My question involves civil rights in the State of: Florida
I have been having an issue with an unruly neighbor for the past four years. A lot of petty tit for tat, but upon a cursory investigation of the person I had found much their background including education and qualifications to be falsified, multiple arrests, marriages and frivolous lawsuits. I have been documenting every event that has occurred over the years as there really wasn't anything the local law enforcement officials could do. I knew that one day when either I moved from the residence or this person would move, that I would publish an article regarding this persons fraudulent business practices and outright unruly behavior. The hesitation in publishing was simply out of fear of retaliation as this person does have a history of criminal violence, child abuse, etc. The issues had died down for awhile until August when this person started yelling at myself and other neighbors and even swerved at me in their vehicle when I was riding bicycle. We also noticed that their spouse had not been around in some time. Low and behold I discovered that this neighbor was going through yet another divorce and was finally set to move away from us.
With this information, some fellow writers on my staff began some investigating once again so that we could finally proceed with this article. However, my neighbor got wind of this and immediate threatened legal action via a barrage of emails including a restraining order against me. Now mind you, I have not said one word to this person in over a year. I do not even look their way despite their antagonism as of late. However we observed a police cruiser pull up to our neighbor's house shortly after they sent us these emails and our neighbor walked out and leaned into the cruiser began talking and laughing with the officer for about 15 minutes.
The following morning, I read the emails they had sent to us and I simply replied and informed this person that we were well within Constitutional Rights under the First Amendment to write an investigative piece and actually provided them with the information that I had gathered so that they could contest anything that they deemed to be untrue. We have not even begun to write the article yet as we were simply fact finding at this point. A few hours later after running errands all morning, I return home to two police officers walking away from my residence and my initial thought was that this neighbor called the police due to my reply email. I asked the officers what was going on, and they in return asked me if I had an interaction with the neighbor that morning. I immediately recognized the one officer as being the one who my neighbor was conversing with the prior evening. I told the officers that yes, I had in fact replied to their email earlier this morning. They both looked at me perplexed and stated that they had no knowledge of any emails. They then began to ask me about an interaction that I allegedly had in person with my neighbor and I advised them that I had not been home all morning. I told them that this was all over an article that was to be written about the neighbor. They refused to tell me what the alleged interaction was and the officer who I recognized from earlier advised me that if my neighbor filed an injunction against me, and they had to come back out to our house that I, "would be arrested whether I did anything or not." I complied and proceeded into my home.
Now realizing that something was fishy here, including my neighbor's relationship with this officer, I immediately contacted my neighbor's spouse to find out if my neighbor knew an officer who frequented their business. The spouse confirmed with the officer's name, and I did a Google search to find a photo of the officer which my neighbor's spouse also confirmed after I sent it. I then contacted our local police department to find out exactly what was going on, and they said they would look into it and someone would be contacting me. The same officer returned to my neighbor's home the following day, entered their residence and left after about 20 minutes.
The following weekend I received a letter in the mail with a temporary injunction inside from said neighbor granted by our courts. It stated that the neighbor feared for their life and referenced a police case file. This past Monday I immediately go down to the police department, pull the report and find a totally fabricated police report alleging assault and damage to the neighbor's property; the particulars of which are so absurd it borders on insanity. Not to mention that I have receipts and witnesses from being way across town at the time the alleged incidents occurred. Obviously this was filed simply to block this article from being written as it was this persons last desperate attempt to do so.
My neighbor has since moved away from our neighborhood but they had accused another neighbor of stealing their property and verbally assaulted two other neighbors before their departure. This neighbor has also been walking past me better half's place of employment over the past two weeks, stopping and looking in the window before they walked away. They have never been seen around there in the two previous years.
So, I know my rights and Florida state statutes when it comes to Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press, but my question is how in the world can a person get away with falsifying and police report to get an injunction to block an article? What is my recourse here? The police are zero help and the one officer may actually be helping this person. The article isn't going away and I have taken myself off the piece and assigned it to two other journalists to avoid bias. I have been told that I have a case for malicious prosecution but I really have no idea how to go about proceeding. This is just really a misuse of the justice system but all apart of the lifelong modus operandi of this particular individual. Thanks in advance for your help.

