California Surveyors Forums

The firm i work for set property corners for a client in San Jose. Two of the corners fell onto the neighbors side of the fence. The front corner was set after explaining that we have the right to do so. Because the neighbor was so difficult to deal with, we set a witness point for the rear corner. The Police were called and it took them a few hours to respond, being this was not a life threatening situation. Our Survey Crew is very busy and did not have time to wait, so they went to their next job. The police came shortly after and told the neighbor it is OK to remove the corner that was set. We contacted the police department and all they said was it is a civil matter and it should be taken up in court. We have contacted the board explaining the situation, but doubt anything will happen from it.

Our Client took video evidence of the corner being removed.
(follow link to view)

http://youtu.be/rctyRDMh5nU

I feel that this Undermines the Whole Survey Profession.

What is the point of having laws if nobody will enforce them? How can we prevent this from happening again?

Drexyl Ekparian, LSIT 7130

If the point is to be reset, also set a witness corner or two. If the client can avoid court that is the best solution, since costs will skyrocket once that happens. Ignore my earlier advice about suing.

I have found the police, especially the ones in the cities, don't really know about that law, or the surveyor's right of entry. Unfortunately this incident could be a source of education for the SJPD.

"....and the visitation of the surveyor might well be set down as a great public calamity." Diehl v Zanger 1878

ekparian, please provide every bit of information you can on the person that actually removed the monument and the incident and provide it to us at BPELSG. We will make contact with all the responsible parties on this and "educate". Please also provide us with the actual video if you have access to it in case it is removed from online.

I would also suggest that a witness monument be set extended into the public ROW as Ryan mentioned and to document that in the pubic record ASAP after that setting.

EDIT: I contacted the Police Department (as Paul suggested) by email with the following message:

Chief Esquivel, I am contacting you in response to a recent incident involving members of your police force, private land surveyors, and public citizens. I am referring to this link posted on the California Land Surveyors Association forum:

http://clsaforum.californiasurveyors.or ... php?t=5818

It appears that your staff authorized and supervised the willful destruction of public property (monument marking a property corner). I am a strong supporter of police enforcement and believe in the protection that members of your profession provide for us. However, in this incident I believe your staff overstepped its authority in advising/supervising the property owner to remove a survey monument set by or under the direction of a licensed land surveyor as a property corner. Once set, that monument is not "owned" by anyone person and is considered in the public domain for the benefit of all citizens. By state law, only a licensed land surveyor has the legal right to remove a monument and that action is only under very specific instances. I recognize that your staff is trying to keep the peace in this situation but this was not an appropriate solution.

I am advising the land surveyor to visit the site again and set a "witness" monument such that it is in the public ROW if possible so as to not be within the physical fenced in area. The witness monument will "witness" the true location of the property corner and the land surveyor will be required to file the appropriate map with the County for public record. This new monument cannot be removed.

I appreciate your understanding and cooperation. Please contact me if you wish to discuss further.

Respectively,
Richard B. Moore, PLS
Executive Officer
Board for Professional Engineers,
Land Surveyors, and Geologists

In addition, it would not hurt for the local CLSA Chapter to distribute their flyers to this police force and meet to educate.

to this fine chap!

https://twitter.com/sjpdchief

Thank you, Ric. We all appreciate your quick response to this incident.

Thank You Ric. I sent you an email that better describes the incident that occurred, who responded (badge numbers) and the clients contact information. By the way, this happened on 11-21-14.

Drexyl Ekparian

I had a "officer of the law" read the CLSA right of entry card - hand it back with the statement "That's for the courts to decide" and send us on our way having to return at a later date.
IMO if the field officer reads the card with the correct legal references and questions it he should be on the phone checking with more knowledgeable cops. Instead, if it's not a common vehicle code violation they don't care and ignore it.

I received a phone call from a Sgt. Angel with the SJPD and we have a very good conversation about what has occurred (to my knowledge) and the importance of survey monuments in general. He was very interested in any laws and publications that explains this information in layman's terms. I directed him to the Board's web site and to the CLSA web site for research. He indicated that he would like to put something together for the purposes of alerting/training their police force on this subject.

