of those boys he played basketball with to stay in school and stay away from crime and make something better of their life than that from which they came, then angering a curmudgeon neighbor who calls police for stupid reasons is well worth it.

And it was stellar police work. Those kids, their parents and their neighbors are never going to forget that Officer White not only played baseball with them, but also brought Shaq to play with them. Now Officer White and the other officers who played have some friends in the ‘hood. The police can always use friends in the ‘hood.

And, you really need to dial back your upper middle class mentality, Emily. It is far more likely that somebody hung over from a bender or a mentally ill person off their meds called the police than a sweet family sitting down to an early dinner that requires quiet for their stimulating conversation of world events before they put their young children to an early bed. The latter is possible, but the former far more likely.

Emily,
What planet are you coming from? Bringing back a team of his own, including one of the most recognizable players from the NBA, to play with these kids, did exactly what Donna just laid out.

And yes it did put an end to the conflict. Because now the moron that called the police in the first place has been sent a clear message. These kids are doing nothing wrong, this is not a police issue, and shut the hell up, suck it up and mind your own business.

I would not be surprised at all should this idiot keep calling the police that the cops will visit them and order them to stop abusing emergency services.

Now if this was our area, we the other home owners would find out who the busy buddy moron is and let them know to back off.

Seriously, Emily, go hang out in the ‘hood some day.

“The neighbors shouldn’t have gone to the police at all. It is not the police department’s job to moderate your neighborhood noise disputes”

Well, yes it is.
It’s their job to tell the folks who are being too loud to quiet down, and it’s their job to tell the complainers about not-too-loud people that the not-too-loud people are not too loud.

Warren It really is of no usage responding, so why am I doing so I don’t know, but anyway.

As much as I agree with a lot of what you say in these topics, I don’t agree with you here. Again, I do NOT agree with Emily with respect to this particular incident and in fact I agree with you with respect to it. Even so, I am also saying that people should have compassion for each other even if it’s not legally required. That goes for noise.

I don’t think I should have to “tolerate” certain noises if they are unnecessary and if the person can easily tweak a couple of things to handle it more responsibly. If a noise bothers a person, it bothers them. Period. A person can no more “tune out” certain noises if it bothers them anymore than a person can “tune out” having their head held under water. Rather than telling someone “that’s life” or “it sucks to be you,” a far more mature and appropriate response is one where the respective parties can find common ground and work together, not tell someone to go shove it up their exhaust pipe.

As I said, you take me. I live in the country. One thing which is common in the country is firecrackers. I can pop firecrackers whenever I feel like it, and I ENJOY it. (How it is that I find that noise enjoyable when the other noises bothers me, I don’t know, but it is what it is.) I very much like it that I don’t have someone come whining on my door about it, I am SO glad of that. Moreover, legally, I’m in the clear. HOWEVER, this is the thing. If I had someone living close by bothered by this, especially someone such as a disabled veteran suffering from PTSD, I’d not tell him “sucks to be you” or “that’s life.” I’d work with him. I’d see if maybe there are certain periods of time he’s consistently away from home and how maybe I can enjoy my firecrackers on those occasions.

To me, THAT is what you do, even though the law doesn’t require it. You do it because there’s such a thing as being a decent human being. To do otherwise is to invite a lot of trouble. When I read, for instance, about someone going nuts and shooting their neighbor’s dog and sometimes even the humans, I keep track of the story and it seems that 95% of the time what happened was that the dogs had barked a lot and the neighbor had nicely asked for a compromise only to have the door slammed on their face. They will complain to the police and even with noise ordinances on the books the police shrug it off and say “dogs bark, that’s what they do.” (Wrong–properly trained dogs don’t bark all day like that.)

Whenever I read such articles, invariably I read comments such as “what he did was wrong but so was the dog owner, that sort of noise will drive a person to do things they’d not do otherwise.” Such is my feeling on the matter exactly. I even tend to think that the owner of the dog had it coming to them by being that way and i even see it as a form of justice to a certain extent, even though I certainly don’t think I’d EVER do such a thing. It is not that big of a deal to keep a dog inside, especially a small Yorkie, and if the dog owner hates the hassle (cleaning up etc) well tough, it’s their dog and their responsibility. They’re being selfish and immoral to keep on letting their noise pollution trespass onto someone else’s property who did not specifically INVITE that noise over.

