Sandy MaloneVirginia Beach, VA – A man has been blasting racially-charged music and slurs out his window from speakers aimed at his neighbors’ homes and the Virginia Beach Police Department can’t do anything to stop it.
Jannique Martinez and her family moved onto Jessamine Court in the Salem Lakes neighborhood about five years ago, according to WAVY.
Martinez said that four years ago, in 2017, a neighbor started blasting music at an obnoxious volume onto the cul-de-sac from giant speakers mounted in his windows.
“He plays offensive music depending on who is outside,” she explained to WAVY. “It’s just him. He finds a way to just antagonize people.”
Martinez said at that for a long time, he used his speakers “to taunt the entire cul-de-sac” but recently, he has focused most of his negative energy on her and her family.
She told WAVY that she called the police about the music one morning this July when it was particularly loud, and that’s when the neighbor started playing screaming monkey sounds and recordings of the N-word at full volume from speakers directed at her house.
The Martinez family is black.
The mother of three children said her seven-year-old son is terrified of the neighbor and wanted to know what the N-word meant, The Virginian-Pilot reported.
This is in Virginia Beach. A Black family with children is being abused by a racist neighbor who plays this recording screaming the N-word & making monkey noises every time the Black family leaves the house.😳
Police say they can’t do anything about it😐
pic.twitter.com/MNYEKDCy9B— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) October 5, 2021
Martinez said the offensive neighbor has at least eight home security cameras set up filming his neighbors and that he uses motions sensors to set off some of the recordings.
She said that she spent 11 years in the military and her husband is also a veteran, and it’s driving her crazy that law enforcement cannot do anything to stop the harassment on her own property, WAVY reported.
Martinez said she sought help from the Virginia Beach police, the Virginia Beach Magistrate’s Office, and a civil judge, but all of them said they couldn’t do anything to intervene because the neighbor wasn’t doing anything criminal, The Virginian-Pilot reported.
Following numerous media reports about the racially-charged harassment the Martinez family was suffering, the police department posted a statement to social media that explained their lack of action.
— Virginia Beach PD (@VBPD) September 30, 2021
Martinez said she was frustrated but not angry with the police, The Virginian-Pilot reported.
“At the end of the day, the law is the law,” she said. “What more can [the city] do than they’ve already been doing — unless something changes, and unless the law changes.”
Martinez confirmed that the Virginia Fair Housing Office, which is tasked with investigating allegations of “coercion, intimidation, threats or interference with any person in the exercise or enjoyment of their fair housing rights,” was looking into her case, The Virginian-Pilot reported.
She said she has appreciated the support her family has gotten from the community and the people across the nation since their story became public.
On Sept. 24, a crowd of neighbors gathered on the lawn of the man with the speakers to denounce his behavior, The Virginian-Pilot reported.
Martinez said her little boy made his own protest sign that read “Spread Love, Not Hate,” which was what the crowd outside was chanting.
Holly Matkin
