I'm in complete and utter shock about this accusation

[chichi2026]

I don't want to bore everyone with the background (or out myself). Basically, I have been on the receiving end of a long campaign of harassment by my immediate neighbour. I was finally able to give a statement to police at the end of last year - then a few weeks later, her behaviour escalated to racism in January this year and after more waiting, she was charged with racially aggravated harassment. I have no choice but to continue living opposite her and it's been a few months of hell, but at least the Court date is finally approaching later this month. We live in social housing and the landlord has recently (after much lobbying on my part) decided to start legal proceedings against her. It's good news, but too little too late as the impact on me has been horrendous - and I'll probably lose my job as a result of it.

This tenant is younger than me and not the brightest - but she is extremely manipulative and has involved a couple of her friends (also neighbours) to increase the pressure of the harassment on me. It's taken me such a long time to get anyone to believe me about the ongoing situation and I personally feel that I have been disbelieved due to unconscious bias by the housing association. I try to see the best in people and I don't want to think this but I have so many examples of when I have been treated differently in very comparable situations.

My neighbour's friend was out in the garden at just after 3am today and was making a lot of noise. I opened my bedroom window and said (not shouted as I didn't want to wake everyone up) that she was being loud and could she please stop. This neighbour is very aware that her friend is due in Court this month for Racially Aggravated Harassment.

She responded by shouting "what?" and then got her phone out and started filiming (I wasn't, I was just speaking out the window). She started walking towards the area under my window. She then suddenly shouted, "what did you say, did you just call me a white bitch?"

I was totally confused and said no, what was she on about, then she started raising her voice, repeating the accusation loudly whilst still filming. She started fake crying and then looked at me and smirked. I then called 999 to report what had happened.

I can't believe it would be that easy to accuse someone of that and there is unlikely to be any meaningful police response to that. How do I trust the police as a woman of colour, knowing that we are statistically likely to be mistreated, yet the far right have now made out that the police don't care about white people because mistakes were made around one recent situation?

There is a two tier issue and it definitely isn't in the favour of ethnic minority people. If the dickheads protesting didn't attack the police they would have a much easier life.

Nobody wants to hear the reality. Brown or black people who report a crime are not going to get a blue light response. I rang 999 an hour and a half ago and have had nothing from them, even though I said that this person is likely to leave the area. That means that they can leave and I get no justice.

You've described a long campaign of racually motivated harassment from an unpleasant neighbour and, her friends. It sounds awful.

I'm not sure why you're in complete and utter shock that its ongoing.

Why oh why did you initiate any dialogue with these ppl when it was in the process of being sorted legally ,you have walked yourself into it . As much as I get your frustration surely you could see the benefit of silence and them having your day in court 🫣 you have played right into your neighbours hands here op ,ask other neighbours if they have ring doorbell footage to exonerate you

After 2 years of constant noise and polite requests verbal and written plus interventions from the Police and Environmental Health I have yelled at my neighbours to "shut up", when you have noise from 11am to well after midnight day in and day out I reached breaking point. I have had years of wearing ear plugs in the house, not being able to use my outdoor space and not inviting people round. There is the noise of daily life which I am fine about and then there is the noise of constant music, shouting, yelling and drunken fighting. I ended up with a Community Trigger meeting due to the hell I went through. They have moved and the new tenants seem to be fine but I am sitll on edge at times. Oh and I almost forgot to mention the time they broke into my yard, pinched my bin, broke the communal gate and fly tipped a load of rubbish on the street, some people are just vile.

I’m a police officer OP.

I really feel for you, I deal with similar reports daily and can’t imagine how awful it must be to have to live the way that you are living, and I genuinely hope you get some recompense in court.

The incident you describe would never be responded to as an immediate threat, blue light situation. You were safe in your house, the other party was outside, had made no threats, the risk for you was minimal.

She didn’t commit any offences so in my force we would deal with this by offering you a telephone appointment to discuss the matter then it would be closed.

The point that I wanted to make to you is this, national crime recording standards have changed drastically over the last few years, if a person (any person) contacts police to report that they have been a victim of crime, we are duty bound to record that crime within 24hrs unless there is immediate evidence to suggest it has not happened.
I completely understand the need for these changes, because forces nationally were fudging crime recording figures and things were being missed and not dealt with appropriately.
The upshot of these changes though, is that we get many many reports from people who we know are making things up, who have their own personal agenda and report crimes that have never happened to, for example, point the finger at someone they have an issue with, and we have to record those crimes…through gritted teeth.

So yes, this female might report to police that you’ve been racist towards her, but the worst that would happen is that you’d be interviewed, and likely not even that, because she’s got zero evidence of you committing an offence.
My advice to you would be not to engage with any of them under any circumstances. These type of people operate differently, have very little integrity and care about little else other than “winning”.

It's very easy to accuse anyone of anything op ,it's proving it that's often the issue ,but once the accusation has been made mud sticks .Like I say someone with ring doorbell footage maybe able to help . I'd advise to ignore until a court can look at this situation x

The OP suggests that it was the "new" tactic of saying that she'd said a racial insult that she hadn't, that was the shocking thing.

Good luck with the court case OP, she sounds awful to live near. But the friend didn't commit a crime - she was just being a total twat.

