We have an 83 or 84 year old neighbour who is said to have schizophrenia. I live with my mum and my brother and we live in the UK.
He has it in for my brother, accusing him of all kinds of weird things like “he’s stealing my water supply” “he’s blocking my TV” “he’s cloning my phone” “he’s going out into the garden at night making wolf noises to wake me up” (we have foxes visit our garden often, and you can hear them in the streets also).
Last year he started blasting his radio every day from 7:30 AM until 10:30 to 11:30 PM. Then, on most nights at 1:30 AM he’ll set off an extremely loud siren and then start screaming and occasionally throwing stuff at the wall/his room. My mum has cancer and she really does not need this.
I went over to his house about the noise, giving him the benefit of the doubt because he’s hearing impaired and has hearing aids, but then he explained to me he’s doing this on purpose to stop my brother from sleeping during the day because my brother is “going into the garden at night making these wolf noises to wake me up”.
We ended up calling the police on him last year, and shortly after that, he stopped and was silent. We had 8 months of silence and now he suddenly started again. The radio, the sirens and the screaming at 1:30 AM. We’ve done nothing to him.
My mum found out that the radio or TV (whatever it is) isn’t just in one room, it’s in EVERY room of his house (we live in a joined house). She found out that when it goes off, they all go off at once, so my mum concluded he has his radio/TV hooked up to some speaker system aimed at the walls. He knows my mum isn’t well and he’s been doing this for 2 weeks straight now. It’s so loud you can hear it over EVERYTHING, even games, films and music. I can hear it in the garden even. Constant low frequency noise that reverberates in every room in our house.
We did call the police Friday night and he hasn’t done the siren at 1:30 AM since but he wasn’t setting the siren off every night before that either. It’s keeping us all on edge. He doesn’t have a wife but his niece occasionally visits to tidy up his garden. We don’t have her contact info though. He apparently refuses to take his meds because he is the type of person to think he’s always right.
Sorry for the long post but I can’t sleep because I’m on edge about being woken up soon after going to sleep. Wasn’t sure where else to post this where I can get some quick replies.
Thanks for the detailed advice! I appreciate it a ton. We’ll keep calling them every time he does this. I’ve got the radio/TV blasting and the siren/screaming recorded. He is a frail old man, he’s almost in an L shape. He did once go out into his garden shouting for my brother (my mum heard it and said it was mostly incomprehensible) with a frying pan in his hand. That was over a year ago. When he yells and screams after playing the siren we can’t make out what he’s saying. We already have a doorbell camera so if he comes to the door we’ll receive a notification about it and it’ll be recorded.
My mum has all his texts he sent her accusing my brother saved. These texts go years back so it’s all documented. When his niece comes over again we’ll see if we can talk to her. She did hide his siren before but she says he’ll probably end up ordering a new one from Amazon which is what seems to have happened here.
In the UK it is called sectioning. I’m not sure what the specific criteria are besides causing harm to others or ones self, I’ll have to research it more in the meantime. Once again I really appreciate the advice, we’ve all been so stressed out lately and something has to be done because we’re not putting up with this every day for months or even years
And I do want to just reiterate that the harassment angle is really what you want to play up with the police.
I don’t know the specifics of how policing and such works in your area, but there’s a pretty big difference between “my neighborhood is an inconsiderate jerk who plays his music too loud” and “my neighbor is intentionally targeting me with loud music and sirens to disturb our sleep”
The first one is a noise complaint, that’s low priority for the police and depending on where you are maybe not even a police issue but something like code enforcement.
The second one is a police issue, it’s harassment. This will vary from one jurisdiction to another, but where I work depending on some of the details I might enter that as “suspicious activity” or even a “disturbance” (basically a fight) which should get police there with some urgency.
And some of the other things you’ve said, like him walking around outside with a frying pan, I could definitely make an argument for putting in those calls as a “wellbeing check” or “suspicious person,” and if he’s acting particularly threatening maybe even “armed subject,” or possibly as a psych emergency to also send EMS to hopefully get him taken to a hospital for a psych eval.