Location: Oregon. We have really unpleasant neighbors that we have an easement with. They live on a flag lot behind our house, and have rights of access & utility on a shared driveway. We live out in the country (unincorporated) off a gravel road.
We were packing up our car for a vacation and the neighbor stopped my husband and asked if we were going away. He told her we were. She complained to him about tall grasses in the drainage ditch in front of our house, offering to cut them down for us. This may sound nice, but last year her husband just started cutting them down without asking and I went out and asked him to stop as there were ground nesting birds' nests in the grasses that I didn't want disturbed. I had to reassert many times to stop and that we didn't want his help, and it turned into a him yelling and insulting and ranting and then stomping away. So anyway, my husband told her not to cut the grass down, and that we'd do it after nesting season is over. Later he sent her a text restating they were not to modify anything, if there was something that needed doing we would do it. (They have cut branches off our trees when we were out of town before.) He positioned a security camera to capture that portion of our yard in case they started cutting it anyway.
When we came back from our vacation, they hadn't cut the tall grass, but we noticed that that security camera wasn't working right. Reviewing the footage, we have a video of her walking up to it and taking it and walking away. It's still recording but not transmitting properly as it's too far away from the wifi. My husband searched the property and can't find it.
Should we try to file a police report? For trespassing and theft, but the tricky thing is even though she was in our yard, she was technically in the easement because it's 30 feet wide and includes the driveway as well as a good portion of our yard. The other tricky thing is she doesn't have the camera, she probably threw it somewhere. (A portion of our yard is sloped and wooded.)
We don't want to exacerbate the situation, but are sick of their rude, disrespectful ways and want them to keep the hell away from our yard and use the easement strictly for the legally allowed access/utility purposes only.