I explained what I meant by referring to the witness monument suggestion for replacement and he wanted to know if that was a normal course of action in cases like this or where the actual location was not easily accessible.

I told him that the Board was here if he needed more assistance on that and that the local land surveying community would be helpful also. I believe this is an excellent opportunity for the local CLSA chapter to perform some outreach on the subject of survey monuments and right of entry assistance from local law enforcement. The more they know, they more they can help the land surveyor in the field and the public.

Thanks Ric! Great to see things working out.

Thanks, Ric!

You're on top of things . . . and the profession thanks you.

Also here's a link to a thorough white paper, by L.A. Stevens:

http://www.lsacts.com/documents/Right%2 ... 20V1.6.pdf

Mr. Stevens also recommends that you also notify the local police so they are not "surprised" should there be an internecine conflict between the neighbors.

Happy hollydaze!

Phil - Sonoma

Barrientos house, rough neighborhood. Thank you for being so proactive Ric.

Hopefully, the next monument shall be sufficient in durability and efficiently placed so as not to be readily disturbed,…by a claw hammer.

A surveyor friend moved into a tract home where the front corners fell about 0.2ft onto the sidewalk. After he set his front corners his neighbor came over and asked what he was doing. After explaining that the nail in the lead and tag was the intersection of the 2 properties and the city ROW the neighbor then stated "HALF OF THAT TAG IS ON MY PROPERTY". The surveyor then stated "No, only one quarter. One quarter on yours, one quarter on mine and half on the cities side. The neighbor left muttering to himself.

Attached is a speech that was published in the Novato Police Department training bulletin. I gave the speech to the Marin County Police Chiefs that was attended by all of the chiefs in Marin County, the management of the Highway Patrol and the District Attorney. You may want to pass it along to your local police department, since it has been accepted by other police departments.

Good luck!

How unfortunate, thanks Ric for jumping on this. It becomes really difficult when law enforcement becomes the judge and jury also.

Situations like these help me appreciate the times when I discuss, with adjoining owners, exactly what I am doing, and then walk them around with them to show them everything I did or uncovered. Those neighbors who still disagree with me still appreciated the professional courtesy.

Probably would be a good idea for every area chapter to send that article to the local law enforcement agencies, police and sheriffs, and the State Board to send it to the CHP and State Police.

Deputy Sheriffs and officers on patrol are not likely to be familiar with statutes relating to land surveying, whether monument conservation or right of entry. And they certainly don't want to appear to be uninformed, or to be taking direction from a third party (that would be you, the surveyor) at the site of a conflict, even if you are correct. It's important to have law enforcement familiar with these statutes BEFORE they respond to a call.

Toward that end, CLSA has produced some materials that are meant to be the starting point for discussion and education of LEOs and, more effectively, their watch commanders, so that when these situations are encountered, informed and appropriate actions can be taken.

RE: MONUMENT CONSERVATION RESOURCES
For your use as a monument conservation information tool (attached):
http://www.californiasurveyors.org/monc ... Email).pdf

RE: RIGHT OF ENTRY RESOURCES
There are two trifolds available from the CLSA Store relevant to right of entry:
A Land Surveyors Guide to Right of Entry
Right of Entry for Land Surveyors - Information about Rights and Responsibilities for Property Owners or Tenants and Law Enforcement
These two trifolds are for the land surveying community and for the public/law enforcement community, respectively.
Since these two items are an item for sale, I will solicit the ability to post these on this thread after the first of the year.
Right of Entry Kits
This package contains door-hangers, some of the trifolds above and a right of entry card with the relevant laws for presentation to property owners and/or law enforcement.

Also, the Board of Directors has approved the distribution of a number of items from the CLSA store - FOR FREE - to each chapter on request at the beginning of the year. A request for the FREE Right of Entry Kits with door-hangers ought to be SOP for each chapter to make available to its members. Oh, did I mention these are FREE?

