My Neighbors, The Drug Dealers

[Andara Bledin]

So, everybody who pays any attention at all knows who the dealers in the complex are. They're they guys that are home all the damn time, and spend every waking hour sitting out on the stairs smoking blunts with all their buddies. Subtle, they ain't.

Anyway, today we had a new brand of going. As we're passing their apartment on the way to our car, we spot about a dozen hand-written signs in their windows. I catch one that says, "STAY AWAY FROM NUMBER 5" which is the number on their door. I don't quite note what the whole hubbub was, but the boyfriend let me know that the upshot is that "THE LONG BEACH POLICE ARE WATCHING US" and for their druggie customers to be scarce.

This is incredibly hilarious. Their customers usually come from the street, so they'd have to walk across the courtyard making what would be a bee-line to their door, so by the time they spotted the signs, it would be obvious to anyone with 2 braincells to rub together where they were headed.

Ah, well. I do have to say that they're less obvious than the last dealers who were operating out of number 12. Seriously, if you're going to be dealing, don't leave your customers standing outside your door while you fetch the product and then make the hand off around the edge of the screen door.

One thing I find amusing is that their neighbor on one side is a marine, and I don't think they have a neighbor on the other side since the last one was hit by a car jaywalking home from the local bar in the middle of the night on a street with poor lighting.

^-.-^

[blas87]

At my first apartment, we had people who dig deals in the middle of the street. Oh sooo smooth, right?

Someone would drive up, stop in the middle of the road, and someone else would walk up to the window, and there'd be a quick exchange.

[protege]

The neighborhood I work in has more than its share of drug dealers. There have been several raids at the shitty apartment building down the street. Oh, and the building next door? It's a crack house--it was raided after an FBI agent was shot two summers ago. One of the suspects in that shooting was using one of the building's apartments to store his wares.

[AdminAssistant]

The other day I saw a drug deal in the stairwell of a building on campus. I'm guessing it was an adderall swap, but, still, drugs.

[HYHYBT]

You'd think, if they were that stupid, they'd be out of business quickly.

Then again, some might say that the other way around: their methods must work, as they're still free.

[DrFaroohk]

I never minded the dealers. Some of the coolest people I met at my c-store job were drug dealers. It's their clients that I can't stand.

[Rebel]

My parents investment house is next to a family of drug dealers (they didn't know when they bought it). I think they only sold pot or maybe some of the "milder" drugs as none of their customers looked like strung out junkies.
How do I know what they looked like?
Well, coz some of them weren't the brightest and so they couldn't read the house numbers properly. We averaged about 2 people a week ringing on our doorbell or knocking then running down the street to a park to deal (subtle they were not). The conversations with them started off stilted, but once we clued into what was happening, we just got into the habit of telling anyone we didn't know at the door that they had the wrong house, then shutting the door in their face.
It really didn't help that my brother, whom I was living with at the time, and all his friends are quite Ocker (quite well off financially, but still the Ocker stereotype), so they kinda had the lazy drug dealer look to them.

I started off really disliking the dealers, mainly due to the fact that they were dealers, but they made it into my good graces. My cat had been hit and killed by a car, and they came to let me know, then carried it to my yard, and helped me bury it (I was quite distraught).

[patiokitty]

We've got a dealer living in the basement of the house next to mine. They know that I know what's going on, especially after walking one of their 'clients' over after the dude was banging on my door. They apologized to me, offered me 'something' for my troubles (I declined), and we went our separate ways. I think they were expecting me to make a phone call to the police but as long as they don't bug me I have no problems with them. We also have a tacit agreement that they don't even think about offering my son anything. Not that he'd touch it, but I still prefer to err on the side of caution.

I've noticed that the smarter dealers will generally go a long way to protect their investments and that includes staying in their neighbours' good graces.

One of the apartments I lived in had a house behind us owned by the same people that owned the apartment building - the guy that lived there was the nicest guy ever and made a point of going out of his way to help the single mothers in the neighbourhood with their cars (and chasing off the occasional asshole ex-boyfriend). He was an older biker dude who also happened to deal - but not from his house because he believed in 'not shitting in your own backyard'. Besides, it meant that he kept it away from the kids in the area. I only knew what was going on because we got to talking one day while he was taking a look at my car for me and I mentioned my former drug use. For as long as he lived in that house our neighbourhood was peaceful...it was after he left that it blew to shit, sadly.

[boringscreenname]

Unfortunately my husband and I have had drug dealers for neighbors several times. The first place we rented was an efficiency apartment (aka glorified hotel room). The guy next to us never worked, and spent all his time on the phone, arguing with his girlfriend on the phone, or ignoring his kid who cried all the freaking time. One day when we arrived home the cops were there and the landlady told us he'd been busted for selling drugs out of the place.

The second place we moved into was a two family duplex. We lived upstairs and there was a family who lived downstairs. Literally the first day we moved in the guy downstairs, tried selling my husband drugs. He also smoked a ton of pot, we could smell it in the foyer and a couple times in our unit. I thought it was particularly stupid because two small children lived with him as well.

Then the third place we moved to, there weren't any drug dealers (that I'm aware of) in our complex. But in the apartment complex up the road there was a huge gang busted, and obviously a lot of them were dealers, because of the sheer amount of drugs they found, and they busted a ton of people, it was one of the biggest busts in our city's history.

We knew the place was sketchy (understatement of the year), but we had no idea how bad it was until we were on our way home and noticed the place was surrounded by the city police department, and a SWAT team who were all getting ready to raid the place. We moved pretty shortly after that (not because of that incident though).

[Boozy]

I've never lived that close to a drug dealer.

The convenience would have been nice; I've always had to drive across town for my drugs.

(jk)

[insertNameHere]

I know the feeling, I live in the country and manged to move next to the local drug dealer. I have only had one real tweaker on my porch who asked me


T:"Do you fuck with pills?"
M: "You looking for (neighbors last name)?"
T: shakes head yes.
M: " You want that house over there, don't ever come on my porch again looking for drugs else, ill shoot you"
T: "Its illegal to shoot someone man!"
M: "Drug deals go wrong plenty of times"
M: Me thinks, the irony of someone try to lecture me on laws while trying to purchase narcotics.

Remember folks, running red lights is alright but speeding is just wrong!!!! (sarcasim)

[Tanasi]

Way back in the days of yore we lived two doors down from a dealer. I didn't like it so I started recording the license plates and descriptions of his customers and turning that into the police. He threatened me outside one day said he was going to "air out my crib." I just smiled and said I'm more than willing to have a good gun fight as it had been a good while since I'd been in one. I went inside put on my flack-jacket and steel pot, lock and loaded and went out to meet my neighbor. Once he saw I meant business he jumped in his car and left. His mother came by a few days later to get his stuff. I told her what happened and that he was dealing. She didn't seem to care.

I won't live around a known drug dealer and if I can help it I won't live around a user. There's no excuse to do either.