Dealing with Drug Dealers

While perhaps the city can fool the general public into believing they are dealing with crime by simply forcing the criminals to move (and in the process make the owner of the property appear to be a criminal as well) the truth appears to be that this policy has actually caused larger areas of the community to be affected by drugs, gangs and prostitution.

Consider this: A small time dealer is evicted, but not incarcerated. He moves ten blocks away. His old "customers" are not suddenly going to become clean because he moved. These are by all accounts powerful addictions. The users will continue to buy from him or find someone else who sells the junk. So the drug activity continues in the old location. And the evicted dealer? He has an entire new potential customer base to peddle his poison to in this new location as well .

I spoke to a long-time nuisance abatement officer about this a few months ago. He laughed while admitting that he sees the same bad actors time and time again, always at a different address.

Drug Dealers Are Dangerous

Below is the Journal account of a very sad story where an evicted drug dealer's retaliation against the landlord resulted in his wife's murder in her own kitchen. We had expressed our fears of this type of thing occurring when we fought the Milwaukee's property recording ordinance provision that required public disclosure of the owner's physical address.

A few safety tips.

1. An owner with an office should use that address only for all tenant and municipal disclosures.
2. If you don't have an office you can use an agent for service and use that address to fulfill the disclosure requirements. Attorneys, onsite managers and property managers all often are used for this purpose.
3. Thoroughly screen your tenants. Drug dealers are both dangerous and don't pay their rent. Prevention is the best medicine.
4. Even with good screening practices you will still have the occasional problem tenant due to fronting*, cotenants who are not listed on the application, bad people who have previously avoided detection and good people or their children who turn bad later. When you get a problem tenant, don't be confrontational.
   * Fronting: As more and more owners use thorough screening methods more

And more bad tenants are having someone else with a clean criminal and rental history apply for the apartment. Fronting undermines the entire screening process. One of the most prevalent forms we have seen recently are parents fronting for their children who can't find a place to live due to evictions and convictions. While fronting is difficult to detect at the front end you can reduce the impact by checking a couple of weeks after the new tenant moves in to see who is actually living there. Pre-acceptance in home visits are a good way of finding potential cases of unlisted co-tenants.

Drug dealers are one of the most despicable criminals, who prey on the weak and ruin many lives. But should you have to evict, or even reject an applicant, due to drug dealing don't do it in a judgmental or disrespectful manner. Rather than 'Get outa my house ya dirt bag scum!', blame it on authority. 'The police called me and said you were selling drugs and they are going to take the house away from me if you don't move.' Blame it on the police even when it is another tenant, a neighbor or even your own observation that is leading to the eviction. When rejecting an applicant with a drug history either (best) don't give them a reason or use a similar 'Sorry I can't rent to you because you have a drug record and the city will take my house if I rent to you'

From the Journal Sentinel
Man guilty of killing woman, 69

A Milwaukee County jury found Jermaine Smith guilty Friday night in the killing of 69-year-old Dorothy Roberts in her north side kitchen last November.

Detectives testified that Smith and Cornelius Blair, 21, invaded the Roberts home around 2:30 p.m. because Michael Davis, the leader of the Black Mob street gang, ordered them to. Roberts had evicted Davis from his N. 22nd St. house because the police had raided it for drugs.

"Mike told me and (Blair) to handle this," Smith said in a statement read in court Thursday by Detective Mark Peterson. "If we didn't, he would handle us. . . . It was about respect."

Full Story:

Last year we took over a property and about 10 days later received a call from the City of Milwaukee "nuisance abatement team". We met the team, consisting of a senior building inspector and two police detectives, at the property. It seems that one of the tenants that came with the building was involved in drugs and gangs. The nuisance team wanted to placard the building arguing that 'this is the quickest way to get these people out of the neighborhood.' Cool, get them out of the neighborhood. No one wants them here, least of all me.

Well, yesterday we spoke to the same officers and inspector. And the occupant that the city expended all these resources on (read: your tax dollars) in an attempt to get them to leave the neighborhood? They moved "just around the block"

A while ago I spoke to a different officer who has been involved in the drug abatement and nuisance actions against property owners since the beginning of these programs. He was laughing when he told us that he sees the same tenants time and time again. Always at a different address but still doing the same bad things. I was already aware of this, as I had watched a tenant I evicted based on a "drug house letter" move in to the house next door.

While the City often argues that problem tenants are the fault of owners that don't screen the truth is the City fails to provide owners with information they have on who the problem people are. Let's face it; the police often don't make arrest and even when they do they usually don't arrest everyone in the home. So when an owner checks a prospective tenant, the tenant doesn't have a criminal record. Although the police collect the names of everyone in homes when they are investigating drug activity, they don't provide the list of these people to us property owners to use for screening purposes.

Until the city provides owners with the names of everyone found residing in a house where there is drug activity these people will remain free to more just around the block while the taxpayers pick up the tab for three high-paid City employees who simply expedite the bad actors moving a few hundred feet away, spreading a swath of destruction. Urban locust.

In the mean time the best screening tool we have found is to visit the applicant's current residence.