4 posts tagged “harassment”

Well, kids, nothing severe to report this time, but because I promised to publicly log everything that Mr. Cranky Pants does to us (or tries to do to us), here's our latest report from about 15 minutes ago: Mr. Cranky Pants attempted to "intimidate" my husband by staring him down with evil eyes. My husband had to run to and from his car a few times to find some stuff, and Mr. Cranky Pants shot him nasty looks the whole time. Happy Holidays, Mr. Cranky Pants! Keep on spreading that good-hearted holiday spirit. I mean, you are one of this town's finest, most upstanding citizens, right?

Anyway, Kids, don't you fear--most of the people in this town ARE fine, upstanding citizens. It's too bad even one bad apple has to mar the reputation of this place. But I guess every town has a Mr. Cranky Pants, right?

At least Mr. Cranky Pants did not try to talk to us--otherwise we would have grounds to institute the restraining order (a.k.a. peace order), as we have grounds to do because we served him with a "cease and desist" letter a few months ago. Unfortunately, trying to be intimindating and shooting someone nasty looks is not criteria for a peace order, so I guess the games will continue into 2008. 

I came home from work tonight and noticed that someone had stolen my pumpkin and my gooseneck gourd out of my front yard. OK, how petty can you get? My number one suspect is, of course, my harassing neighbor. But why would he bother to do this? I mean, pumpkin thievery?

By the way, my harassing neighbor had his lawyer fire off a letter to me this week. Some of you might be entertained by the contents, so I might print some of the excerpts here later on, with names removed, of course. My neighbor and his lawyer claim that my neighbor is an upstanding citizen who has never done anything bad in his entire life. I'm making all of this stuff up, of course, that must be it! Those multiple marks in my bumper that perfectly line up with the screws in his license plate are a complete figment of my imagination! Please.

Anyway, because this harassment is turning into a ludicrous soap opera that seemingly has no end, I will keep posting the events as they transpire in my online journal, hoping that a witness to his acts will come forward one day to help stop the harassment.

Well, my harassing next door neighbor is up to his old tricks again today--this incident happened within the last half hour. I got home around 11:45 AM today after leaving work early due to illness. As I was pulling onto my street I noticed my harassing neighbor getting into his truck. In an attempt to avoid confrontation I parallel parked my car many spaces in front of him. Then, deciding that I didn't want any contact, I remained in my car to check my voice mails. He drove off, but quickly returned, having driven around the block.

I called up my friend, wondering what to do, and hmy friend said he would stay on the phone with me no matter what happened. As I was talking to my friend (still sitting in my car), my neighbor pulled up a third time (into a parking space behind me.) My friend told me to walk to my house and cross the street while talking on the cell phone. As I started walking, my neighbor pulled his truck out and drove it at me. Of course, he did this at a normal rate of speed so that any witnesses would think it was just a random incident. But I know he did that either to scare me or to provoke me, and I didn't give him the pleasure of any response, not even eye contact. I just went inside. Then I called the police and they told me that because my neighbor neither talked to me nor touched me, there is nothing they can do (as usual).

Once again, I feel like this is going to come down to me getting physically hurt by this psycho before anyone does anything to help, isn't it?

For years now I have wanted to blog about this topic, but I have refrained from doing so out of fear that people would think I was crazy or paranoid. But the events that occurred in my neighborhood yesterday have left me no choice but to publish this post.

If you are from Brunswick, Maryland, then this post might be of interest to you. If you do not live in Brunswick, you may very well wish to skip this post entirely.

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Most of the time, I try to post about positive topics and highlight the positive aspects of living in Brunswick, Maryland. Generally speaking, it’s a great little town and I would typically recommend it to anyone.

Unfortunately, there is one bad thing about living in Brunswick that I am powerless to stop: my next door neighbor, who has executed a 4-year-long campaign of harassment against me and vandalism against my property.

The sad thing is, according to the Brunswick police, under Maryland laws, there is nothing that they can do to protect me or my property. Unless someone witnesses my next door neighbor committing an act of violence against me or an act of vandalism against my property, then our police can do nothing to stop this man.