Again, I understand the other side too, being reasonable and not making a fuss out of nothing. Such was the case here, I fully agree with you on that. I’m just saying that does not mean compassion is unnecessary in the overall sense either.

Emily,
What is your problem? Do you really think that not selling a fund raiser to one ahole neighbor is going to bother the kids or bankrupt the school? Give your head a shake. If the idiot that called starts harassing the players, he or she will end up on the wrong side of the law.

You really don’t think things through do you? A bunch of happy kids, which in turn makes for a better family life, for all kid’s families as compared to one cranky old ahole? I do not see any downside to this at all. If this complainer wants to hold a grudge, become vengeful………go for it. He or she will only be ruining their life.

” Suppose some of the older basketball kids want to have an open house when they graduate from high school? Well, besides the fear of the Team Quiet neighbours getting upset about the noise from that, you can’t have an open house if you exclude half the street, but they probably wouldn’t want to include the Team Quiet neighbours who called the police on them, and continue to harbour a grudge, which might even still be in effect years later, and have an adverse effect on the younger kids on Team Basketball, and their younger siblings even later on. Oh, and there are probably people living on the street who previously had friends on both Team Quiet and Team Basketball, and now feel they have to choose one side or the other.”

Holy Crap on a Cracker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When and where did you get the idea that half the neighbors are against the kids?
Go have a few stiff drinks and calm the heck down. This is real life not some freaking soap opera or whatever shows you watch. You really need to get some help and fast. You’re losing it. Where the hell did you grow up that this issue will become a war between people? Wow, you are are about 51 cards short of a full deck.

Emily,

” It’s easy for us to say “the neighbours on Team Quiet can just suck it up” when we’re observing this over the Internet, because they aren’t our neighbours, and they might not, in fact, suck it up—if they were angry enough to call the police in the first place, I think the police joining in the basketball game would make them more angry afterwards…..at which point the police would have moved on to other cases, and Shaq could be off shooting a sneaker commercial or a PSA somewhere. For them, it’s over, but for the residents of the neighbourhood, it isn’t.”

It is easy to say, because if this was my neighborhood, I would make sure this was the end of it. There would be no tension, no war, no harassing the players. The idiot that called would be made to understand that he or she was wrong. If they don’t like it, they have two choices, move or suck it up. And if that meant I had to visit them daily to remind them, then that is what I would do. I know you are scared to death of confrontation, I am not, and never have been.

The caller was wrong and you are wrong. That is all there is to it.

Emily,

This is not some fantasy realm where everyone is happy about everything all the time.

I don’t care if the Shaq game pissed off the caller. I don’t care if the caller wants to sulk, cry, throw a tantrum, drink excessively, smoke a joint or stare out the window with hate. His or her feelings are 100% irrelevant, and of absolutely no concern of mine. He or she could sit there in their little home and dream about ways of killing me. I really don’t care. And I guarantee you the kids don’t care, nor does anyone else on the street care.

It is time for Emily to join reality. Not every situation has a win win outcome. As a matter of fact most don’t. That is life, and the sooner you understand that the better your life will be. If you are going to life your life trying to make everybody happy, you are in for a long hard disappointing life. Because what you are trying to achieve is impossible.

James,

“Most people, however, are just not that big of a dick”

I didn’t know you were involved with this, but good for you. Admitting you have a problem is the first step in recovery.

LRH,

It is not about balance, it is about expectations. I and pretty much everyone I know does not expect the world to be quiet during daylight hours. Not in the slightest. These same people also don’t fret about noise coming from a social gathering late into the night, on weekends.

If one of my neighbors has a party going on, and it runs late into the night, and even on into the morning, I don’t give a rat’s rear. Why? Because I know that very same neighbor will not give a rat’s rear when we do the same thing. So maybe there is a balance.

My hours of work are better now, but there are times when I am up for 36 hrs or so straight and need sleep badly. I still don’t give a damn about noise. It is nobody else’s problem that I need sleep. So I take the needed steps to try and muffle exterior noises.