Please could you point out which posts have put the boot in? I see pretty much everyone feeling very sorry that the OP is going through this, but advising that what happened was not a blue light worthy incident (which it isn't, irrelevant of the colour of people involved). And that, whilst unfair and annoying, it's probably best to not engage with the people involved since the matter will hopefully be dealt with through the courts soon and they are trying to escalate the situation and make the OP out to be the one in the wrong, even though she clearly isn't.

Get a grip. Nobody is supporting racism. It was framed as a question ‘did you just call me a white bitch ?’, so I’m not quite sure how that could be described as a crime. There is a court case imminent and in my opinion the whole incident - if it actually ever happened - was an attempt by the neighbour to make OP look unreasonable and cast doubt on her complaint. She actually achieved that goal because the noise created was undoubtedly to get OP to act exactly as she did - hanging out of a bedroom window exchanging words. She hit the jackpot when OP called 999.

It was Digwa’s brother who called the police and told them that Nowak had attacked them with racist intent. And apparently an onlooker in the street had rung the police and reported that someone was shouting that they had been stabbed. I think that’s a bit different than OP’s situation.

You’ve probably annoyed the emergency services dialling 999 for this. You certainly won’t get a blue light response and nor should you, it wasn’t an emergency and you won’t get special treatment in this situation no matter what colour you are.
Very strange post.

that isn’t a situation to call 999. It’s not an emergency - call the non emergency police line and report. I’m so sorry you’re experiencing racism and such hostility from your neighbours and I hope you find some protection from the court system, but respectfully…. It’s very clear that 999 is for medical injuries which are critical or life threatening, a serious crime is ongoing, immediate risk to life, serious fires and serious road accidents. What were you expecting to happen??

I'm pretty sure the neighbour sent her friend down there at 3am quite deliberately. No coincidence the girl had her phone ready and all set to record, screaming that you'd harassed her, etc. It sounds totally planned. They set you up.

You need to stop reacting. As a pp said, would you shouting down have made them shut up, even if this wasn't a total set up?

Trust me, I know what it is to have bad neighbours. We were harassed for five YEARS when I was in London. Police didn't want to know. A huge group of teenagers decided to zone in on my house, and they harassed us for five years, leading us to sell the house and move north. I won't go into what they did, it's too long. There was never one response to my 999 calls which took under 2 hours. And these kids were pulling knives on us. Yes, totally unprovoked, which no one seems to believe.

Can you point out which posts are gleeful please ? I don’t see anyone sticking the boot in to OP, but simply pointing out that she has, to say the least, fallen for her neighbours’ attempt to paint her as the one who is unreasonable, by responding as she did.

Agreed! You never engage. There is no reasoning with these type of people, you just record the noise as you hear it in your house and use it as more evidence for the HA.

Because it shows intent. The speaker knew OP hadn't said it. They also knew she hadn't shouted.

I think you'll find if you check my post, I didn't say it was a crime. I said it was 'mired in racism'.

I'll get a grip if you get accurate.

And while calling 999 probably WAS a waste of time, OP can use it as evidence of the event. Pity she didn't think to film it herself too.

The scummy friend was trying to provoke you into a counter attack.

Don’t fall for it.

Racist is now an everyday pejorative term, same as weirdo, clown,
nutter.

OP when you are in a (genuinely?) difficult situation as you say you are,
with a tormentor and friends making your life a misery, the only way to
relieve this is to remove yourself from it.

‘Neighbours from Hell’ site posters have dreadful stories of harassment
spending money on their homes, be they bought, rented, HA whatever,
ultimately, sadly, their solution is to move away from the mayhem.
Your HA should expedite this move without suggesting you resort to the
exchange route.

You shouldn’t have leaned out of your window. My neighbours do all sorts my opinion on the all sorts are kept to myself, the contact they get with me is a smile, hello, wave or chat depending on which one it is.

you also should not have called 999 no emergency was occurring. There are other numbers you can call if you really thought you needed to.

They came out because they were told that the ‘victim’ had been physically attacked, not because the ‘victim’ had been called a mean name.

That's absolutely awful. And I can well believe you feel there is racism in the police. Sadly that's been going on for a long time.

I really hope they move this woman away from you. It must be so depressing feeling trapped next to your abusers.

In my opinion, this whole racial discrimination thing has gone far too far in both directions. At first there was zero sympathy for anything racist towards "white" people then it was noticed that people of different skin colours were overusing this as an excuse, now in some places its going too far the other way. There should be no difference between "white" or any other race should not be allowed to get away with this type of bullying. Its not particularly racist at the moment its main and simply bullying they are using your race as an excuse hang on in there and hopefully it gets dealt with. I think you should record all the instance yourself as they appear to be using this as biased evidence against you. (I am just a normal, hopefully unbiased non racist human being, who hates bullying in any shape or form).

OP, I am so, so sorry. You're been the target of a soul-destroying campaign of harassment. They are manipulative, conniving little toads and they will lie about anything.

I know that it's unfair, but the only thing you can do is refuse to react to them where they can see. I understand why you asked her to be quiet and I understand why you panicked and called the police. But all of thst was what they wanted.

They are trying to manufacture evidence that they're the victims in your dispute, so please don't play into their hands.

This. Don’t retaliate, but do record it (as well as possible without being obvious). Some sort of CCTV would be ideal - I think Aldi get remote systems in for about £50, not sure how much other systems cost, but I think it would be a good idea and would capture what happens when you’re not at home too.

Obnoxious neighbours cause lots of stress for you, while they seem to enjoy it.

I hope you get the outcome you need.