Lack of sleep, bitterness

I will come right out and say that my 16 month old Luke is a very mild-mannered and resilient kid. He is very curious and can keep himself entertained, as long as it involves something he shouldn't be doing, like scaling the washing machine or turning the printer on and off. The one complaint I have about this kid is his blatant disdain toward sleep. He is not a sleeper. Zach and I aren't really sleepers either, but we do like our minimum 7 hours at night. Now Luke will sleep on his own bed for a 6-7 hour stretch. When he does wake up, he goes back to sleep with just a little reassurance from me or Zach. I just expected that he would sleep "better" by now. Luke has an intense need to be close to us, and that I don't mind. In fact, I think it's a very healthy need. What does bother me is when he obviously needs to sleep, but instead puts up a fight that results in us leaving him in his room crying, yelling and screaming for several minutes at a time. This can go on for quite some time before we finally give up, let him walk around zombie-like for the rest of the afternoon and decide to put him to bed early, which usually ends up being a measly half hour early. It can be stressful, and added to that stress is the fact that we live on the third floor of a three-family apartment building.
I am paranoid that Luke's crying will result in our college neighbor calling child services on us. It sounds crazy, but this neighbor has given us reason to feel this way. She once ran to our landlords to complain that there was a baby sleeping out on the landing by himself, with no parents around. My mom and I were 20 feet away in the kitchen with the door open. Luke was sound asleep safely secured in his stroller at the top of our landing. It's like our front porch. Someone from the landlord's office came running over to see about it. At that point Luke was awake and no longer on the landing. Crazy landlord lady just kept repeating "you can't do that. you just can't do that". I told her I hoped she didn't come all the way over here just for that, but while she was here, could she look at our oven which had been broken for three weeks at that point with no sign of repair after numerous complaints. I later called the office and spoke with someone a little more levelheaded, someone who actually has kids, and he apologized. I told them that if it's an issue of not having anything at all on the landing, then I would understand, but this overreaction implied that I was being negligent. I am not negligent. So, I'm a little on edge, and I don't feel good about it. Babies cry, and it's natural and okay for them to cry. I am just a little angered by the screwed up society we now live in. I can appreciate someone taking the time to investigate something troubling, but how about the notion of just talking to someone before running to the RA (resident assistant of a college dorm) to tattle on someone. This happened in May, and I am still bitter about it.