Some of my recreational activities make noise, a lot of noise. Oh well, too bad so sad for those that don’t like it. Though nobody has ever said anything. Because I give those the same respect I get. They can do and enjoy whatever they want. Like my GTO. She is one loud beast, even more so when I am working on it, because it is not going anywhere. Works like a signal, and usually means one or more neighbors come over for a beer. And the kids in the area love to help me work on her.

Do I plow and snowblow at 3 am? Yep sometimes, because I know I won’t be home for many hours. And never had a problem with the neighbors, because they understand. Just like I understand my one neighbor that mows his acreage very early on Sunday. Because they go to church and he then hits the golf course. Woke me up the first time he did it, but never after that, because I expected it to be there.

You and Emily must have lived very sheltered lives. Noise pollution is only as bad as you allow it to affect you. I have lived beside firehouses, under flight paths and within spitting distance of Ontario’s busiest highway. Noise is there. Deal with it.

James,
How would you know they say that when you wake them up?

James, most people would do as you described, and just grumble a bit over being woken up before rolling over and going back to sleep, but I really don’t think those actions would be in line with people who’ve already called the police over basketball noise. And, Warren, I think it’s fortunate that you, as a noisy person, just happen to live next to another noisy person, and the two of you have similar attitudes about noise versus quiet. I think part of the reason why my parents were so big on quiet, is because I grew up with older adults living on either side of our house, and we also lived across the street from a retirement home/nursing home (it had different levels of care in one facility). So, in this case, it was easier for my parents to teach me and my brother to be quiet, than for two sets of neighbours plus an entire building of senior citizens, to have to put up with tons of kid noise, and dog noise as well (I only remember about three years of my entire childhood when we didn’t have a dog). We still played basketball, built things out of scrap lumber, ran around and played imagination games, rode bikes, and had basically normal childhoods. However, when an adult told us to stop dribbling/hammering/whatever, we stopped, because it was impressed upon us early that a lot of older adults, especially those living in nursing homes, are medically fragile, and making noise could actually be bad for their health. So, my parents weren’t mean people; they were just trying to teach my brother and me to have compassion for the elderly and sick. I don’t know why I didn’t mention this before, except that I was so used to living like that, that I never really gave it a second thought, and then I remembered.

“Deal with it.”

Some people–not me, because I do practice that much restraint–will “deal with it” in a way that may involve actions that make the headlines, and frankly, if the noise makers had a “sucks to be you” attitude, then I say “good.” The noise makers had it coming to them. You have NO moral right to inflict unpleasant noise onto other people in that apathetic kind of way.

If everyone in your neighborhood is truly cool with your actions, fine. In fact, I think that’s the best set-up, where liked minded individuals are grouped together that way vs having too much diversity and conflicting interests thrown into the mix. HOWEVER, if you do find yourself in mixed company with significant numbers of other persons who don’t take kindly to noise pollution, you’d find out very quickly “deal with it” and “sucks to be you” will cause you, not the one complaining, an awful lot of trouble. You can gloat all you want “I’m not afraid of confrontation” etc etc, but when the manager of the apartment building tells you that the next time they get a complaint you’ll be served with an eviction notice, or the city police give you a ticket and then another and then after awhile it becomes a court type sort of thing and the fines are higher, you’ll find out real quick-like who wears the pants around there.

The operative word is “pollution.” When something is deemed to be “pollution,” right away the premise and understanding is that the particular “pollution” needs to be gotten rid of, not tolerated. No one has any interest living around a jerk who doesn’t care how his or her actions affect other people.

So yes, maybe Emily and I live in our “own little world.” So do you. Lucky us that we are that fortunate vs living in a “mixed company” type of situation.

“James, most people would do as you described, and just grumble a bit over being woken up before rolling over and going back to sleep, but I really don’t think those actions would be in line with people who’ve already called the police over basketball noise”

Yeah, and some people would say “dammmit, that’s the last straw”, follow the kids home, and burn down their houses. And some people might say “dammit, you called the cops on my kids, I’m coming over there right now, knocking on the door, and shooting whoever opens it.”
But you can’t plan your life around making that sort of person happy. It can’t be done, for one thing.
Yes, if you get two such people on opposite sides of something, you can get the sort of escalating feud that makes news. But mostly you won’t.

