Update 11/4/07:  John Walker Henderson rescued dogs. His neighbors were hoping someone would rescue them, too - from the racket his dogs made.

In October, a judge ruled that while Henderson had a right to keep the dogs he loved, his neighbors in the Westgate Village community where he lived had a right to some peace and quiet.

"This is not the Wild, Wild West any longer," Nashua District Court Judge David Kent told Henderson after a two-day trial during which Henderson - the son of former Nashua police officer Robert Henderson - fought the eight violations and three misdemeanor charges police lodged against him in the summer and fall of 2006.

The dogs, six in all, were at the center of those charges and a neighborhood feud that raged around Robert and Jan Henderson's residence, where John Henderson and the dogs lived throughout the second half of last year.

Neighbors said the noise only ended when police finally took the dogs, but the family immediately hired a lawyer and got them back on the condition the animals not remain in the city. Robert Henderson retired from his job a week later, ending 35 years of service to the city. His family said he was "pushed out."

Last month, the Henderson's, several neighbors and numerous city police arrived at court to tell their versions of what happened in late 2006.

By the following afternoon, Kent found Henderson guilty of all eight violations, but said two officers had overreached their authority when they charged Henderson with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. The judge convicted Henderson on one count of resisting arrest.

Henderson, who said he and his family have already spent thousands of dollars fighting the case, said he plans to appeal.

"I think it was the most unfair trial ever," Henderson said.

The following account is based on court testimony and extensive interviews with the Henderson's and their neighbors.

Neighbors of Robert and Jan Henderson's 16 Valencia Drive residence began calling police in late spring of 2006 to complain that dogs on the Hendersons' property were barking incessantly at all hours of the night and day.

The dogs, the majority of which were mixed American pitbull terriers that John Henderson had rescued, were chained to stakes in the backyard.

Henderson, 30, a devoted fan of the breed, had recently made it his mission to take in abused or traumatized dogs, including one that was a Hurricane Katrina victim, and "rebuild" the dogs physically and emotionally.

Neighbors were less enthused about his hobby, since they said the slightest sound would cause the pack to start barking.

Police sent to the residence found one of their own, longtime senior relations officer Robert Henderson, supporting his eldest son's argument that the dogs were not a nuisance and that some of the neighbors were doing things to make the dogs bark.

Officers went to the house on several occasions during the next few months, asking the family to control the dogs, but complaints about the barking continued. Neighbors said the barking often went well past the 30-minute period that qualified the noise as a nuisance under a city ordinance.

Furthermore, neighbors were beginning to complain that police weren't doing enough about the barking because Robert Henderson was a cop.

Soon, the bad blood between the Hendersons and the neighbors began to boil.

One neighbor at the rear of the Henderson property put up a security camera facing the Henderson home. John Henderson got his own security camera and hooked it up in the rear of his parents' property.

As the summer wore on, neighbors farther up the street stopped allowing their children to play at the end of the street because they were fearful of the dogs - and of the volatile situation that was brewing in the cul-de-sac.

Eventually, officers began citing Henderson for allowing his dogs to be a nuisance and for being unlicensed. By October 2006, Henderson had been arrested twice on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest in connection with two police visits.

Henderson filed a complaint against one of the arresting officers with the department's Internal Affairs Division, and soon after, members of the department's brass made a visit to the neighborhood to get a firsthand look at the situation.

Tensions peaked in early October 2006 when three neighbors, all of whom had complained, woke up one morning to discover their property vandalized. Nobody was ever charged with causing the damage, but the following week, residents said police became a constant presence on the street. When they weren't going to the Henderson home for complaints about the dogs' barking, one or more officers could be seen sitting in their cruisers at the top of the cul-de-sac.

Then, on Halloween day 2006, the dogs left the neighborhood for good.

City police, including animal control officer Bob Langis and animal control officers from Hudson and Merrimack, went to the Hendersons' home and, after someone cut a padlock off the chain-link fence, removed Henderson's dogs.

John Henderson came home in the middle of the procedure and angrily asked officers for paperwork to verify the legality of the situation, but claimed he never received any.

Instead, Robert and John Henderson were served with complaints for nuisance dogs. A week later, Robert Henderson ended his long career with the police department.

John Henderson moved to Virginia weeks later, and has since returned to the city only for court procedures to address questions about the seizure and charges involving the dogs.

In the meantime, his parents are looking to sell the home in which he grew up.

If you ask some of the residents of Valencia Drive about the summer of 2006, you will immediately hear stories of lost sleep, wrecked study time and no yard time without hearing the din of Henderson's pack of dogs.

"The day they took the dogs was wonderful," said Joe Baldelli, who lives across from the Hendersons.

