At one time mostly white and working class, it’s now considerably more diverse. Which is a nice way of saying that there can be friction, some of it with racial overtones.


On one side of the street, at 304 Coral, lives Diana Ashford, 39. She’s of Hispanic and African-American descent. She’s got five kids and two grandchildren, some of whom live elsewhere but visit regularly. She has four pit bulls. Several neighbors say she’s a wonderful person, friendly and warm.


Across the street at 305 Coral live Kenneth and Cathleen Holt. They’re white. And the term they’re most likely to use to describe Diana Ashford would be “loud.”


On numerous occasions, the Holts have called the Lancaster Bureau of Police to complain about the noise from the area of 304 Coral St. People on the porch, people on the street, people going in and out of the house. Kenneth Holt says he, his wife and two kids can’t get any sleep.


Diana Ashford doesn’t think she, her friends and family are particularly loud. Instead, she suspects the complaints are a racially motivated attempt to get her subsidized housing revoked and force her out of the neighborhood.


Last summer she complained to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, which, last month, agreed with her — in part because the Holts never responded to the complaint.


Meanwhile, the neighborhood dispute came to a head two months ago, when yet another call to the police resulted in a confrontation during which Diana Ashford was arrested and charged with several offenses, including including aggravated assault on a police officer, a felony. And she says her kids, one of them a toddler, were pepper-sprayed.


The charges against Ashford were thrown out of court following a preliminary hearing last week. But in the meantime, she’s been notified that she has violated the terms of her subsidized housing, and may have to move. Some of Diana’s neighbors, who are helping her deal with her legal issues, say she will appeal.


City police have assigned a detective to investigate the ongoing situation on Coral Street. And Chief Samuel Gatchell sounds as though he wishes the whole thing would just end.


“Over the past couple of years [the dispute] has consumed a tremendous amount of police efforts and taxpayers’ money,” said Gatchell.


“We certainly prefer that the taxpayers’ money be used elsewhere to more constructive issues in the community.”


Flood of calls


But when the calls come in, the police have to respond. And oh, how the calls have come in from the 300 block of Coral Street.


One neighbor, standing outside Magisterial District Court Judge Cheryl Hartman’s office on Union Street last week, displayed a record she’s been keeping of how many times police have responded to noise calls on her street. In August 2005 alone, police were called eight times. That’s not atypical, said the neighbor, who didn’t want her name used.


Ashford was cited for violating the city’s noise ordinance once, Aug. 16, 2005. That charge was later dropped.


Police say the Holts aren’t the only ones to complain. But the Holts, who moved to Lancaster from upstate New York two years ago, have indeed made many calls to the police.

But “this isn’t a race issue,” said Kenneth Holt. “This is a noise issue.”


Some neighbors aren’t so sure. At Ashford’s hearing on the criminal charges in Hartman’s courtroom last week, Ashford’s attorney, Doug Cody, asked Holt if it was true he’d told neighbors that he didn’t like Ashford because she is Hispanic.


Replied Holt: “No. I have not expressed that to anybody.”


In an effort to defuse the issue, police told Ashford that when friends and family are over, perhaps they should congregate out back rather than out front. But complaints to the police continued. Police continued to respond, even trying mediation at one point. All of it, to no avail.


Finally, in September 2005, Ashford filed a complaint with the state Human Relations Commission alleging that the Holts “have made frequent false reports to the police which has jeopardized [Ashford’s] Section 8 housing assistance and terrified [her] children” — and that the “harassment” came because of Ashford’s “ancestry, Hispanic, and race, African American.”


No reply


The Holts were given a chance to respond to the allegation, but failed to file an answer to the complaint. Kenneth Holt says that’s because at one point he received a notice that a hearing had been canceled, and he was under the impression that the complaint itself had been nullified.


“I had the paperwork half filled out,” he said.


Monday, the state Human Relations Commission will schedule a conference to determine whether the matter can be settled out of court; if it can’t, it will then “move forward on the issue of damages,” said Laura Treaster, HRC spokeswoman.


State law permits the commission to award damages and decree that the discriminatory behavior must cease and desist.


Holt insists there’s no discriminatory behavior to cease; all he’s done is try to get police to stop the noise.


“We can’t sleep,” he said. “It’s every night — or it was every night,” he said, noting that “it doesn’t seem to be happening as much anymore.”


Another call


That may be because of what happened this past Aug. 10, when another Holt complaint brought two Lancaster police cruisers to the 300 block of Coral Street.


Two of the officers there that night, Todd Dickinson and Eric Lukacs, were involved in an incident earlier this year where they were videotaped insulting and threatening a young Russian man on South Queen Street. In response, police launched an internal investigation of the officers’ conduct.


Police are also investigating the manner in which officers handled the Aug. 10 noise complaint against Ashford.


As reported by the Sunday News last month, city police knocked on Ashford’s door about 11 p.m. that Thursday night, asking if they could come in, and then if Ashford would step outside. She refused both times, telling a reporter that she is afraid of police officers, who in the past have allegedly told her that they would shoot her pit bulls if the dogs came after them.


After Ashford refused to come outside or let the police into her house, she shut her door, while asking her children to retrieve her purse so she could provide identification to the police. Dickinson claimed she slammed the door on his arm, injuring him.


That, according to the charges, constituted aggravated assault on a police officer.


Ashford and several members of her family said police then broke several glass panes in her front door before Ashford relented and went outside, where she was pulled to the ground, allegedly by Dickinson, and handcuffed.


Ashford’s daughter, Cherisse, 17, asked officers for an explanation, and was sprayed with pepper, said Ashford; police also sprayed into the house, hitting several children, including a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, Ashford said.


Ashford was held overnight at the police station before being released on bail.


The case went before District Judge Hartman last week, absent Officer Dickinson, whom Gatchell said had to attend to a serious illness in his family. But at the hearing, Ashford’s attorney Doug Cody offered to continue the hearing at a later date. Police declined.


Hartman said, “I don’t see where there is any testimony” proving the charges, and dismissed them.


Police Chief Gatchell said that while the possibility that police might refile the charges “has not completely been ruled out for the future, we have no definite plans at this point” to do so.


Ashford has also filed a complaint with the state Human Relations Commission about her treatment by police.

Meanwhile, though, she’s received notification that she might have violated the terms of her Section 8 government subsidized housing — in part, it seems, because of all the police attention. If upheld on appeal, it means Ashford will have to find somewhere else to live.


But even that may not end the bickering. Some neighbors say they are convinced racism indeed played a role, and want police to investigate whether any of the noise complaints were phony.


Lt. Dean Miller is looking into that and other aspects of the dispute, said Gatchell.


“I felt justified in expending additional resources into this due to its nature and tremendous drain on our resources over the past couple of years,” said Gatchell. “I believe the police department has gone over and above in its efforts to resolve this neighborhood situation.”