If I wasn’t on my bloody awful phone I’d post the classic line from The Magnificent Seven.
I can tell you from experience that in the USA anyways, it comes down to reasonable expectation of privacy. If you are walking around your house butt necked and the windows are open I can and will take pictures of your nakedness.
You should have just had fun with it. Put on chicken hats and had a religious ceremony. Or invite a bunch of foreigners over and have a meeting with a visible whiteboard that said something like. " plans for destroying Taiwan culture" and had like bullet points and stuff.
Peaple in general can be mean petty and stupid but I have found Taiwan people to posses less of these traits than some other nationalities.
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Americans,I mean as Americans we can be pretty mean petty and stupid
Oooooh ooooh you should have had a puppet show. Damn I miss taiwan
Or took pictures of the other family had them blown up into cardboard cutouts and pretended they were your own family.
You could have walked around with an enormous 3 foot long strap on dildo. (Different color of course)
You could have pretended to drink your own urine
everyday
Stage a fake murder and pretend to chop up a body and cook it in the oven then bring them a roast the next day.
Soooo many posibilites. You are so lucky
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I’d be pretty pissed to be recorded by a neighbor. It doesn’t help you now but a good solution would be to call the police non emergency line as the lines are monitored and insist on an officer visiting your home. They can’t ignore you when their call is being recorded. Then you can point out the camera and ask them to speak to the neighbor about it. Damaging their camera played right into their hands
You may want to speak to your lawyer as they may be willing to take a cash settlement in exchange for dropping the charges.
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What’s a man to do when the law isn’t enforced by the people meant to enforce it.
Makes you want to go all gangster on people and take things into your own hand. That’s probably why gangsters still have a use here and survive. There’s a market for them.
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I’m sorry to hear of your troubles, Taco. Although some of us (including myself) disagree with you about how you’ve handled the situation and may also take exception to your views on immigration and so on, we can still try to offer helpful advice.
Ask your lawyer whether or not the police are obligated to examine complaints written in English. If they have behaved negligently, the Control Yuan should know about it. (They have taken action on this sort of thing in the past.)
You are definitely entitled to an interpreter in court, if your case goes to trial, but in general, legal documents need to be in Chinese. (And unfortunately you can’t rely on court interpreters – some are good at what they do, and some aren’t.)
Note to everyone:
There will be no further insinuations in this thread that asking gangsters for help is ever a good idea. There will be no further warnings about this either. 
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I think the OP has not wanted any help here. Just blowing off steam. And giving some warnings.
The OP was wrong I think but two wrongs don’t make a right, especially when the law only admits one wrong in this case (damaging property ).
Taiwan way to do stuff is usually really sneaky shu
It and not get caught.
Attacking cars, cutting lines, gossiping, anybody who has lived in an old crowded neighbourhood may have experienced these things.
Recording someone from a camera constantly pointed at their house, not cool. I have kids and a wife I would get seriously angry at somebody doing they. It seems the police didn’t treat the OPs complaints well because he doesn’t have local in-laws .
Why did you have to damage thier property?
What is it with you people? Either ignoring noise complaints as an other post or stealing and destroying personal property like this one.
You’ve been here ten years. I’ve had these problems but had the help of a local spouse or girl friend. You didn’t own the home and wasn’t stuck in the place like we were…
I would have just moved.
Really, you could have gotten local help, either a good legal savy local to write the original complaint against the people for the harassment and the camera.
Did you record with your camera phone the video and sound of the harassing you publicly. Quietly building a threatening case against your neighbors with videos and documentation and a smooth talking local friend could have allowed you to have a discussion that would end in you all agreeing
that it was a misunderstanding. Or, if you could not get anywhere you could have just moved out.
Maybe you need to get another lawyer if you feel you’re not making much progress.
And never never never do anything on your own or at the spur of the moment without consulting with a local friend.
It really doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived here but, it’s not really about that. These kind of issues happen every day among locals. If this happened in the United States I would have consulted an expert in the field or a lawyer.
you really need to speak to somebody and get an estimate about what’s going to happen and how long the case could be drawn out. Maybe there is a time limit on how long charges can be left in limbo.
Don’t many people in your situation a file counter suits? I’m no expert but I believe the police must accept your counter claim.
vi
I suffer a number of anxieties and problems too and when I was in these situations, I was able to get a clear picture of how long, what is required, and the worst thing that could happen.
Since I always complied with requests for information and never damage people’s personal property the uncomfortable situations blew over.
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Just as an aside be aware that living in a rooftop tends to limit your legal standing. Neighbors have a right of access to the roof which means your general right to privacy is affected. 99% of Taiwanese respect local practice rooftop rights and don’t encroach. But in the eyes of the law rooftops aren’t strictly legal, I think that’s why the police in this case are so useless.
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When it comes to the police start from an assumption of zero competence and work your way up. Oh yeah and never sign any shit they shove in your face.
OP needed to file a suit against the neighbours. It didn’t even matter if he could win or not, just to piss them off and waste their time like they are doing to him now. That’s the way it works here.
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If they put up a camera again, you could buy a bright LED light and point it on the camera to blind it. Make sure the bulb also emits infrared to blind the night sight.
Destruction of property is a bad move in Taiwan.
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I was thinking this. The only downside is you would have probably found yourself to be “famous” on some low-ratings TV show, or on a dodgy website.
Thanks for the shout out, @RickRoll
@the_bear is correct about the relative lack of legal protection about rooftop apartments. Also, construction quality is variable, so rent at your own risk.
On the plus side, you get a substantial rent discount and can do DIY modifications without consequences. That plus you get plenty of outdoor space for barbecuing, growing plants, brewing, distilling and sunbathing. Think living in Miami minus alligators and very old people and plus some regular wah-gah-li-gongs.
To be fair, I have a great relationship with most of my neighbors: I give them bottles of moonshine for CNY and invite them over for mahjiang nights and in return they don’t report me for excessive noise.
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The camera was their property. You destroyed it. That’s illegal virtually everywhere. Having said that, I am quite sympathetic to your situation.
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op, you need to vent on this situation. the fact is you didn’t act well by damaging their camera. and the other fact is they are acting like wankers. you should record your experience and vent about it publicly. they will soon change their tune if shamed publicly.
other than that, move out or keep fighting them but it seems they have more energy and time to fight you than you do. so thats not a good idea.
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NEVER, EVER SIGN ANYTHING!!
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