Happy Valentie's Day, LOVE SWAT!!!

[Mike Holland]

A short tale of frustration, insurance, and tenant land lord relationship.  I would have posted this sooner but things have been hectic to say the least.  Here is the tale.

So on Valentine’s Day I was in LA for a wedding.  I had just finished helping my sister-in-law get ready because she was a brides maid and leaving before everyone else to get to the church.  I jump in the shower real quick and when I get out I have 3 missed calls and 3 voice mails.  2 are from separate tenants in my fourplex property in Las Vegas and one is from a number I don’t recognize.

I decided to listen to the unknown numbers voice mail.  It turns out to be a Lt. from the Las Vegas Metro Police Department needing additional information about my property and tenants.  I listen to the other voice mail and things begin to clarify.  The message said there were 50 cops outside the apartments with shotguns and military vehicles and they were screaming at everyone.  The second message was similar except a different unit.

I start out to call Metro central commands nonemergency line since the brilliant Lt. said his contact number was 311 and just ask for the badge number.  I left a message and called the tenants to see if they were ok.  The one I called is very outspoken and vocal so she very animatedly told how everything went down with everyone being woke up early, guns, yelling, and everyone being pulled out of the property.  Not only that, they brought in negotiators.  It seems all hell was breaking loose and I am almost 300 miles away.

Oddly enough the tenant started yelling, “Hey head police guy I got the owner on the phone!  You come speak to him now and get this thing over with.”  So I started answering questions about who the tenant in #1 was what they look like and who lives there.He just kept saying, “NO, NO, Not what we are looking for.”  Then I here from the vocal tenant in the back ground, “SHE DON’T LIVE THERE NO MORE!!! SHE LEFT ON THE 4th!!!  WHAT SHE DIDN’T TELL HIM?!?”

So I spend the next 30 minutes talking with the Lt. and drawing plans for the house because the county did not have them on file.  I do vulnerability analysis and threat assessment in the military for years.Not only that I would conduct aggressor penetrations testing of facility structures and layouts.  I highlighted all the blind spots, kill zones, and clearest lines of sites for ingress and room clearing.I get that over to them in a picture and things start to roll.

What happened is the tenant in unit 1 abandoned the unit on the 4th and left the door unlocked.On the 14th someone decided to sell an Iphone 6 at a gas station and got robbed at gun point.  There was a police chase, car wreck, and one suspect ended up finding the unlocked door and locked themselves in the unit.  There was a 6 hour SWAT standoff with an explosive breach entry with guys stacked and clearing the unit.

I don’t hear anything for a while then I get a call saying they are going to “blow up” the unit.That’s SWAT speak for breaching charges and concussion grenades.  So it looks like things are about to get REAL!” real quick back in Vegas.Knowing what’s about to happen I call my insurance company, FARMERS.So the operator answers and asks if I had a claim to open.  My answer to that was, “Well when the search warrant gets signed I will.”I further explain the situation and what was about to happen then ask, “SOOOOO am I covered for that?”

I hear typing and a few seconds later the operator comes back, “Yes, you are covered for that.”  SCORE!!!  Needless to say I have a full remodel to do on one unit, water mitigation in another 2 bathrooms, 7 windows blown out from 2 concussion grenades, rebuilding a storage unit and repaneling because of a third one concussion grenade thrown in the 4X4 storage unit, and a full door casing and door to replace because of breach charges.

There are 2 morals to this story.

1. Make sure you have quality rental property insurance that covers you in odd situations because those are the ones that will cost the most. 

2. Build a good report with your tenants.A trusting relationship will empower them to WANT to call you when something is wrong. Without the tenants calling I would have not know the details until days later.

Final note to this little ordeal, the suspect was not in the unit.  Just as they ran in and locked the door; the cops were banging on the front door.  The suspect proceeded to open the 6’X4’ kitchen window and walk out the back.  The negotiators and SWAT team were racking and stacking on an empty apartment.

So here is a link to the news article.

http://presscovery.com/news/news/las-vegas-police-arrest-female-robbery-suspect/

I have more picture but I cannot figure out how to post them at the moment.  I'm going on 4 days with 3 hours of sleep a night.  Been working too hard at working.