"Toward the end, I think the police became pro-neighborhood, because for a while there we were wondering if we were getting a fair shake."

Baldelli was one of a group of residents who regularly complained to police about the dogs.

The other neighbors, Daryl and Laurie Blais and David and Ruthann Carrier, whose properties abuts the Hendersons', tell similar stories of Henderson and his dogs.

" 'Sucks to be you,' " Daryl Blais said John Henderson told him one day when he asked Henderson to quiet the dogs because he needed to sleep. David Carrier said he had similar exchanges with Henderson.

They said the dogs seemed to take turns barking, and if any of the abutters went into their backyard, the dogs would get so riled up that they would bark for hours.

Also of concern was the powerful dogs' nature; pitbull terriers are working dogs that have historically been bred for their aggression. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a report that showed pitbulls were responsible for more dog bite-related attacks than any other breed during a 20-year period. Fans of the breed, however, say most attacks are the result of improper handling, lack of socialization or training, or a misreading of pitbull behavior.

"They were aggressive," said Laurie Blais, who said the dogs couldn't be chained near each other or they would fight. "If those dogs ever got loose, somebody would be in big trouble."

And while Robert Henderson made an effort to quiet the dogs when he was home, he and Jan Henderson were often away.

Over time, the neighbors said they devised different ways of coping with the barking. Some closed their homes and ran their air conditioners, even on cool nights, and others said they would take a drive just to get away from it.

As the weather prompted people to open their windows, the noise began affecting residents farther up the street.

Vernon Maine, who lives at 8 Valencia Drive, said the dogs' feverish barking one night prompted him to get out of bed and investigate. "It is not in my nature to go exploring, but I actually thought that something might be wrong," Maine said.

When he reached the Hendersons' home and saw only the dogs barking, Maine said he called the police on his cell phone and grumpily asked the dispatcher to have a listen.

The dogs "were all there baying," he said, "and I held up the phone."

Shortly after, Maine and the rest of the neighbors met at the Westgate Village community center to discuss the problem.

"Some did feel that nothing was going to come of it because Robert Henderson was a police officer," he said.

Not everyone in the neighborhood agreed the dogs were a problem.

"I know for a fact that those dogs were not a nuisance," said Lee Atkins - who described the neighborhood as "cliquey" - said that when an officer came to her home to investigate Henderson's complaint to the department's Internal Affairs Division over his first arrest, she told him he could sit in her living room for a day and listen for himself. The officer never took her up on the offer.

Neighbor Cindy Cloutier agreed the dogs' barking wasn't bad and said the constant police presence at the Henderson home was oppressive.

"We were calling almost daily," Laurie Blais said, adding that when the officers arrived, John Henderson would tell them the neighbors had set the dogs off.

Carrier said that was the story Henderson was telling officer Dennis Lee in the seconds before he witnessed Henderson struggling with Lee in the backyard. The Aug. 13, 2006, incident ended with Henderson's arrest and his subsequent complaint to internal affairs, claiming police brutality.

The police presence ramped up after the incident, Carrier said, and soon after, police Chief Timothy Hefferan came by his home to check out the situation.

On Oct. 11, 2006, Carrier said police searched his yard in the late-night hours, stating that John Henderson had reported a prowler. Finding nothing, the officers left, but returned later after getting complaints that the dogs were barking. That visit ended with Henderson's second arrest, this time for not quieting his dogs.

A week later, Laurie Blais said she was pulling out of her driveway on her way to work when she noticed her freshly planted chrysanthemums strewn across her yard and porch.

Across the street that morning, the cobalt-blue paint job on Baldelli's truck bore fresh gashes, and around the corner, the Carriers discovered shattered windows on both their vehicles. Police investigated the vandalism, but never arrested anybody for it, Carrier said.

Not long after that, police took Henderson's dogs. Most of the residents weren't home when it happened.

"I don't know how they justified taking the dogs," Baldelli said. "But it took that to quiet this area down, because this place was getting ready to explode."

Police never did produce a warrant allowing them to cut the padlock on the Hendersons' chain-link fence, enter his yard and take the dogs.

Hillsborough Assistant County Attorney Michele Battaglia, representing the police department, argued in court documents that police didn't need one. She argued police had the right to take custody of a dog from anybody who failed to abate nuisance violations.

At a July 6 hearing, however, police dropped all the violations issued to Robert and John Henderson stemming from the seizure, effectively pushing the question aside.

Three misdemeanors and eight violations against John Henderson remained when the trial finally convened on Oct. 11. Kent allowed evidence and witness statements only from the time of Henderson's first citation on July 27, 2006, to Oct. 11, 2006, the date of his second arrest. Nothing from the day the police seized the dogs was allowed.

