Neighbours causing criminal damage

[jackieglyn]

Can anybody please help.

My mum /dad and brothers live in a 3 bed terraced house. The neighbours one side are causing criminal damage to my mums house ie Saturday had a stone thrown through there house window.

Dad car wing mirror ripped off
Dads car been heavily scratched.
Brothers van broken into.
Dad has nail through his tyre.

We inform the police everytime something happens but as we do not have prof they can not do anything. We know its the neighbours one side but how can we prove it.

if they install CCTV they will only cover there face up so we can not prove it is them.

What can we do. Has anyone been through this before?

They have to be seen in the act of doing something even if its not recorded. Would it be possible to put a security light up to act as a deterrent?

They have a security light, that doesnt seem to worry them.

Any other ideas this is getting desperate now.

Tell them to move house

Really

A mate has been going through similar for years, can't move house and is stuck with the fuckers.

I'd just cut my losses and GO

They need to install CCTV which is not obvious. You often see programmes where people have set up camcorders behind their curtains in order to catch others in nefarious acts.

I'd move

When you say the neighbours are causing damage, is it the adults or the kids/teenagers?
Moving house is not so simple as you have to tell the buyers if you have trouble with neighbours and who would want to buy their house in today's climate?
Just set up CCTV behind your curtains or even better use net curtains.
Get some better security lighting or some extra lighting.
Make a note of all incidents.
Are these neighbours approchable?
I've lived with people like this and it is not nice.
They used to scratch my car, leave dog poo on it and bend the car arial (the one time i left it up), but they were just young kids being egged on by an older kid.
One day they went ballistic and broke the windows on the car, because we dared to tell them off, but my DH had to pin me to the floor of the kitchen as i was ready to go out there and knock their blocks off!
But we were in the middle of selling the house and did not have a for sale sign put up as that would have caused more trouble.
For years i did fantasise about turning up at their house in the middle of the night and causing damage to their stuff but never did.
Yes, it is very scary, but the bottom line is that they are either mad, bad or just jealous of something.
They will get found out one day, but NEVER go out and confront them as it could turn out nasty, especially if the kids have a gang.
Just gather evidence.
Good Luck!

Another thing that can help. How well do your parents know the other neighbours in the street?
We found that the kids attacking us, were doing it to everyone in the street and it was good to know that we had backing if it did come to a showdown.
Could they set up some kind of neighbourhood watch? Or join and existing one?
Get your parents to get as many people as they can on their side.
In some estates you can sometimes get whole famillies, aunties, grandparents in one street and they bully everyone else that is not THEIR familly.
Just don't understand that kind of mentality.

Something similar happened to us. Our neighbours did a lot things to us and out house and cars and threatned to burn our house down.

The police did NOTHING. They said that there was no proof. They did not help us at all. With us it was racial as my dh is black. They wanted us out. The police did not question the other neighbours ot take a sample of the spit I had to wipe off my baby.

Once you report it to the police you have to inform the buyers of your house that it has happened.

We had to part exchange our house as we could not sell it.

The only answer is to move. When this was happening to us it destroyed our lives. I stopped working, I was frightned to go outside in case they attacked our baby - which they did do. We couldn't sleep as they said they would put petrol through the letterbox.

I have lost faith in the police. I honestly thought they would help us.

That is outrageous savoycabbage. You were completely let down and it is inexcusable.

We also think that they are council. Can we report them even though we have no proof?

will the council do anything if we have no proof?

We dont want to report it to the council and for the council to talk to her and make the situation worse before we have proof.

What do you think?

Keep a diary. Dates, times and facts. This can be used, I think.

If they are council tenants you are actually in a better position to get something done. In extreme cases, they can be evicted for anti social behaviour. I would contact your local housing department and explain the situation to them. Give them full details of all the incidents and make sure they are all reported to police, even if police do nothing, as they will have to log it and give a crime ref number. Do also keep a diary, as a previous poster said.

If you can take pictures on mobile phone etc all to the good, but if you persist with the council, they have the resources to instal monitoring equipment in your house to collect evidence.

CCTV is ok in daylight, even high priced night cameras will not provide a good enough image for criminal ID in court. There is a big difference between "identification" and "recognition" by CCTV. If you go for CCTV also get a microphone. I had an 17 year old girl on asbo (next door neighbour) causing damage to cars, burning fences with petrol, bricks at windows, and high powered ball bearing guns fired from her bedroom window at me. It was ONLY when I had her on CCTV (poor night image) but WITH SOUND, she could be heard making threats against me (voice recognition rather than image recognition).... That was enough to take her to court for breach of asbo and bail conditions prevent her from returning home (now lives with father). Without idependant witness's criminal damage caused by neigbhours is simply classed as family feud and the police are reluctant to get involved.