I need some advice.
My girlfriend and I live in an apartment above an old, queen-ish Spanish immigrant (From Spain), who constantly harasses us. We've been living above him for almost 2 years now. Our apartment has hardwood floors and we have two cats which our landlord allowed us to have in the apartment. The neighbor, Leo, has been living in that same bottom-floor apartment for at least 15 years. In that time, we found out, there have been close to a dozen different tenants who lived in our apartment. They all left, primarily, because of him. We didn't know this when we moved in because we were kind of in a pinch and needed an apartment when we moved to LA (Another deal had fallen through last minute, so we were forced to take this apartment). The first couple months, Leo would come up to the apartment when I was at work and tell my girlfriend that we make too much noise. At first, we tried to be considerate...not wearing shoes in the apartment, buying an area rug, locking the cats out of our bedroom at night (Our bedroom is directly above his bedroom and we tried to be courteous and not let the cats wake Leo at night). After about a year of our placating to Leo's instability, he became more aggressive with his harassment. Once, when I was not home, he threatened to send his 35 year old "adopted son" to bother my girlfriend. As a result, she insisted on us sleeping with a bat and a knife in our bedroom. A couple weeks after that, our old out-of-building apartment managers were fired and Leo was made manager of our apartments. That's when our tires started getting slashed whenever we had to have him fix something with our apartment: clogged pipes, broken doors, windows that don't close, a busted furnace, etc. We even called Housing to do an inspection and they told our landlord and by extension, Leo, that had to comply with the issues. it's been about a year since that inspection and they still haven't fixed everything.
Every time, without fail, a day after something was to be fixed in our apartment that we had to knock on Leo's door for, our tires would get slashed. We've had our tires slashed 4 times now, costing us about $1200. We decided to put a camera up in our covered parking space, and we made sure to let Leo know we were putting it up. We know it was his "son" who was doing it because his "son" is the only one in the building who we have a beef with and the only one with the tools necessary to slash tires (Slashing tires is not as simple as one might think).
Anyway, since the camera's been up, Leo has been just as aggressive with the harassment. he's called the cops on us so many times for "noise". The cops have come to our apartment at least 4 times. Each time, we have gotten the cops' cards and logged down the activity in our "Leo Big Book of Harassments". Every time the cops come by, though, they can't do anything. We're just at the end of our ropes. We would love to move out of the apartment, but we're not financially ready to do that and won't be for a while, and we don't want to move out of one bad situation hastily into another. We've already filed a police report against him for our slashed tires, but what else can we do? He pounds on his ceiling (Our floor), it startles the cats and makes them run around even more on our hardwood floors. Our landlord won't do anything because she's a 90 year old Russian slumlord who says she "just wants peace" whenever we call her. We're basically in a real bad situation and we need some advice as to how we can get him to stop through legal means. We've wanted to retaliate...especially when it comes to our car. But Leo's basically set himself up as queen bee in our complex, giving his son a caged parking spot where no one can get to his car, and embedding himself in the same apartment for 15+ years.
We thought about calling Immigration to report an illegal alien, but we don't know how to do that. We also aren't entirely sure if he;s a citizen or not. One thing's for sure...he pretends he doesn't speak English very well, yet he manages to call the cops every single time our cats scamper around, or I drop a remote on the floor like I did last night that resulted in pounding at 10:30PM at night.
What can we do?
My girlfriend and I live in an apartment above an old, queen-ish Spanish immigrant (From Spain), who constantly harasses us. We've been living above him for almost 2 years now. Our apartment has hardwood floors and we have two cats which our landlord allowed us to have in the apartment. The neighbor, Leo, has been living in that same bottom-floor apartment for at least 15 years. In that time, we found out, there have been close to a dozen different tenants who lived in our apartment. They all left, primarily, because of him. We didn't know this when we moved in because we were kind of in a pinch and needed an apartment when we moved to LA (Another deal had fallen through last minute, so we were forced to take this apartment). The first couple months, Leo would come up to the apartment when I was at work and tell my girlfriend that we make too much noise. At first, we tried to be considerate...not wearing shoes in the apartment, buying an area rug, locking the cats out of our bedroom at night (Our bedroom is directly above his bedroom and we tried to be courteous and not let the cats wake Leo at night). After about a year of our placating to Leo's instability, he became more aggressive with his harassment. Once, when I was not home, he threatened to send his 35 year old "adopted son" to bother my girlfriend. As a result, she insisted on us sleeping with a bat and a knife in our bedroom. A couple weeks after that, our old out-of-building apartment managers were fired and Leo was made manager of our apartments. That's when our tires started getting slashed whenever we had to have him fix something with our apartment: clogged pipes, broken doors, windows that don't close, a busted furnace, etc. We even called Housing to do an inspection and they told our landlord and by extension, Leo, that had to comply with the issues. it's been about a year since that inspection and they still haven't fixed everything.
Every time, without fail, a day after something was to be fixed in our apartment that we had to knock on Leo's door for, our tires would get slashed. We've had our tires slashed 4 times now, costing us about $1200. We decided to put a camera up in our covered parking space, and we made sure to let Leo know we were putting it up. We know it was his "son" who was doing it because his "son" is the only one in the building who we have a beef with and the only one with the tools necessary to slash tires (Slashing tires is not as simple as one might think).
Anyway, since the camera's been up, Leo has been just as aggressive with the harassment. he's called the cops on us so many times for "noise". The cops have come to our apartment at least 4 times. Each time, we have gotten the cops' cards and logged down the activity in our "Leo Big Book of Harassments". Every time the cops come by, though, they can't do anything. We're just at the end of our ropes. We would love to move out of the apartment, but we're not financially ready to do that and won't be for a while, and we don't want to move out of one bad situation hastily into another. We've already filed a police report against him for our slashed tires, but what else can we do? He pounds on his ceiling (Our floor), it startles the cats and makes them run around even more on our hardwood floors. Our landlord won't do anything because she's a 90 year old Russian slumlord who says she "just wants peace" whenever we call her. We're basically in a real bad situation and we need some advice as to how we can get him to stop through legal means. We've wanted to retaliate...especially when it comes to our car. But Leo's basically set himself up as queen bee in our complex, giving his son a caged parking spot where no one can get to his car, and embedding himself in the same apartment for 15+ years.
We thought about calling Immigration to report an illegal alien, but we don't know how to do that. We also aren't entirely sure if he;s a citizen or not. One thing's for sure...he pretends he doesn't speak English very well, yet he manages to call the cops every single time our cats scamper around, or I drop a remote on the floor like I did last night that resulted in pounding at 10:30PM at night.
What can we do?
