on the cover / By Helen Sanderson

Sometimes Jerry wins

Nuisance neighbor, beware the power of DROZ

(April 12, 2007)  On the corner of 8th and B streets, Jerry Droz cranes his neck back, squints the midday sun out of his eyes and studies a blue, shingled house that’s seen better days. The high-complexioned, blue-eyed 56-year-old aims the lollipop stick he’s been chewing toward the second floor of the four-unit rental. “You can see there’s window work there,” he says, pointing to the fresh putty around the frame.

Droz is a burly guy, wearing a Hawaiian-print shirt, khakis and a suede coat - a thrift-store buy, he says - with long fringe that swishes as he walks. He heads to the front of the house and stops on the sidewalk to inspect the place some more. Beckoning toward the open entryway, he mentions the newly installed door jamb and thinks back to when the tenants started destroying the house last year.

Still standing, Jerry Droz in West Side Eureka. Photo by Helen Sanderson.

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“It was just terrible,” he says, “the stuff that went on.”

Droz has a history with this 1910 Colonial Revival. For almost a year, 804 B St., a well-known drug house, was the bane of his existence. In 2006, Droz led the Clark District neighborhood in a drawn-out legal fight with its owner, claiming that the habitual crime happening in that fourplex severely harmed the quality of life in West Side Eureka.

“We needed them out,” he says bluntly. “They were destroying the neighborhood. You couldn’t imagine. The worst place in Oakland wouldn’t be comparable. I said, ‘I don’t care if I get killed. I’m going to sue this guy for public nuisance.’”

Stop for a moment. You remember Droz, right? The guy who ran for mayor of Eureka last year. The one who interrupted former Mayor Peter La Vallee’s reelection campaign kick-off speech in August of ‘06, shaking his briefcase like a tambourine and shouting stuff like, “Families are a-scared! In this city! To let their children out of their yard! Because this mayor has screwed up this city so badly!” Jerry Droz — the guy who could not stop calling Eureka “The City of Lawlessness,” and always referred to himself as “Acting Mayor.” Said he wanted to control the city. Remember, Jerry did a little jig during the mayoral debate on KEET-TV. Walked right into Peter La Vallee’s frame and sort of danced. Yeah, that guy - the one who wore a western hat with a band of bullets. Bloggers had a field day. In the end, he lost the mayoral race by a mile, raking in only 2 percent of the vote.

But Jerry’s still around. He owns a house in this neighborhood. Heading back down the alley toward the fresh-looking four-unit Victorian he rehabbed on A Street he talks about the mounds of trash that once spilled from his neighbor’s backyard, the abandoned junk cars that lined the street, the loud music, the explosions, the hypodermic needles strewn in the alley. “One guy took a crap in her backyard,” he adds, motioning toward a Queen Anne duplex owned by Georgianna and Jim La Peer.

When it became apparent to residents that police intervention alone was not going to put an end to the constant ruckus at 804 B St. (police responded to the house 51 times in 11 months), Droz sued the owner in small claims court. He says he asked other homeowners in the neighborhood to join him in the suit, but they feared retaliation from the troublesome tenants.

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