An Adelaide resident has escaped penalty following repeated arrests for not turning down opera music which she loudly played in her apartment.
As Adelaide Now reports, complaints from neighbours led to police visiting Anne Tipping's Oaklands Park unit in October last year and in February and May this year.
In Adelaide Magistrates Court on Monday, prosecutors said Tipping became hostile on the most previous visit from police and turned the music up louder before she was taken away.
She later pleaded guilty to disorderly behaviour and received fines for creating an "environmental nuisance".
Tipping has since moved out of the Housing Trust unit and now reportedly lives next door to a 92-year-old woman who has no objections to the loud opera music.
"You are now not surrounded by people who don’t like opera music at six o’clock in the evening and people who want to go to sleep at 9pm, but you could have saved all this trouble by buying a $20 pair of headphones," Magistrate Sue O'Connor said.
"Then you can get drunk and blast your eardrums out and it won’t affect anyone."
O'Connor suggested that Tipping may not have broken any laws because no testing was undertaken to determine if the music being played was louder than the limit set by the Environment Protection Authority.
"I think SAPOL’s views in relation to noise pollution are underdone," O'Connor said.
"There are state regulations as to how much noise you can emit at certain hours of the day, but at no time did SAPOL bring a noise meter or the EPA to test the levels, so it is not certain that you were breaching the law.
O'Connor went on to say she was "amazed" Tipping, who has reportedly been addressing an alcohol problem, was arrested following the complaints, but suggested it was brought on by her behaviour towards the police.
Though she has escaped with no penalty, Tipping will be forced to pay a victims-of-crime levy.