So, for 4 long years, my next door neighbor has conducted this relentless campaign of:

¨       Poisoning my plants in my yard, including ones that I eat (which I believe is a direct attempt to sicken me);

¨       Trying to kill my crepe myrtle tree and hacking away at its branches (over the property line), because once a year it drops messy berries onto his sidewalk that he does not want to sweep up;

¨       Bumping the rear end of my car with the front end of his (burgundy red Silverado) truck, thus chipping off paint on my back bumper in numerous spots;

¨       Playing a radio at such a loud volume that I can hear it loudly and clearly in my house at 3 AM most nights of the year;

¨       Reporting me to the city every time he thinks I have committed some kind of code violation (such as not scooping up my snow within 6 hours of the first snow fall. Considering that I work in another state and can’t always drive home within 6 hours of the snow first starting to fall, I get fined $25.00 by the city each time he calls me in).

¨       Blocking access to my home’s foundation with fencing so that I cannot conduct simple home maintenance without setting foot onto his property (which in turn makes me vulnerable to charges of trespassing).

Even though this man has done this stuff to me for 4 long, stressful years, he gets away with it, always.

Even though the police have been called to assist me at least 4 times since September 2003, they say they can do nothing to get him to cease.

Even though this man scares me, and possibly tried to run over my bare feet today, and called me a bitch today, and told me he will cut down my tree and throw it into my yard today, apparently no one can stop him from harassing me. I tried to file a peace order against him tonight (a document that instructs him to stay away from me and my property, as well as my workplace and my son’s school), but because he has not slapped me in the face (yet) nor burned down my house (yet), my request was denied.

So, even though this type of blog entry might make me seem like a crazy person (after all, how do you know if I am a sane and logical person?), this is my only outlet and the only form of protection I have: to publicly declare that this man is harassing me and has been doing so for the past 4 years, and to describe him as closely as possible so that my fellow citizens can be vigilant in case they come across this person vandalizing my property or trying to hurt me.

I can’t give out my neighbor’s name or address here, but I can describe him as closely as possible:

¨       Male

¨       Caucasian

¨       Old—senior citizen

¨       White hair

¨       Balding

¨       No mustache, beard, or glasses

¨       Overweight, round-ish in form, possibly 200 pounds in weight

¨       Kind of short, perhaps about 5 feet and six inches in height

¨       Walks with a slight limp sometimes due to knee replacement surgery

¨       Korean War veteran, used to be in the Army

¨       Used to be an appliance repairman

He drives a burgundy red Silverado with Maryland plates (the first numeral in the license plate is a 7, and there is a stainless stell lockbox in the flatbed), even though his primary residence (where he spends most nights of the year, and the most hours of every day) is actually in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. His wife drives a burgundy red SUV, also with Maryland plates; sometimes he shows up here driving her vehicle. Their first names rhyme. Their last name is printed on a sign that hangs in front of their blue house. There’s almost always a distinctive yellow snow blower on his front porch.

Please note, my dear neighbors: he has bumped other cars with his truck before, so take a look at your own bumpers to make sure that you don’t have any scratches or chipped paint. I’m not this man's only victim.

This man and his wife are only my next door neighbors in that they own the house next door to mine and come by to visit it about once a day (usually between 9 and 10 AM on weekdays) to cut the lawn, deposit the trash, and pick up mail. The man grew up in the house and is so emotionally attached to it that he can’t sell it. He doesn’t actually live in it anymore (except on snowy days when the roads to his West Virginia house are too treacherous to drive and he can subsequently call me in to Brunswick city for not picking up my snow fast enough). (A side note: I have always paid my fines and cooperated with the requests of the city, because I know they are not trying to harass me--the workers are just doing their jobs. But I hope our city employees are aware that certain citizens are using the city ordinances as a means of selectively persecuting and harassing and targeting other citizens, a practice which is unjust and unfair and should be stopped.)

Most of the day, my next door neighbor has the radio in the house turned on to volume eleven so that I can hear it all day and all night from inside my house (sometimes even when my own television set is on), a subtle form of audio torture. My neighbor is not around to hear this noise pollution himself—he is safely ensconced in his West Virginia home, blissfully reveling in how he has gotten away with harassing a woman and vandalizing her property for 4 years.

A little side note to the police officers, city employees, and judges in this county: this neighbor of mine thinks he owns you, and he thinks he owns this town, just because he is old and he has “lived” here all of his life (even though he really lives in another state these days). How do I know this fact about him? Because he told Officer C--- this stuff on September 4, 2003, when I was within earshot to hear him say all of this to her. That type of language sounds like a threat, but I guess under Maryland law, Officer C--- could do nothing about this because such verbal threats aren’t actionable in this state.

