AIBU to report this little fucker to the police?

[Londonista123]

Sorry - long but genuine dilemma.

My flat and car were egged on Halloween (in vast quantities, if it matters). I was miffed but put it down to not answering the door to T'or'T'ers - until I realised that my flat and car were the only ones targeted in my building of 20+ flats. Car and flat are not next to each other.

After some thought, I put it down to a particular kid in my building. We've had a few run-ins before this:

• A few months ago I accidentally photographed him while documenting something untoward that's happening around the building, that I photograph and send to the council to report (excuse the vagueness, but think fly tipping / antisocial behaviour or similar). His angry mum knocked on the door a few minutes later and, when I didn't answer, left me an illiterate note asking me to stop photographing her son / show her the photo. I was reluctant to talk to her because I don't know who was involved in the thing I was actually photographing, and didn't want to mention it to her.

She caught me in my car a few weeks later (son was with her), asked me why I was photographing her son, none too politely, and I explained that I was photographing something else. She may now think I'm a paedophile for all I know.

(I also wanted to scream that I am free to photograph whatever the hell I want in public, but never mind.)

• On another occasion recently the son was making a serious racket directly outside my door (rollerskating up and down, shouting loudly downstairs to his mate). I went out and asked him to stop, which he did. I think he's around 12/13 y.o.

I really don't know most other neighbours here, certainly none with kids, and don't know who else could match me with the car, and would particularly want to egg my house.

I put a posted, anonymous note through their flat door to the effect that I'd reported their kid to the police for his Halloween "joke", and he was welcome to come by and apologise if they wanted me to withdraw the complaint. I was hoping a) his mum would give him a bollocking, since I doubt she knew and b) to frighten the hell out of him.

Got home to another note through door: I think you sent me a note [...] you say my son did a Halloween JOKE [...] go ahead and report him to the police if you think it was him [...] but report yourself at the time time for photographing my son.

I'm now even more certain it was him, and angry because the response I expected was to have the son say sorry, not an aggressive note from his mum.

So... do I now actually go to the police about what is technically "criminal damage"? I feel that the local police (like police everywhere) have much, much bigger fish to fry, and frankly I'd be embarrassed to ring up. I also think he's unlikely to do this to me again since he's now been caught.

AIBU to report this, and have the police round to "chat" about not egging houses?

OTOH - I'm angry. If this was my son, he'd be cleaning up the mess and writing an apologetic letter, whereas his mum's note seems to think she believes his behaviour is justified.

I'm too intrigued, got to ask. What is this anti-social behaviour issue. Given the info you've given out already, If anyone in the block is watching this thread then they will already know.

Given some of your actions In Dealing with this so far, im not convinced this will be as "serious" as implied as the council would come and sort pictures themselves rather than put you at risk.

Lurking - I really don't feel comfortable saying. The council do deal with stuff, but at a slow, council-like pace, and having visual proof of what's happening is more effective at getting them to act than just ringing up and saying.

Toooldtobearsed - my note was anonymous, and they've not seen my handwriting before. From my POV, they "know" it was me, because the kid did it, mum confronted him about note, he 'fessed up to egging my house so they know the note was from the person whose house was egged. Or, they think I'm the building Crazy so of course no one else could be behind this. I appreciate that from their POV I'm a nutcase/paedo.

I really have no (like, zero) dealings with the rest of my neighbours, their dogs and so on, and I think it's unlikely that random adults are egging houses on Halloween - and I don't imagine that many/any can match me to my car.

How do you know the mum didn't egg your house and car? Seems like she has more reason to dislike you than her son.

She may have, but do adults really go around egging houses?

OP the only reason I can think of that you're getting such a hard time here is that people are weird about their children being photographed, even though it's perfectly legal, you didn't mean to photograph the child in question and it was anyway incidental to what you were photographing.

One of our former neighbours was nuts on the issue - they'd appeared to have some sort of mix-up with getting photographs of their young girl, guessing around 2 or 3, delivered. We actually heard her shrieking at the courier in the street "Those are pictures of a CHILD! They could be with a PEADO!" The courier then told her where he thought they'd been delivered to, she must have misheard and thought it was our address, and came over and basically accused my DH of lying when he said he knew nothing about the pictures. Gave us funny looks from that day forth.

