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player ready...Few snorers can sleep easy in Davis these nights-the noise police are on patrol.
Two weeks ago, a community services officer was dispatched in the dead of night to a duplex in a mostly quiet suburban neighborhood. The crime: “audible snoring.” The fine: $50, according to a citation issued at the behest of an annoyed neighbor.
No gentle hum, this woman’s snoring, but an enthusiastic roar able to penetrate at least one mattress rigged against the common wall to serve as a baffle.
The accused, a 30-year-old, believes an injustice has been done. “It’s an uncontrollable bodily function,” she said. “I didn’t decide to go to bed and say, `Gee, I think I’ll snore tonight.’ “
But does she create a racket as she slumbers? “I guess I do,” said the woman, who asked that her name be withheld. “When I have a cold, I snore. But I don’t have a chronic snoring problem.”
Chris Doherty, the sleep-deprived neighbor who shares a common wall with the woman, said the rumble has been keeping him awake nights intermittently for several months, according to Nick Concolino, a Davis police lieutenant.
“He said the snoring would get very loud at 3 to 4 in the morning,” Concolino said. “He has . . . used earplugs but could still hear it.”
The two neighbors were asked by police to work it out, Concolino said; both agreed to place mattresses against the common wall to muffle the snore.
Apparently the noise was not so easily subdued, and Jan. 31 at about 1 a.m., Doherty summoned police and urged them to issue a citation.
Concolino said the responding officer had little choice. Under the city’s noise ordinance-aimed mainly at rowdy parties by students at the University of California at Davis-“it is unlawful to create any noise which causes discomfort or annoys a reasonable person of normal sensitivity.”
The woman, who said she has had “no complaints” from her husband and two children, will tell a judge at her Feb. 23 court hearing that Doherty is not “a reasonable person of normal sensitivity.” Meanwhile, she is not letting the matter rest there.
The woman has taken her grievance to local politicians. “I do consider it impossible to control due to the fact that I am sleeping at the time,” she wrote in a letter to Davis Mayor Lois Wolk and the City Council. “I truly hope that the council will take a serious look at what has happened to our family.”
Wolk admitted that at first the ruckus made her laugh, but now she says the city must act.
“It became clear that this was serious, had indeed happened, and I became quite indignant,” Wolk said of her conversation with the alleged snorer. “This is not what the noise ordinance is all about. Government does not belong listening at bedroom walls.”