Drug dealers and manufacturers have common habits that are easily observed. Listed below are some of the 10 signs your neighbor is a drug dealer. If you observe a combination of these activities you can take certain measures to be absolutely sure.
Keep reading to find out more and don’t hesitate to report suspicious findings to the police in order to keep your home and neighborhood safe from illicit drugs.
10 Signs Your Neighbor Is a Drug Dealer
- There is a strong chemical odor coming from the home, garbage, or garage
- Strange items appearing in the trash including kitty litter, methanol cans, lithium (batteries), veterinary products, large empty bags of salt, sulfuric acid, paint thinner, antifreeze, drain cleaner, brake fluid, acetone, plastic bottles with holes at the top
- Frequent visitors both during the day and night
- Neighbors seem very secretive, unfriendly, paranoid, and in general display odd behavior
- Windows are blackened or curtains are permanently drawn
- There are excessive ‘keep out’ and ‘beware of dog’ signs
- There are a lot of ventilation systems around the home like fans on windows
- Open exchange of drugs and money
- A sudden increase in criminal activity
- Residents often leave the home to smoke (this is because smoking cigarettes near meth can cause an explosion)
According to the Guardian, there are also signs that you should consider if you suspect your neighbor has a cannabis farm next door.
- ‘Smell – Follow your nose. A cannabis crop takes about three months to produce. During the final four weeks, the plants stink.
- Light – Growers can’t get away from the fact that internal farming requires a lot of it: 2,000 watts running 12 hours a day in a small bedroom looks a lot like the sun, so look out for windows that are constantly blacked out to cover that up. Cannabis farms in spare rooms will have the tell-tale sign of curtains that never open.
- Heat – Those lights also give off a lot of heat, so the old theory was that the house growing cannabis in the loft would be the one with no snow on the roof in winter. But nowadays growers use internal tents, which isolate a lot of the heat. This makes farms harder for police to spot using their infra-red cameras.
- Ventilation – Growers need to ventilate the plants with large extractor fans, which generally emit a low hum. If every morning, at exactly the same time, it sounds as if someone next door is starting up their hovercraft, then it’s probably a cannabis farm warming up for the day.
- Security – Growers live in a paranoid world, always wondering when their door is going to get kicked in – not only by the police but by “enforcers”, violent criminals who make their living by stealing cannabis crops. For that reason, many of them adopt Fort Knox-like security. Portcullises on the doors, bars on the windows and even CCTV cameras are not uncommon.
- Activity – Not all farms are inhabited by the grower so watch out for signs that there is no one actually living there: unkempt front gardens, or if your neighbor never leaves out any bin bags on collection day.
- Good neighborliness – If the grower is in residence then it can go the opposite way. Perhaps the most surprising tell for having a grower next door might be their over-the-top neighborliness as they overcompensate in their efforts not to annoy you or make you suspicious as to what they’re up to.’
How to Confirm Signs Your Neighbor is Cooking Drugs
Illicit drugs have been a problem in the United States and around the world for decades. media profiles amongst other information. According to the New York Times,
“Almost 64,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016, a shocking 54 percent increase since 2012. Dangerous opioids such as heroin and fentanyl contributed to two-thirds of the deaths. This killer knows no geographic, socioeconomic or age limits. It strikes city dwellers and Midwestern farmers, Hollywood celebrities and homeless veterans, grandparents and teenagers.
Remarkably, law enforcement efforts actually declined while deaths were on the rise. Federal drug prosecutions fell by 23 percent from 2011 to 2016, and the median drug sentence doled out to drug traffickers decreased by 20 percent from 2009 to 2016.”
If you have seen a number of the above, they might be signs your neighbor is cooking drugs. There might still be a question in your mind as to whether you wish to report them before making sure. Keeping your neighborhood safe for yourself and your family is vital, but you can make sure of your suspicions by completing an online background check.
A background check will come up with information regarding arrests, convictions of felonies, court records, warrants, sex offenses, contact information, incarceration records, and social media profiles. The best background checks will require you to sign up for a subscription, but there are also some solid free options available.
Best Background Checks for Checking up on Your Neighbors
#1 BeenVerified
BeenVerified will offer you a lot more information than what you can come up with when doing a simple Google search. This background check company searches public records allowing you to access all of it in one convenient report. All you need is the name of the suspected drug dealer and you can use BeenVerified’s powerful People Search.
The BeenVerified check will come up with information such as:
- Residential history
- Telephone numbers
- Email addresses
- Immediate relatives (including those that are deceased)
- Social media profiles
- Available educational and employment information
- Photos
- Criminal records
- Case numbers
- County records
- Arrest details
- Bankruptcies
- Traffic records
- Bankruptcies
To perform a criminal record search, you will need to enter the first and the last name of the person as well as their city and state of residence. If there are signs your neighbor is a drug dealer, chances are it isn’t their first rodeo, and they would have probably gotten in trouble with the law previously.
BeenVerified will provide you with public arrest records including information regarding when and if they were first arrested as well as why. You can sign up with BeenVerified for $22.86 per month, $14.86 per month for three months, or $9.83 per month for six months. Although it might be a little more expensive than some other options, BeenVerified has a reputation for coming up with information that its competitors cannot find.
An additional fee of less than $20 will allow you to use their court runner service which will provide you with information from criminal court records that haven’t yet been digitized. The flat fee also includes any court fees that are incurred during the process.
There is a dedicated app for both iOS and Android devices allowing you to run reverse telephone lookups too. Whilst customer support is not available 24/7, you can contact the support team between 8 am and 10 pm during weekdays and 10 am and 8 pm on weekends.
Read more about BeenVerified in our extensive review.
Run Background Checks And Get Information With BeenVerified Right Now
#2 TruthFinder
TruthFinder rounds up our best background check for following up on signs that your neighbor is making drugs. Many background check services rely heavily on public records, which can sometimes be out of date.