YANBU to report the 'egging' to the police. YANBU to tell the police that you suspect it was this boy.

Ignoring all the desperately ill-informed photo-hysteria, I do think you need to understand that you behaved badly.

From their point of view, the boy is sitting outside minding his own business and you appear on your balcony and start taking photos. They don't know you're photographing this antisocial behaviour, so it could very easily appear that you were taking photographs of him. I think it's understandable that she come and ask why. Of course, you can photograph what you like in a public place, but leaning off a balcony to photograph a child is unusual behaviour! You should have answered the door and simply told her that you were not taking photos of her son.

And now the anonymous note....ridiculous. You should have photographed the door and the car and gone to the police. I can't believe as a lawyer you think anonymous notes are the best way to deal with this sort of thing?! Even a signed note would have been better!

Unfortunately, this one (the thread) will run and run.
I count his mum as the busybody (not OP) since "his angry mum knocked on the door a few minutes later" .

Why didn't angry mum report OP to police for taking photographs, giving the police the chance to have a little chat with OP- whereby OP could have shown the police the photo. Just playing devil's advocate here, really, to point out that if that woman was really worried about OP taking photos of her child that's her probable course of action. But it wasn't, suggesting that the issue is OP taking photographs (at all). I'm guessing the council haven't got cctv. Best turn off your flash, OP.

Fair enough you don't want to disclose OP, just had to ask.

But your reply kind of answers my question. The council are dealing with it, at their pace, and you are sending the photos in the hope that you can speed up the process, if I've understood that correctly. Sorry but that does read a bit like you are looking for trouble, you've registered your issue. Let them resolve it, if they aren't doing it to your satisfaction or quickly enough then contact the local press and see if they will run with it (whatever the asb thing is, not the egging etc). Stop getting dragged into things and going vigilante, it will end in tears.

I would just calm down and ignore this incident and any future ones before this whole situation escalates. I know other people's kids are annoying but you are the adult, if you ignore the kid's prank (if it was him), he will get bored of provoking you at some point in the future. Just don't play into him and his mother's hands because that's what they now want, even if they may have been justified in being annoyed (or over-reacted) when you photographed the child.

I would calm down and stop taking pictures of things to report to someone or other, nothing people have done is serious so far and you're obviously causing yourself more problems than it's worth.

Sadly people are antisocial these days but the only things worth reporting to the police are real crimes, not petty things about a bit of rare, noise. I am sorry you you seem to be wound up over petty things and if you can't share a block of flats with neighbours, maybe you should buy a remote house? If you don't want to do that, then you must accept and ignore childish pranks, occasional noise and other nuisances.

i never saw the bits about smoking joints and dogs pooping in lifts. sounds like a place i know of in southeast london. not a nice place to live.

the mum of the boy does not seem that bad. it sounds like she has spoken to op on a couple of times. op has not said its got out of hand. its just not actually solved anything

Yes, some adults do things like egg cars. I saw some cctv footage on some programme or other a few years ago, where a neighbour threw flour all over someone's car because she didn't like her and wanted to make her life a misery. I was agog! That was only one of the things this mad neighbour did, she did tons of stuff and made the other woman's life a misery. That's why you try to keep the peace. Making a simple apology immediately in the first place tends to preempt that sort of war.

You'd call the police just because an adult photographed your child, you wouldn't even try to ask them what the score was, if they were doing something else, politely ask if they would consider deleting or blurring your son in any photos they use?

Jeezo!! Yanbu OP. Isn't this whole photo thing getting a bit out of hand? I took DS to disneyworld last month, I have about 200 photographs and in about 150 of them there are children I don't know having been standing at it near what/who I was taking a picture of. The OP hasn't done anything wrong taking her picture that just happened to have the little shit in it, for the poster who would snatch the camera and make the photographer delete every photo that had her child in it, I really hope you never go to a kids theme park because your likely to have pictures taken of your child and you are going to be very tired snatching hundreds of cameras from people!! Jeezo get a grip!!
OP report this to the police, they will log it, it's what they are there for and most forces have anti social behavior quite high up in their priorities