Sometimes a third party is needed to intervene in a neighbor dispute, on occasion just to collect evidence to prove an event really happened. Rick Roy of Rix Investigations, a private investigations agency based in Phoenix, Arizona, is an old hand when it comes to neighbor disputes. Here, he discusses what a private investigator can do.
We just finished a neighbor dispute case two weeks ago. In this particular case, a man knew that his next-door neighbor was growing pot in his house, so he turned him into the police. The police never found the pot.
As a result, the neighbor was furious with the guy that reported him. So we had to send people over for their own security. We sent over a combat medic trained in the military, we left him there with the family until the dispute was resolved. In the end, the man accused of growing the pot moved house.
Other cases of neighbor disputes can involve:
- Theft
- Spousal infidelity – maybe it’s the neighbor he caught him with
- Property damage
- Petty arguments turned nasty
- Problems with teenage or grown children
- Animal disputes
If there is a neighbor dispute and somebody comes to us, our job is to gather the evidence and provide proof of evidence, if needed. This is so when somebody calls the cops and say, “This guy threatened me and pointed a gun at me,” we can prove it really happened. Our whole goal as private investigators hired to help settle a neighbor dispute is to catch that person and to have evidence and be able to prove it.
In Colorado recently, a petty fight over two dogs between neighbors led to a double shooting, in which one man was killed and a woman injured. The dispute centered around whether or not a dog disturbed some chickens on the neighbor’s property. It’s easy to see how neighbor disputes can get so out of hand – and why intervention or help from a private investigator can be so beneficial.