On the other hand, TruthFinder is a great choice due to its depth of updated information, allowing more accurate findings than its competitors. In saying that, TruthFinder will go back as long as fifteen years in terms of the content of your report. There are iOS and Android apps available which means you can make your background check wherever you are.
You can expect to find the following information in a TruthFinder report:
- Home addresses
- Criminal records
- Social media profile search
- Educational information
- Weapon permits
- Current or former roommates
- Deep web search
- Reverse email lookup
- Reverse phone lookup
- Property search
- Interactive map of registered sex offenders
On top of all this, they are incredibly easy to work with and all you need to give is the bare minimum information about the subject of your search, such as:
- Their name
- Their surname
- City
- State
You can sign up for a reverse phone membership at just $4.99 per month which will look up a search based on phone details, however, it won’t provide a complete background check report.
There are a few membership options including $27.78 per month, $46 for two months, or three months for $69.07. remember that your subscription will be renewed automatically unless you cancel your subscription prior to the end of the month.
Read more about TruthFinder in our extensive review.
Find The True on Every Matter With TruthFinder Service Right Now
#3 PeopleLooker
Another excellent background check service is PeopleLooker. The best part about this service is that is faster than most of its competitors. It will provide you with a preliminary report within two minutes, with the full report being downloadable in just five minutes or less.
This background check company gathers its data from public records including state, county, and federal as well as searching social media platforms such as Instagram LinkedIn, and Facebook.
In addition to doing a people search, you can do a reverse phone number search, property search or an email search. As soon as your report is completed, it will be separated into sections allowing you to easily skim over information.
Reports generated by the company can return the following information regarding a person:
- Full name
- Maiden name
- Known aliases
- Address history with “last seen” date
- Current address
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Satellite imagery and access to an in-depth property report for current addresses
However, its property search function can also generate the following results:
- An individual’s current and historical real estate assets with detailed property info
- Satellite maps
- Property tax amounts
- Home value
- Building specs.
- Buyer/seller info
- Sales prices
- Co-owners
- Parcel numbers
- Country assessor data
Finally, PeopleLooker can delve into a person’s criminal history and find out these data points:
- Arrest or conviction records
- Outstanding Warrants
- Traffic violations
- Speeding tickets
- Detailed offense records, including the date and location of the crime
- Federal, state, county, and local court databases
- Most Wanted lists
You can expect to pay a monthly price of $18.28 per month which allows you unlimited reports, unlimited sex offender searches, criminal records, email, property, and phone look-ups. On the other hand, you can choose to opt for the three-month plan which is cheaper at $14.62 and provides the same. It should be noted that the three-month subscription is billed as a lump sum.
One of the best features of PeopleLooker is that it has excellent customer support.
“We offer live customer support services, 7 days a week. If you have questions about the process or simply need help, you can call us, toll-free, at 1-800-218-3309, 8 am-10 pm Monday-Friday and 10 am-8 pm Saturday and Sunday. Or you can email us at [email protected].”
Read more about PeopleLooker in our extensive review.
Reporting a Suspected Drug Dealer
If you have suspicions that your new neighbor is a drug dealer, any information that you can provide the authorities in preventing drug activity in your neighborhood is helpful as the dangers involved are serious.
“Toxic chemical fumes, spills, explosions, and fires make meth labs dangerous places. Meth cooks, their family members, and first responders are often the ones who are injured (or worse) in illegal drug labs. Waste dumped from meth labs can expose people to toxic chemicals. People picking up litter on the side of a road have been injured from meth lab waste dumps.
Exposures to high levels of contaminants found in meth labs can cause shortness of breath, cough, chest pain, dizziness, lack of coordination, chemical irritation, and burns to the skin, eyes, mouth, and nose, and in severe cases, death. Symptoms such as headache, nausea, dizziness, and fatigue have occurred in people who entered a meth lab after the bust was completed, but before the property was properly cleaned and ventilated. If you experience any of these symptoms, contact your health care provider.
Not much is known about the long-term health effects of these labs. Long-term exposure to meth labs is a big concern, especially for children living in a very contaminated environment. However, there is scientific evidence from animal and human toxicity studies that shows the chemicals used in the manufacture of meth can cause a range of health effects. These include cancer, damage to the brain, liver and kidneys, birth defects, and reproductive problems, such as miscarriages.”
Coming forward about your suspicions even with minor details could provide the police with the right information to shut down a lab.
‘”They do not need to actually have facts to contact Crime Stoppers … just holding a suspicion that something is not quite right on your local street or neighborhood or as a result of something you’ve heard is enough,” she said.
Callers to Crime Stoppers can remain anonymous.
“The biggest barrier to them actually talking to the police is that this is someone who lives with me, a loved one, a work colleague; it might be that they are actually on the fringe of criminal activity so they are worried about retribution.”’
Contacting Crime Stoppers anonymously either online or via telephone you should try to include the following details:
- The address where you suspect drug activity to be happening
- Full names of any suspects
- Related vehicles including make, model, and license plate
- When people frequent the home, times, how long they stay and how often they come
- Information regarding any packages being exchanged
- The names of other people living in the home
- Are there any children or dogs residing there?
- Any other information the authorities should be informed about
Conclusion
Feeling safe in and around your home is a priority for everyone. Keeping your neighborhood safe from illicit drugs goes a long way in creating a safe neighborhood for yourself, your children, friends, and the community in general. If you are seeing signs that your neighbor is making drugs and have high suspicions, your best bet in confirming them is to undertake an online background check.
Upon signing up with one of our top online background check services, your report can be completed in minutes and you can be one step closer to understanding what is happening around you. Never hesitate to report your suspicions to the authorities as you can do so anonymously.