I myself have provided these to receptive residents and to law enforcement. (OK, so not everyone is going to be receptive.) I have been told that these were distributed by watch commanders to patrol officers and sheriff deputies as part of their in-house training. I have been told that these were successfully used as a "cold-calling" tool to engage in dialogue with local law enforcement. I see the trifolds as handouts to the public at my County's Planning and Public Works Department counters.

Ignorance is curable - stupidity can be fatal. Edifying the uninformed does indeed take effort but hopefully CLSA's resources can provide a source of information long after the conversation stops.

Follow up:
We went back to the site and requested a "Civil Standby" as suggested by the Sergeant of Internal Affairs. the officers called me back and were reluctant to meet me at the site. After I dropped the name of the Internal Affairs Sergeant, the officer said he would call the sergeant and get back to me. They were there within minutes of talking with the Sergeant. We set a Witness Point offset to the Property Corner and left a Letter on the door of the neighbor which explained there would be action taken if this corner disappears. The officers still tried to tell me if we were to have set a Monument at the Property Corner then the neighbor has the right to remove the corner, even though he understood that the monument, once set, is owned by the public. This statement is boloney, but arguing with him would've been a waste of time.
If Ric hadn't got a hold of the Internal Affairs Unit, this situation could've gone down hill. The Officer didn't care to listen to me, or the law until Internal Affairs got involved.

I encourage ALL CLSA Chapters to meet and inform the Police and Sheriff's Departments in your areas and get them aware of these laws and educate them.

Drexyl

I'm betting that neighbor has connections with PD.
We were on a site and the neighbor called the cops. A sgt told us to leave. Turns out the neighbor is a hot-shot lawyer and intimated the desk sgt. Our client knew the chief personally and we were back in site in a hour.

Ric

I appreciate you stepping up to handle this in a professional and straighforward manner. Thank you!

Here is a technique we use almost all the time in a neighborhood with fences.

1. Set the front corners as offsets along a prolongation of the property line as a drilled hole in the sidewalk with tag (or curb). This also helps prevent driving a rebar into a utility (water line, electric conduit, sprinkler line - all of which we have hit in the past).

2. If the rear corners fall within the area enclosed by the fences of your clients property then great, set the monument right at the corner. If the corner falls on the opposite side of the fence, do not set the actual corner. Instead set an offsets to the corners within the fenced area of your client's property. This means that the monument is actually set on your client's property and to remove it would require that the neighbor trespass.

3. Don't fail to FILE A RECORD of your survey and show the actual locations of your offset monuments so that your client, the contractors and future surveyors will be able to retrace the boundary that you worked so hard on.

4. Do not cheat by setting wooden shubs or untagged marks for the corners instead of steel pins or pipes with your LICENSE number. You will only make the land surveying community look bad when you cry foul when someone else doesn't know and follow the law but you don't keep it yourself.

way to do that Ken. That is how I set corners, or offsets thereto,as well. It works pretty good. I also provide a sketch to the client on site so that I can get the remainder my money before I draw the RS or CR.

As for not tagging the pipe, it is not worth it. I gotta tag it even if I don't file a record. In fact there is a fella down in Laguna Beach that has been doing that for 30 years. He sets tags but rarely records the survey. He seems to put the pipes in the right place but ya don't know if he set one till you go out and dig some holes. Wished he would have filed even a crappy map so at least I knew he was there and kinda sorta what he did.

He still is doing this cause no one "takes him to task" in this regard. I'm not gonna. I will leave that to those more eloquent, smarter, powerful and with fewer skeletons in their closet than me.

Ken said it best, and this is exactly why we have Ric and the Board available.

One item that has not been addressed by others, but I have previously done after reading Larry's earlier article is as follows:

Print the Navato's PD Training Bulletin and keep a copy (or two) in the truck for support if you ever run into a similar situation. I have not needed to do so, but let the officer(s) read the Right of Entry card, and provide them a copy of the Training Bulletin for backup. It may just help your case and educate them while in the field.

If the local chapter doesn't take charge in this, I know a member of the SJPD and I may be proactive to assist in the departments training, and use it to my benefit at the same time.