James, you’re right; you probably can’t make a legitimately irrational person unhappy (if that’s what’s going on here), but from what you described, I’d settle for not making them any more angry than they already are.

This made my day! That cop rocks.

I find it endlessly frustrating that people use the police as a first resort for everything (I’m sure this frustrates them too).

The police are for preventing and punishing real crime.

LRH and Emily,

I suppose you two are supporting the ban on trains blowing their horns after a certain hour because of the noise?
They are trying to do this again. Just got asked today to sign a petition. The lady was not to happy when I told her, “Then you shouldn’t have moved near the damn tracks.”

Warren I do think train horn blowing should be addressed, but not in that respect. The main thing is, at least around here, they think they have to blow it 32 times at the exact same spot. I tend to think “I think they heard you the first 3-4 times.” Otherwise, my tendency is to think “you move near train tracks, you’re going to hear some horn blowing.” (Just let it SOME horn blowing.) Commerce isn’t obligated to stop, after all, nor should people possibly die from an avoidable collision. Again, just don’t blow it 100 dozen times, that’s all.

I think there are some commenters here who have forgotten whose blog they are reading.

In my city, kids can’t just pack up their basketball game and take it the YMCA. The parents have to pay a membership fee (sliding scale or not, it’s still an expense I personally can’t afford) and even with membership paid, kids can’t be left “unsupervised” (parents must be in the gym facility somewhere.)

And to suggest they go to the park? Good lord, how many blog entries just from the last year were related to someone sending their kids to the park unsupervised and then getting arrested for it? Older teens may not have access to a public park. The closest one to my house is a 10-minute drive. The public schools near me have basketball goals but they’ll kick people off of them on the weekends and after school. (Insurance risk, supposedly.)

On my block, I’ve seen all varieties of ages of kids playing together, from middle-school to high-school. We have several families who have those outdoor basketball goal things in the street and the spontaneous games have never been a problem, noise-wise or space-wise. Sometimes even the parents play.

What grates on my nerves is the ear-piercing screams and laughter of the 8-year-old girls riding their bikes or chasing each other through their yards, but I’m not going to complain about it because IT’S NORMAL FOR CHILDREN TO PLAY.

5:00 in the evening is hardly the wee hours of the morning, and if you work seconds or thirds (as I did once) you quickly learn to sleep with ear plugs and with room darkeners over the windows. As a citizen, as a neighbor, as a resident of a community, you don’t demand that everyone else change their lives to adapt to your desires. I’m not saying “get over it” but I am saying, “be reasonable.”

Good lord, we have communities right now that live in fear of the police, and where parents tell their children never call the police because they won’t look out for you and will just as soon shoot you as ask you a question. What the police did here is WONDERFUL because the kids weren’t breaking any laws, the police didn’t pull the authority card on them and threaten them — they used the conflict as an opportunity to actually build community, to put these kids’ trust back in the police. We need to keep in mind the kids were doing NOTHING wrong. Inconveniencing someone is not against the law.

As far as “respecting one’s elders,” I’m 45 and I will call shenanigans on that one. Honest truth: I saw a couple in a restaurant complain to the manager because a kid two tables away from them was chewing with his mouth open. Not screaming in the restaurant; not throwing food, not running through the tables. Chewing with his mouth open. And they wanted the manager to throw the family out.

Respect is earned. You don’t just “deserve” it by managing to live through your 20s.

“Respect is earned. You don’t just “deserve” it by managing to live through your 20s.”

Damn right. Few things annoy me more than the “adults” who go through life with the attitude “I’m not a kid anymore, so now I’m ALLOWED to act like a blankety-blank jerk!”

I had to share this story of the Denver Broncos kicker, Brandon McManus, who also showed up to support a child, much like Shaq did. Not all adults demand respect over children. What a great anti-bully project!

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14681117/how-denver-broncos-kicker-brandon-mcmanus-embracing-cause-bigger-super-boql-50-nfl