Neighbor issue update (again)

This is long and boring, so feel free to skip it LOL. I'm not good at condensing stuff.

Sigh......so after 10 nights of listening to neighbor make all his garage repair shop noise until 1 or 2am every single night, except one, DH finally decided to give the sheriff's office a call again last night at close to 11pm. Enough is enough. When your noise is louder inside our house then our own tv on, you are just an ass!

And exactly like the time we called in last month, within minutes after DH hangs up the phone with dispatch, one of the guys buddies pulls up. He closes his garage all up and turns all his lights off and buddy leaves. He and his buddies are on the volunteer fire dept - we aren't stupid - of course they have radios that can hear the police stuff, so of course he's getting the heads up.

A deputy (different one than before) shows up about 10-15 minutes later. Again, a very nice guy. But, he wouldn't go knock on the guys door and tell him to knock it off (yet the sheriff had no problem knocking on our door because of a complaint, asking for DH's ID - because he mowed weeds in the alley on a Sunday afternoon LOL). We mentioned that both calls we have made, within minutes he closed up and turned all the lights off. Deputy is like ya....that's not good. He's getting word first. He wasn't sure if/what the law was on noise (he's only been working there 6 months), especially after a certain time of day, but said he'd look into it. Said next time he's doing it again, to call and ask for him and he'll come over and try to catch him while he's making all the noise, to talk to him.
 
Also, yesterday the developer emailed back that the certified letter he sent to the renters was returned to him, as he did not have their PO Box# and sending it "general delivery" didn't work.

This morning we decided to go to the sheriff's office to talk to the sheriff and see what he recommends and get a definitive answer on a noise ordinance, time allowed, etc. The dispatcher asked us to fill out a complaint form, so we could get it on file. While we were doing that the sheriff and his under sheriff came out into the hall to talk to us. Boy, is that sheriff a pompous jerk! His attitude right off was basically what do you want? hurry up, you are wasting my time. He asked DH what the issue is and DH started to tell him and he interrupted DH right away and when DH tried to give him more info he was like "don't interrupt me, I'm talking". Whatever. The under sheriff was totally relaxed and you could tell was listening and getting what we were trying to say. At first the sheriff was like I'm not aware there has ever been a problem with this neighbor (though the first words out of his mouth when we gave our address and said we had a neighbor issue was "oh the guy with the chop shop (or something like that) in his garage?" By the middle of the conversation the sheriff had calmed down and was listening and by the last 1/3rd of the conversation he was actually trying to be helpful. Then he was telling us there had been lots of calls to them from the previous owners of our house. (no duh) Make up your mind which it is.

About 3/4 the way into the conversation a guy walks in to say something to the dispatcher at the window (why we are standing right in the middle of this area to walk up to that window, I have no idea) and it's the guy that showed up at renters house right after we called the sheriff. He's has a distinctive appearance, so not hard to confuse him with someone else. DH and I both kind of glance at him and then each other as he's walking in between us and the sheriff's to the window. The under sheriff kind of caught that look between us and raised his eyebrows and DH quietly says "he was the guy there last night".

He says they can't be making unreasonable noise after 10pm, so please call it in every time he is doing it after 10, as they need to catch him doing it. Ok. We can do that, but what do we do about the fact that it appears he's getting a heads up somehow and knows you are coming so he closes up? He got all defensive like we were accusing him "no one in my jail is doing that". Then the under sheriff says well, he's a volunteer with the fire dept, so he has a radio......then the sheriff calmed down and said ok, then when you call it in, tell the dispatcher to call the deputy on duty on his cell phone with the dispatch, not over the radio, because the guy has a radio to listen to it.

The maybe good (?) part is this guy that had walked in during the last part of our conversation had to go sit on a bench to wait for something from the dispatcher (he's apparently a tow truck guy or something) so he pretty much got to hear what the sheriff was telling us to do about his buddy. So, I'm sure the renter guy has already gotten word that we were talking to the sheriff about him.

Then he suggested we also talk to the county planner about the covenant's issue. So, we went to his office (same building) but of course he just basically told us the same thing he told the developer guy, when he was there to talk to him about it a couple of weeks ago. He had brought the map up on his computer of our neighborhood and when we were talking about the developer already meeting with him, I mentioned that the developer sent the renters a certified letter, but it came back to him because he didn't have their PO Box...(hoping maybe he had it in his system and would offer it up) and he looked it up and gave it to us. So while DH was still talking to him I used my phone and emailed the developer the PO Box.

Then we get home and the neighbor lady across the street had kindly looked up the PO Box on their school records and it was a different PO Box than the county guy had. Who knows which is right. We gave that address to the developer too.

It's one thing to have to look at a bunch of junk cars and parts, we can be a bit patient on fixing that issue, but we're not going to be kept awake every single night listening to his pounding, grinding, etc until 2 am every night. It's been some 90 degree days. We can't even open up our windows to let some cool air in at night while we are trying to sleep - or the noise would be even louder :/