@rule:
@body:Vernon Bauldry estimates that the police have been called to his street 15 to 20 times over the two decades he's lived there. Alan Goff claims he's been the subject of police surveillance in the past, activity that peaked during the time he was battling with the city over the condition of his yard.
"When we were going through that process, I don't know if it's just me thinking this, but there were police cars following me all the time," he says. "Police helicopters would buzz our house every hour on the hour. Midnight, two in the morning, three in the morning. "If they're out to get you, they will get you. They'll always say, 'Oh, no, we're not doing anything.' You can never prove it."
Phoenix Police Sergeant Mark Yoshimura confirms that the department is interested in the feud. "It is a police concern," he says. "It's not a police matter."
Yoshimura is supervisor of the Community Action Office of Phoenix Police Department's Squaw Peak Precinct. The office, a comparatively new police program, battles crime by organizing "fight back" campaigns in neighborhoods and working with schools. "There's no crime that has been committed at this point," he says of the Bauldry-Goff imbroglio. "It's not against the law to be in a dispute with your neighbor.
"But a neighborhood dispute such as this could have some relation to police services down the road." Should a crime be committed, he says, the feud will be elevated from police concern to police matter. Yoshimura, who says he visited the neighborhood several years ago on a Bauldry-Goff police call, was reminded of the feud recently during a routine patrol of the area. "I happened to stop and talk to some people just walking down the street," he says. "I asked them if they were experiencing any particular problems or if they had any concerns. They said basically that everything was fine, with the exception of a neighborhood dispute going on."
@rule:
@body:Yoshimura "developed further information" about the feud--he interviewed the Bauldrys--and elected to call in the Community Mediation Program of Terros Inc., a local, nonprofit social service agency whose original purpose was to counsel recreational drug users.
The mediation program, which is partly funded by the City of Phoenix, is a Terros offshoot long removed from the bad-trip, phone-bank days. Its role is to help people settle various kinds of disputes, including tenant-landlord fights, neighborhood noise complaints and pet problems. Program officials claim a high rate of success. Most referrals to the program come from city prosecutors, who use the mediation service as a diversion program once a minor crime has been committed by someone embroiled in a dispute. These mediation participants can avoid criminal charges if their mediated agreement succeeds in settling their differences. Since no crime has been committed, Goff and Bauldry will have to participate voluntarily. The Bauldrys have ended up in mediation before, after violating an Injunction Against Harassment brought by another neighbor, and doubt that this will do much good. "My husband doesn't want to go," says Leona Bauldry. "With Alan, we don't get anywhere." Goff acknowledges he's been contacted by Terros, but believes that it's a tactic on the part of the Bauldrys and their attorney to somehow portray him as a drug abuser, which he denies. "They're trying to slander me and degrade me and harass me any way they can," says Goff, who, after a recent exchange of letters between his attorney and the Bauldrys' lawyer, taped over some of the profane slogans he had displayed on his cars. @rule:
@body:And so it has gone for more than a decade. The old couple watches closely while their neighbor stews over being watched. Other neighbors watch, too, feeling for themselves the effects of Vernon Bauldry's ever-present gaze and fearful of the day Alan Goff feels those effects too deeply. "They're both at fault," says the neighbor who moved away. "Alan has lowered himself to the same level that Vern is on." As for Vern and his level, she says, "I don't know what to say about the man. . . . There's nothing more I can say.
