Two Short Creek area residents arrested last year in a dispute over access to what was once a city zoo filed a federal lawsuit in Arizona this week, claiming their “illegal” arrests constituted yet another example of alleged discrimination by Colorado City marshals against residents who aren’t members of the community’s dominant polygamous church.

Andrew Guy Chatwin, 48, of Hildale and Patrick Leroy Pipkin, 33, of Colorado City claim the marshals, Colorado City and its municipal attorney Kenneth Brendel, the city of Hildale and the corporate charter of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints conspired to prevent the men from using property they were legally entitled to amid a dispute with a “squatter” who had no right to the property but had status with the FLDS church.

Chatwin and Pipkin, who are not members of the FLDS church, were arrested for trespassing Oct. 13, 2015 and a second time on Oct. 17, but Brendel asked the court to dismiss the charges in January, less than a week after a federal trial began in Phoenix regarding allegations that Hildale and Colorado City had been systematically discriminating against non-FLDS residents who sought utilities and other municipal services.

A jury found the cities guilty in March, and a settlement between the parties awarded $1.6 million to nine select victims. The judge will convene a four-day hearing beginning Oct. 24 to hear arguments related to the federal government’s claim that the Marshal’s Office should be disbanded as a result of its complicity in the discrimination.

Chatwin, Pipkin, and lease holder Claude Seth Cooke, the operator of business enterprise Prairie Farms, claim they were granted authorization to work on the 65 E. Cooke Ave. property by the owner, a once-communal trust known as the United Effort Plan.

The arrests a year ago violated their Constitutional rights, damaged the business, harmed their reputations and cost them time and money as they worked through the legal process and their incarcerations, they claim.

The municipal defendants have not yet filed a response or had an attorney enter an appearance on their behalf, but Hildale City Attorney Blake Hamilton told The Spectrum last October the issue centered on a dispute over whether the property was classified as residential or commercial.

Because the person described as an unauthorized squatter by the plaintiffs claimed to be living on the 65 E. Cooke Street property in Colorado City and there were some minimal home furnishings in a shed, an Arizona court had to authorize the man’s eviction and the owners couldn’t simply “self-help evict” him, Hamilton said.

In Arizona, commercial property owners don’t need court authorization to evict a squatter, but residential property owners do.

“The Marshal’s Office has told them that and told them that,” Hamilton said, adding the marshals would support the eviction once it was duly authorized. When the criminal case was dismissed in January, Brendel noted that “the investigation is continuing, but there is insufficient evidence to secure a conviction,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit claims the property was classified commercial, not residential. And Bill Walker, a Tucson attorney representing Pipkin and Chatwin in the criminal case as well as the new lawsuit, told The Spectrum that Pipkin and Chatwin did not evict the squatter, but set up a fence separating the shed from the rest of the “commercial” property until the issue could be settled through the courts.

Isaac Wyler, an employee of the UEP trust, said at the time that the men had followed proper protocol for evicting unauthorized individuals from the 12-acre site with the help of the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office, and that the dispute arose after he reported property damage to the Marshal’s Office.

An officer who responded to the vandalism complaint instead informed the group that the man occupying the shed, identified as Chad Johnson, “was the legal occupant of the property and that, without Johnson’s permission, neither Wyler, Pipkin, Chatwin or Cooke had the right to be on the property.”

The UEP trust owns the majority of the land in the Short Creek community, but its administration has been the subject of controversy since control passed from FLDS overseers to the state a decade ago. The trust’s administration was returned to a local board earlier this year, but the board is not the same entity as the original FLDS overseers.

The lawsuit states Johnson was a trespasser who “should have had no right to dictate the rights of others to occupy the property,” and that a sheriff’s deputy informed the marshal of the legal status of the property during the dispute.

The officer spoke to Johnson, who said Pipkin would be allowed “guest status” but the others would have to leave, according to the lawsuit. Chief Marshal Jerry Darger then arrived and informed the group that Brendel’s legal opinion was that Johnson had sole rights to the property until he was properly evicted, which the plaintiffs dispute.

Wyler said he left rather than challenging the marshals’ decision, however, because Darger told the group they would be arrested if they remained. Chatwin and Pipkin chose to remain and were arrested.

In this Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014, photo Isaac Wyler, a former member of The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who now works for the United Effort Plan trust, stands in front of a UEP property where the trust had recently evicted residents not paying UEP occupancy fees in Hildale. (Photo: AP)

The second arrest occurred after the men received news that unidentified residents had cut the fence separating the two parts of the property and allegedly were going onto the “commercial” side to steal “whatever they want” from an area where they were operating an herb farm business, according to Wyler and Walker. Chatwin and Pipkin asked the sheriff’s deputies to respond, but when the marshals exercised jurisdiction instead, the pair attempted to stop the plunder and were taken into custody by the marshals, they claim.

The lawsuit notes that the plaintiffs were assessed a $500 deposit by the town for utilities last year “because the property was commercial, not residential.” After paying the deposit, town officials told the plaintiffs the utilities couldn’t be connected “because they did not have permission of the prior registrant of these services,” a long-deceased resident.

The $500 commercial utilities deposit was never returned, but after the March jury verdict in the government’s discrimination lawsuit, water and garbage collection were reinstated on the property, the lawsuit claims, and Colorado City continued to classify the property as commercial.

The lawsuit seeks compensatory damages “in an amount to be determined at trial,” punitive damages against the FLDS church “for malicious conduct,” attorney’s fees and other relief as deemed reasonable.