How Bad Can It Get?

[Michael Rossi]

A poster yesterday or today was asking about the bad side of the rental property business: damage, lawsuits, tenants from hell, etc.

I spent much of my day in court today dealing with such a situation. In fact, this is one of the worst situations (or at least the most dangerous) that I've been involved in, during my six years in the rental property business.

Here's a little background. I basically operate 2 different types of rental businesses. The first type is the single family house business that is primarily lower-middle (working) class renters. The tenants in these houses are usually pretty good and it's a relatively low demand business from the standpoint of management. The second type of business I operate is the low-income rental business, which is made up of apartment buildings filled with tenants receiving Section 8, SSDI, SSI, and welfare. These units are not located in war zones, but are certainly in low income neighborhoods.

I actually specialize in taking over problem properties and turning them around. I enjoy the challenge. Most of these buildings were owned by failed landlords who allowed their buildings to be taken over by undesireable tenants (drug dealers, drug addicts, hookers, etc). When I take them over, I evict the scumbags and bring the buildings up to proper standards. I often take over several buildings on the same street, which makes turning the neighborhood around much easier.

I took over one such troubled building in January of 2008. The building was filled with a bunch of riff-raff including a crack addict; a ridiculous looking drug dealer who always wore a fancy suit and a big hat (pretending to be a preacher); an unmarried couple who both smoked crack, and a bunch of other riff-raff. On the very first day, I became aware that a man staying with the suit-wearing drug dealer had been barred from the property by the police and one of the tenants had a written order stating that. I immediately kicked him out of the building and he became homeless.

As I found out later, this guy is a real psycho. He literally looks like Charles Manson and has been arrested over 200 times. He has a history of being violent and is a convicted felon, including a conviction for assaulting a police officer (he broke the officer's leg). I guess he blamed me for being homeless and he has basically stalked me every since. When I would work at the building, he would stand on the sidewalk behind me and say that he had a gun. He threatened me several times. To be quite honest, I didn't take him as seriously as I should have for the first few months because I hadn't seen him commit any violence. Every time that he actually stepped on my property, I had him arrested for criminal trespass. That all changed in January 2009, when at 4am one morning, he pulled a large pipe wrench out of his coat and attempted to break into 6 of our apartments (with the tenants obviously inside). A few minutes later, he attempted to kill several people in another apartment building by piling trash on their only door and lighting the building on fire. I caught all of this on our security camera system.

At that point I began to take things more seriously. Since he was an obvious threat, I decided that getting a restraining order would be a good idea as that would keep him away from me while I was working and keep him away from my buildings. The restraining order says that he can't come within 300 feet of me or 300 feet of either of my buildings on that street. He was in jail for 48 days after being convicted of the attempted breaking and entering charges at my buildings. The felony arson charges are still pending. After serving his 48 days, he got out of jail and was out exactly one day when he came looking for me and violated my restraining order. I had him arrested for that and he's been in jail since then.

Today was the trial on the restraining order violation. And the verdict was...NOT GUILTY! That's right, the convicted felon that has been stalking me was found not guilty at the conclusion of a trial by the court (judge without jury). Ironically, the facts were not in dispute and the prosecutor and defense stipulated that the felon did indeed come within 20 feet of me in direct violation of the restraining order. There were 3 witnesses for the prosecution and the entire incident was on our security camera system, so there simply could be no denying of the facts. The not guilty finding came as the result of a legal technicality. It seems that when the defendant was served the restraining order by the sheriff's deputy, he was in jail. Testimony showed that the deputy knew that the felon had a difficult time reading (nearly illiterate) and that the deputy didn't read the contents of the restraining order to the felon. So, the defense attorney argued that the felon was not "recklessly negligent" in violating the order. There was a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo about the definition of "recklessly negligent" as opposed to simple "negligence". The judge even read the exact definitions of these terms out of a law book. The judge ruled that the felon was simply "negligent" and therefore he was not guilty of violating the restraining order. The gist of this is that the felon claimed that he didn't know what the restraining order said and the judge found that to be the case (even though everyone in the room knew that wasn't the truth).

After finding the felon not guilty, the judge read the entire restraining order word by word to the felon and after each sentence asked him if he understood. He did that so that it is on the record that the felon now knows exactly what the terms of the restraining order are and won't be able to use this defense next time.

The other twist on the situation is that while the felon was in jail, the grand jury handed down felony drug charges against him for a drug incident that occurred in December. He went before a judge in common pleas court (felony court) in the last few days and he may continue to be held in jail on that charge. I looked at the court records myself and my interpretation is that his bond was revoked, but I'm not sure which bond that is talking about and what the implications of today's verdict will be on that situation. I discussed that with the assistant prosecutor, but she wasn't able to definitively say whether he would be held or not.

If he's released, he will almost certainly be stalking me again tomorrow and I will need to exercise extra caution while working. I bought a magazine pouch so that I can carry an extra clip for my handgun, just to be on the safe side. Apparently, the courts simply can not keep this felon in jail even though they know that he is a serious threat to me; to the police; and to the public in general. You might have heard the old saying: "WHEN SECONDS COUNT, THE POLICE ARE ONLY MINUTES AWAY"!!! So true.

The good thing about this situation is that it is allowing me to assess my defensive situation. I've upgraded my carry handgun from a .32 caliber to my .40 caliber. I bought the magazine pouch so that I can carry an extra clip. Finally, I signed up for an advanced tactical shooting class later in the month. Hopefully, I won't need any of this to deal with this felon, but at least I'll be prepared. It could be a very dangerous situation if this criminal gets out of jail and comes looking for me again.