The following crap has been going on for several years. We only recently decided to have a security system installed after things began to escalate. Here are some of the highlights.
May 12/25: Bylaw paid them a visit about the condition of their property. Here's their reaction.
Jun 9/25: It was a busy night for Marty. The police have told him to keep off our property. But, being warned by the police doesn't slow him down. He's like the Energizer Bunny.
He started his trespassing routine at 2am and kept it up for an hour. Marty meets someone at 2:39am, is he buying drugs or showing him the photos/videos he took earlier?
He didn't get a reaction, so at 3am he became more aggressive. That's when the police were called.
Unfortunately, the police missed the action and arrived about 2 minutes after Amanda dragged Marty back to their place. Near the end of the video, Marty tosses his lit cigarette onto our wooden steps. He was probably hoping to set them on fire.
The police brushed off this evening's activities with the excuse...he's just drunk...
Jun 21/25: Marty tried to damage my car at 1am.
As he's looking at my car he takes a drag on his cigarette to get the tip nice and hot, then he tosses it onto the roof of my car and stands there waiting to see if anything will happen.
The police also brushed off this incident. Their reasoning was it was "attempted" vandalism and nothing was actually damaged, so no big deal. I felt like saying ...if I attempted bank robbery and wasn't successful, then I could just walk away free, right?
May 6/26: We had No Trespassing and Keep Off signs posted on our fence. Marty ripped them off, I reinstalled them, then Amanda ripped them off and a "skirmish" followed. Marty (or Amanda) called the police and guess what the solution was that the police up with. They told us not to post no trespassing signs because it irritates them. WTF!!!
We were advised to contact police if there were any further escalations or confrontations.
May 8/26: Now they're putting up sheets of plywood against the fence. The base of their "wall" is against the bottom of our fence and therefore is on our property. They've also put a LOT of 4" screws through the plywood just above the top of the fence. More screws and a spike thing on the top edge of the plywood were added after the first photo was taken. They eventually covered about 14' of our fence and by doing so they've blocked our view of anyone using the sidewalk who is approaching our driveway when we're driving out.
We did as we were told and contacted the police (twice) about this escalation and, as expected, no one called back!
May 22/26: They had a busy evening:
I installed a better lighting system recently. Marty probably thinks he's wandering around in total darkness.
At around 9pm they've got their karaoke going, the system is located INSIDE their house with the speaker pointed towards the window. This time Marty was being "creative" with the lyrics and ad-libbing. Here are a couple of audio clips for your listening pleasure, they were recorded from inside our house: Audio #1Audio #2Audio #3Audio #4
And this is the audio from our driveway camera.
Around 10pm, he started wandering. As mentioned earlier, he's been told to keep off our property, but that doesn't slow him down. The noise you hear in the background is Amanda on their karaoke system. Video #1Video #2Video #3Video #4Video #5Video #6Video #7
He takes a short break from wandering at 10:20pm, gets some sidewalk chalk and decides to write SLOW on the sidewalk in front of our driveway. Does he want to be a traffic warden when he grows up?
May 23/26: I filed a trespassing report using TBPS's online reporting system at 2:49am, complete with 8 video clips showing Martin's "activities" and audio clips of the threats he screamed to the neighbourhood using their karaoke system.
I also filed a noise complaint with bylaw and included the audio files.
May 24/26: I heard back from bylaw. They were shocked by the language and the threats, said it was beyond what they could handle and said I should file a report with the police. I told them I had already filed a police report. Bylaw is going to treat it as a noise complaint.
May 26/26: I received an e-mail from the TBPS Online Reporting Team about my report.
Here's what they said "...Unfortunately, Thunder Bay Police Service had to reject your report... This is a ongoing neighbor dispute last handled by Constable... Please contact the non-emergency number at 807 684-1200 to have that officer contact you with any issues stemming from that incident". We've phoned them twice and no one has ever called back! So, I've been brushed off AGAIN!
My reply to their e-mail was "...This has nothing to do with a neighbour dispute. He's been told by the police to keep off our property. This was trespassing plain and simple! Did you listen to the audio clip? This was broadcast very loudly through his karaoke system to the entire neighbourhood. If this isn't harassment, then what is??
I never did get a reply to my e-mail. WTH!! Do I need to hire a lawyer and to find out why the police aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing? After all, by not charging Marty with criminal harassment, they have enabled and encouraged his activities.
I don't get it. WTF is going on, and why won't the police deal with this asshole properly? Is it because quite a few police officers bought lemonade from their kids last summer and think Marty and Amanda are fine upstanding citizens?
Here's more of their activites, these weren't reported to bylaw or the police.
Jul 8/25 They've set up a spotlight aimed at our living room window. We have to place a piece of cardboard in the window to block the light so we can watch TV.
Then they started with Karaoke. The following sound level readings were taken with a calibrated sound level meter from across the street (approx 100' away). Except Aug 24th entry which was about 30' away.
The City's Noise bylaw (#131-2005) states that "Yelling, shouting, hooting, whistling, singing or the playing of musical instruments" is prohibited from 11:00pm and day until 7:00 am the following day.
Jul 25/25 Started at 9:30pm. Finished at 2:00am. 69db
Aug 2/25 Started approx 8:30pm. Finished at 4:47am. 72dB
Aug 4/25 Started at 9:45pm. Finished at 2:50am. 66dB
Aug 5/25 Approx 2:15pm. A bylaw officer showed up to do another follow up inspection of garbage in their backyard and mentioned there had been a noise complaint (it wasn't us).
Aug 8/25 Started at 9:15pm. Finished at 12:40am. ??dB. It sounded louder than usual. A (new?) neighbour from further down the street told them to turn it down at 12:35am.
Aug 16/25 Started at 9:20pm. Finished shortly after midnight. 64dB
Aug 24/25 Started at 9:50pm. Finished at 11:45pm. The speaker is now in their bedroom window and pointed directly at our house. It's 78dB inside our living room and 88dB outdoors in our carport. According to WebMD, sounds above 85dB are harmful.
We managed to ignore all their karaoke noise and none of it was reported. Marty is agressive, violent and a bully. My wife was worried about what he might do if we submitted noise complaints.
They've got 3 small kids. I wonder how they're able to sleep through all the noise?
I called the police a few times when they were doing their karaoke late at night and asked if they had a patrol car in the area that could take a drive-by. As far as I know, they never did do a drive-by.