On the first day of the trial, the neighbors and the Hendersons sat apart from each other as they gathered in the court lobby. Minutes before the judge entered the courtroom, Jan Henderson sat on a court bench and wept quietly while her son sat with Nashua attorney Steve Maynard at the defense table.

Although her husband refused to talk about the neighborhood feud and any relationship it may have had to his retirement from the police department, Jan Henderson said the situation was the catalyst for that decision.  "We felt he was pushed out," she said.

The emotional and financial impact the neighborhood feud has caused their family has been huge, Jan Henderson says, but she believes her family has done the right thing by standing up to what she sees as bullying neighbors and police.

"It has been a mess. It has been a hard thing," Jan Henderson said. "I guess they just wanted us to kick out our son with all his dogs, and we just couldn't do that."

Robert Henderson is now selling cars and Jan Henderson continues to work as a home nurse.

Life has been less hectic for John Henderson since he moved to Alberta, Va., in November 2006. The rural countryside with which he fell in love while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps agrees with him and his dogs, he said.

Henderson stays in the city only long enough to fight his case in court, saying he doesn't want to give local police any opportunities for retaliation.

In his testimony in court, John Henderson explained that in 2005, after four years in the military, he returned to New Hampshire. He had already begun rescuing abused pitbull terriers by then, he said, and shortly after coming home, he moved to Groton, MA, with a girlfriend. In the spring of 2006, his relationship ended and he returned to his parents' home, he testified.

By that time, Henderson said he had six dogs: Leroy, Cosmo, Dopey, Argo, Hooker and Storm, who was a victim of Hurricane Katrina, he said.

Initially, Henderson said he didn't bring all the dogs to his parents' home. Instead, he kept some of the dogs in Unity and some in Massachusetts, keeping only two at his parents' home while he looked for a rural place to move.

John and Robert Henderson testified that the neighbors, especially Carrier and Daryl Blais, constantly antagonized the dogs.

Taking the stand, Carrier refuted the claims that he did anything to antagonize the dogs other than just being in his yard.

"There was no reason for us not to be there," Carrier said of the trial. "If they would have just gone out and taken care of the dogs, we wouldn't have been there. It was not about retaliation. I just wanted some peace."

Carrier and Daryl Blais said Robert Henderson shared a lot of the blame for the situation, especially since he was a police officer and should have known better.

When police kept showing up at the his parents' home, John Henderson said he became nervous about leaving his two dogs alone for any length of time and brought the other four animals there. He said the neighbors didn't like that and began complaining more.

In court, Henderson said he told officers the neighbors were exaggerating about the barking.  "The dogs are not capable of barking for half an hour," Henderson testified. "I have a couple that don't bark at all. I have never heard them bark."

Often, it was the arrival of police that often got the dogs going when they walked up to the home, John Henderson said.

And as the police visits increased, so did the barking, he said.  "I tried to calm the dogs down, but what was I going to do?" he said. "I had the military in my front yard."

Of the seven police department members who testified, four were officers, two were sergeants and one was the animal control officer. All testified to hearing the dogs barking when they arrived in the neighborhood.

"It was extremely loud," said Sgt. Frank Bourgeois, who claimed he could hear the dogs from Main Dunstable Road as he was heading to Westgate Crossing on the night of Oct. 11, 2006.

Bourgeois was one of several officers and a lieutenant who responded to the home when John Henderson reported seeing someone dressed in all black clothing jump into his backyard. The officers investigated Henderson's claims, but found no evidence of a prowler and left the home.

Later, when the dogs' barking brought them back to the neighborhood, Bourgeois said he told Henderson several times to take the dogs inside to quiet them, and when Henderson refused, he ordered one of the other officers to arrest him for disorderly conduct. Kent later threw out the charge, saying it was improper to charge Henderson with disorderly conduct for something his dogs were doing.

John Henderson said that arrest was retaliation for his complaint to the department's Internal Affairs Division about his first arrest, on Aug. 13, 2006, by officer Dennis Lee.

In court, Henderson said the officers arriving at his home on Oct. 11, 2006, "kind of acted like they wanted to arrest me."

While testifying about the Aug. 13, 2006, arrest, Lee told the court that he responded to the Henderson home shortly after noon to find numerous dogs barking in the backyard. Lee said he walked to the side gate and, after seeing Henderson, asked him to come outside the gate. He said Henderson was argumentative and his body language was aggressive from the start.

