Ask Officer Michelle – Question #355
Posted by nicole
Officer Michelle,
Hi I live in an apartment complex and I saw my neighbors dealing drugs. I called the police and notified the apartments about the activity I witnessed. The apartments don’t seem to be to willing to help me with the situation. What else can I do? We have had a lot of on going problems with these neighbors and I have a young child. I am very concerned about her and our safety.
Dear nicole,
There are several avenues you may take to help rectify this problem. You say that you have called the police before about this problem which means it has been documented that we have been there for narcotics related calls. This will aid in the justification of evictions and letters to the landlord. Call every time you witness an act. Describe the subjects and vehicle descriptions to dispatch so that they can voice the descriptions of the suspect(s) to inbound units. You can tell dispatch that you don’t want to be contacted if you are fearful of retaliation. The officers will see that you don’t want to be contacted at the scene so you can remain anonymous. You may want to leave a phone number for officer to call you if they have follow-up questions. You may want to call the Problem Oriented Policing Team in your area as well. They will be able to focus on this neighborhood problem for a more long term solution.
Finally, I would suggest you call our Narcotic Tip Line at 808-5796 and leave a message about the activity you are witnessing. Again, try to be specific. Give license plate numbers or vehicle descriptions if you have them, suspect descriptions, times of day you are seeing this, etc. One of our investigators will receive the information and process it. They can go from there.
Your landlord must comply with the police department if there is a problem such as this. Failure to cooperate will result in a substantial fine imposed by the city. The Sacramento Police Department has no tolerance for this type of thing. When we find out about problems like this, we hit it head on. I take particular offense in crimes like this being a prior narcotic detective…especially when there are children involved. I’m sorry you are exposed to this. Thank you for your post, and I hope you are able to aid the police department so that we can find these drug dealers a new home in the Sacramento County jail.
Officer Michelle
