Photo: TikTok
Love thy neighbor.
By Hawthorn Martin — Written on May 23, 2023
One woman shared a video of an aggressive altercation with her neighbors after her older mother simply requested they turn down their loud music.
The request was simple and, at worst, a minor inconvenience for the neighbors who appeared to be throwing some kind of two-person party in broad daylight. But, the uncomplicated request elicited a rather extreme reaction from the clearly irritated neighbors.
In a TikTok, the loud neighbor berated the woman who complained about noise.
“All I asked was you to turn the music down a bit,” she called over the fence and was answered by overlapping voices all screaming angrily at her. Most of the comments couldn’t be made out, but the aggression was palpable.
According to Katelyn Park, the woman posting the video, her mother had gone to ask the neighbors to turn down the music because it was literally shaking their house, and disrupting time with their family.
It’s common for loud music to be a disturbance to others, but in most situations, it’s an easy fix. Sure, it’s never fun to be told that your fun is upsetting other people, but it is often understandable. However, these neighbors didn’t take the criticism kindly.
The neighbors went so far as to throw water over the fence and scaled the fence to shout at the woman from above.
“You can’t even have a decent conversation,” the mother exclaimed in frustration as she reemphasized that all she wanted was quieter music, not a fight. One of the neighbors had to physically hold the other back from leaping over the fence in his anger, and Katelyn and her family weren’t able to get a word in edgewise into the argument.
The viewers of the TikTok were baffled by the neighbor’s response and several commenters suggested the family call the police.
She made a follow-up video addressing the topic of the neighbors’ interactions with law enforcement, saying that during the argument about loud music, other neighbors had actually called the police on the family, but the police never showed up.
Unfortunately, Katelyn said that calling noise control or the police wouldn’t do anything to help the situation.
Their house had been “red flagged/black listed” according to her, meaning that “Noise control won't attend and send police… Flagged for abuse and gang house.”
According to some records she was able to obtain, the police tend to show up at her neighbors’ house “about once every three weeks, give or take,” so at this point, they don’t come out to address other issues like this one.
Katelyn has also tried to handle the situation through the landlord but was told that they can’t kick out their tenants, and was offered no help. So, Katelyn and her family have planned to take the case to their tenancy tribunal in hopes of reaching some kind of arrangement.
She has done her best to document the situation and her grievances, but unfortunately, it seems like the family has ultimately decided to move, given another one of her recent videos was captioned with: “I cannot wait to move.”
Hawthorn Martin is a news and entertainment writer living in Texas. They focus on social justice, pop culture, and human interest stories.