On the other side of the gate, Lee said he told Henderson to stay with him because he was investigating a report. Henderson told him, "They are my dogs," and then reached for the gate, so Lee went to arrest him for resisting arrest. When Henderson struggled with Lee while Lee was trying to handcuff him, Lee charged him with a second count of resisting arrest. Lee said he eventually got Henderson handcuffed and took him to the station to be booked on two charges of resisting arrest. He said he never knew Henderson's name until booking.

Henderson testified that the first words out of Lee's mouth were, "Are you John Henderson?" and that when he obeyed Lee's orders to step outside the gate, the officer grabbed him, spun him around and threw him to the ground. Henderson said Lee's knees were in his gut when the officer cursed at him and attempted to throw a punch.

"I went to block the punch and I said, 'What, are you stupid?' " Henderson said.

The next day, Henderson and his girlfriend, Eliza Faucher, who witnessed the incident, lodged complaints about Lee with Lt. James Lima of the Internal Investigation Division.

Although the county attorney's office never turned over the reports from that investigation to Maynard, Kent still allowed the result. Lee was exonerated.

Yet, Kent later ruled that Lee had no right to charge Henderson with the first count of resisting arrest, since Lee never made it clear he was arresting Henderson. Kent did find Henderson guilty on the second resisting arrest charge, though, saying Henderson "certainly" knew he was being arrested when Lee was trying to handcuff him.

On the day his dogs were taken, Henderson said officers had been watching his parents' house, waiting for the opportunity to take the dogs when he was away.

It wasn't until he noticed police following his car that day that he turned around, purposely lost the cruiser and then headed back to his parents' home, he said. Once there, Henderson said he found police.

He said the officers were unnecessarily rough with the dogs when they put them in the animal control vehicles and when he got the animals back two weeks later, they were obviously traumatized.

And Henderson said that is what he is most angry about.  "To rebuild a dog and then see it get abused again was just too much," he said. "They had no right to abuse my dogs. They had no right to even take my dogs."

In September, Henderson said he called the Humane Society to ask for medical records for his animals and was hung up on several times before somebody threatened his arrest if he called back.

The call came back to haunt him at the finish of the first day of his trial, when Henderson walked out of the courtroom to find a police officer waiting to arrest him on a charge of harassment for making the calls.

The surprise arrest was just more police harassment, Henderson said.

Jan Henderson said she and her husband don't regret sticking up for their son and his love of dogs.

The dogs were well behaved, she said, but their breed played into the neighbors' fears. "They were pitbulls, and there were a lot of them," she said.

Henderson said she encouraged John Henderson to file the complaint against Lee.  "I told him, 'As long as you speak the truth, you can't be punished for the truth,' " she said.

However, the complaint just seemed to make the situation worse for her son and especially her husband at the police department, she said.  "He is the one that took the brunt of it," she said of Robert Henderson.

Soon after, it became intolerable for Robert Henderson at the department, and for everyone at home.  "It just went on and on," she said. "It's sad. I think that we were mistreated."

Update 11/13/09:  A former officer is suing the city and its police department, claiming police trespassed at his home, invaded his privacy and ultimately forced him from his part-time post while handling complaints about his son’s dogs.

Robert and Janet Henderson filed suit against the city Oct. 30 in Hillsborough County Superior Court.

Police Chief Donald Conley defended the department’s handling of the neighborhood dispute and said Henderson wasn’t fired, but resigned.  “I believe that when the facts are presented in a court of law, we will prevail,” Conley said.

Henderson had officially retired from the department years ago, but was rehired to work part time as the department’s first senior relations officer. Henderson left the department for good in November 2006, about a week after police came to his house and seized six dogs belonging to his son, John Walker Henderson.

Police cited both Robert Henderson and his son with having “nuisance dogs,” a violation under state law (RSA 466:31), though repeated offenses can rise to a misdemeanor.

The Hendersons charge that police had no permission, warrant or other legal authority to enter their property, and used a bolt cutter to remove a padlock from their gate.

Their suit also charges that the complaint brought against Robert Henderson was “without legal basis,” and intended mainly to coerce Henderson’s son.

Conley said Henderson was cited simply because the dogs were on his property and said he believes the department handled the matter appropriately.

A judge later dropped the complaint against Robert Henderson, but found John Henderson guilty of eight violations and a misdemeanor resisting-arrest charge.

Representing the police department in district court, Assistant Hillsborough Assistant County Attorney Michele Battaglia argued police didn’t need a warrant to seize the dogs, since the Henderson had failed to do anything about the ongoing nuisance violations.

The Hendersons’ lawsuit charges police with trespass, malicious prosecution, invasion of privacy, interfering with his financial interests and inflicting emotional distress. They seek compensation for the emotional distress, lost wages and legal expenses.

The city has until January 2010 to respond to the suit.

Reference:

The Nashua Telegraph