The multiple police calls and reports made by the three women — Deborah Nash, Martha Callahan and her granddaughter, Jennifer Morris — eventually led to three stalking charges against Mr. Peeples and a trial. In a case first reported by The Detroit Metro Times, State District Judge E. Lynise Bryant threw the charges out at the trial, calling them fabricated and rooted in racism.

[‘End mass incarceration’ has become a rallying cry for D.A. candidates this year. Read more about how the campaigns are changing here.]

“At the heart of this case is a kind of inseparable mix of race and power,” Mr. Peeples’s lawyer, Robert Burton-Harris, said adding that the women had their own plans for the park, which fed their hostility. “They knew they could use the police as their own personal henchman to get him removed from this area just based on their allegations.”

In some ways, the story hints at the unsteady, culture-clashing path of gentrification, the ubiquitous lens of race and the social role of law enforcement. Absent race, the women insisted, this is a dispute between residents about rebuilding a neighborhood that had largely been written off.

“You see people giving these nicknames. That is letting them off the hook,” Mr. Peeples said. “These are serious allegations. They tried to have me go down for a hate crime.”

Days after the verdict, Ms. Nash sat outside in her car, giving her first interview about the case.

“I am not a racist. I was all for the garden and even helped with supplies at first, but he threatened me several times, in person to my face, that I needed to leave my neighborhood or I would be put out one way or another,” said Ms. Nash, 49, a part-time art teacher who moved to the neighborhood in 2014. “I called the police because he was destroying property in the neighborhood and painting graffiti. No one had the right to paint park trees.”

Image Deborah Nash was among the neighbors who made multiple police calls and reports about Mr. Peeples.

In spring of 2017, Mr. Peeples, the great-great grandson of a South Carolina farmer and third-generation community member, began planting seeds in Hunt Playground, a city-owned park near the old State Fairgrounds. He described the neighborhood where deer still roam, as desolate and desperate but in its own way, full of promise.