In other words, this man thinks he is above the law. He thinks he is better than me, and he thinks he is better than the police, and he thinks he is better than you. I guess because he thinks he is better than all of us combined and above the law, that’s why he feels he can poison my raspberries and damage the bumper of my car repeatedly with complete impunity. And so far he has done exactly that--destroyed my property with impunity. That makes me sick—literally nauseated. I think it should make some other Brunswick citizens feel a little sick, too, because one day this man might turn his unbridled wrath onto one of them. (This man also used to harass the former owners of the house I now occupy, so harrassment is a longstanding pattern with him.)

Because the police say they are unable by law to stop this man, and because under Maryland law I am not eligible for a peace order telling him to stay away from me and my home (I know this because I tried to file for a peace order tonight and was denied, because no physical assaults against me have occurred--yet); I am posting this blog entry in the hopes that it will help to stop him.

I hope that by alerting my neighbors to this man’s behavior, I can make them aware and vigilant, so that if they witness him harming my property or threatening me, then they can call the police about it and serve as a witness. If someone actually witnesses my next door neighbor doing these things, then some action can finally be taken to stop him. But until there is a witness, all of the photographs I have taken of the damage he has caused, all of the video clips I have filmed of how he has mutilated my plants and marred my car, all of the times I have called the police and asked them to help me, have been futile.

Apparently it doesn’t matter how threatening my neighbor’s actions and his words have been; it doesn’t matter what names he calls me, or how scared of him I become. No one can protect me until he knocks out one of my teeth or breaks my arm or slaps me in the face. This saddens me greatly, because I don’t want to get hurt, but I am afraid over how these events are escalating, and I worry that one day he will physically harm me because he cannot control his temper and he believes he is above the law.

I should note that this man typically executes his acts of vandalism whenever I am at work or otherwise away from the house and thus unable to protect it. He strikes my car in the mornings when I am either asleep or in the shower, unable to videotape his truck making contact with my vehicle. Also, the only times this man yells at me and says rude things to me and calls me names is when my husband isn’t around to help me. I truly believe this man likes to pick on women and other people whom he feels are lesser than him; he only acts on his bullying impulses when other men are not around to watch what he is doing. I don’t think he would have yelled at a male police officer, for example, but he felt he could threaten Officer C---, a female, in 2003. My husband would protect me if he was around me when these incidents occurred—but what can I do in the future when my husband is not around to help me?

I guess if my neighbor finally hits me or runs me down with his vehicle and kills me one day, then this blog post will serve as a testament to the fact that Maryland laws need to be changed to protect people from harassment before someone else gets hurt or dies. I think the definition of what constitutes criminal harassment needs to be altered to encompass multiple-year campaigns of property destruction like the one this man has waged.

That’s why I am posting this, too: so that if anything happens to me and I can no longer speak out about all of this, then at least some kind of public record of my problem exists (because the request for a peace order I filed tonight will most likely be disposed of, leaving no documentation that I ever tried to stop this harassment).

I am truly saddened that the actions of one lunatic like this makes me feel like moving away from Brunswick. I’d move away (to another state with more protective laws) this very instant if I could afford to do so, but I can’t afford it right now, so all I can do is blog about this pattern of events and “out” this neighbor for his immoral behavior. I am sad that for all of the great, wonderful people and things that exist in this town, one crazy, unstoppable vandal is coloring my feelings about living here and is making me want to leave.

I hope that my descriptions of this man have been significant enough to “out” him for his devious and malicious behavior and to stop him so that he never succeeds in vandalizing property or harassing people again. At least if my fellow Brunswick citizens know who he is, then they can watch out for him, because he will harm my property again, and I do believe he would gladly mutilate the property of others, too. After all--he knows he is unstoppable, and he has already stated in front of a police officer that he owns all the police officers and judges in this county. Does that sound like a man who will respect the property rights, peace and privacy of others?

I just want my neighbor to leave me and my stuff alone. I just want peace and an end to the incessant fear and worry. How much longer do I have to deal with this? Is 4 years going to turn into half a decade or more of this harassment and property destruction?

Every time from now on that this man threatens me or harms my property, I am going to post a detailed blog entry about it here, revealing every detail and fact about the events that I can. I will also post any relevant photographs, even if it inadvertently reveals where I live. It’s the only thing I know of that I can do to protect myself, ironic as that might seem.

(Postscript dated August 27^th: Any interactions between me and my neighbor described in the paragraphs above as occurring “today” occurred Sunday, August 26, 2007, at approximately 6:10 PM, in the street in front of our houses. My house modem is down right now so I could not post this blog entry until Monday.)