Tresspassing in America

I had an unexpected brush with the police today.

For family reasons, I continue to spend my time between Florida and California. In both places, we rent an apartment. In California, I stay with my parents and my youngest son.

Several weeks ago, I was away from California, and my Mom and stepdad reported this incident: someone from the floor above was pouring hot water that was partially landing on a small balcony of our first-floor apartment. My stepdad even recorded a short video — you could see the water and its steam. My parents asked the neighbors to be more careful. I don’t know how exactly they asked; their English is broken. It was probably a simple “stop”. The response they received was “Shut up.”

We assumed the water was being poured by the cleaners, not the apartment tenants. I reported the incident to the apartment complex's office, but despite following up, I never received a response.

Today, as I was stepping out with my son for a short run late in the afternoon, my stepdad chased me to say that it was happening again — the pouring of the water from above.

There are three floors in our building. I went to the top one; a very polite man greeted me and assured that they weren’t pouring anything out of their window; he even invited me to go inside and check. I then knocked on the door of the apartment on the second floor, but no one answered. There was no doorbell, so I pushed the handle; the door wasn’t locked. I continued to knock on the partially open…