Extreme weather sweeps family's bench swing into their neighbor's yard, neighbor puts up 'no trespassing’ signs and begins to use their bench swing so they can't retrieve it

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    Neighbors stole our bench swing and then pointed it facing our property
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    We moved to our current house back in January. We have a situation and if anyone has advice it would be appreciated. When we moved here, our house had a bench swing installed and facing the creek in our backyard.
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    We also had a swing set. A few months ago, we were hit hard by flooding and it took out the bench swing and the swingset, carrying them hundreds of feet. The swingset ended up mangled in the trees on the edge of the property line, and the bench
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    swing went into our neighbor's property across their driveway into some thicket (we live in the country). We spent a couple of weeks trying to clean up after and got the swingset down and out (it was metal and bent around a lot of things), but the bench
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    swing was still there. Right after getting the swingset fully out of the trees, the neighbors put up no trespassing signs, preventing us from going into their property and cutting out the bench. We
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    figured it's fine, we'll leave it, and when see them we'll talk to the neighbors and ask to get it out. At that point we hadn't met them yet. Every time we've seen them since they stuck the sign up, they've avoided us like the
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    pl have called the cops in us (for literally no reason, and they've sided with us each time), have yelled at us for getting close to their property line (but not even on their property), driven by slowly while my kids have been playing outside...the list goes on.
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    We haven't had a chance to remove the rest of our belongings due to this. We're trying not to be jerks or do anything illegal by trespassing but we're also not sure why they have such an issue with us.
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    Now to the main reason for the post. That bench swing? I noticed it this morning... hanging on posts on their property, in a way that they can watch what's going on in our yard once the leaves fall off the trees. How do I know it's our bench? It wasn't there before, the
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    old bench isn't in the thicket anymore, and our bench had a very specific pattern to it. They didn't even offer to give it back after not letting us get it, they just took it and used it. I have photos of it pre-flood taking it away so I can confirm it's ours.
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    Is there anything we can do to get it back, sans calling the cops since they refuse to talk to us? Would they even do anything? Are we SOL because it was on their property for a few months (even though they wouldn't let us legally retrieve it to begin with)?
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    It's not the end of the world but at the same time, it's a serious They have no trespassing signs EVERYWHERE and seem like they have a screw loose so I don't think going up and knocking on their door is an option either as I don't want to get at or have the cops called on us for no reason again.
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    Edit to add: since so many people seem to be fixated on how long the cleanup took- for clarification the swingset and bench swing were the only things mentioned because they're all that are relevant to things "ending up in/near their property." We had
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    weeks worth of debris cleanup and repairs due to damage to our house and garage. So yes, home repairs came before anything else and cleanup took time. I have a special needs child and a full time job. Sometimes things take time and you have to
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    prioritize. The swingset was also literally wrapped around trees with tons of debris so it took a few days and tools to cut through metal to get it removed. We had a lot of items end up in our yard that didn't belong to us
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    that we immediately posted online to try to find the owners of because we're not and the stuff didn't belong to us. We returned as much of it as we could as we found things to the people who were missing them.
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    Meanwhile, these neighbors left the debris on their property everywhere as their house wasn't effected. Their property is still covered in untouched debris months later.
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    Kittytigris • 19h ago I think you do need to involve the cops at this point since they refused to interact with you. I'd let the cops know that the neighbors refused to interact with me so I can't get my stuff back from them
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    and could they spare someone to just speak with the neighbor to get the swing back? Make sure you have pics or receipts or anything that proves the swing is yours and show it to the cops. Worse comes to worse, you might have to file charges for theft.

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