cannabisnews.com: Unwary Landlords Run Risk of Ruin 





Unwary Landlords Run Risk of Ruin 
Posted by FoM on November 07, 1999 at 20:32:27 PT
By Robin Franzen of The Oregonian staff 
Source: Oregon Live
Landlord Judy Hankerson says she always did her best to find out what she could about potential renters, verifying jobs and pay, calling previous landlords to see if they were troublemakers, asking, point-blank, about illegal drugs. 
Then, a friend told her about a guy who needed a place to live, and, in a hectic moment -- what some might call a moment of naivet -- she did what experts say never to do: She rented him her two-story house on Southeast Alder Street after a cursory background check. "I wasn't too involved with this tenant," she admitted in hindsight, having delegated much of the on-site management to a friend. Landlords LearnTo find out more about keeping your properties crime-free: • The Portland Police Bureau's no-cost Landlord and Property Managers Active Participation Forum meets the third Thursday of every month from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in Room 168 of David Douglas High School, 1001 S.E. 135th Ave. Guest speakers include professional property managers, crime prevention specialists, civil attorneys, police officers and deputy district attorneys. For more information, call 503-823-4811. • City-sponsored landlord training seminars are given routinely to help landlords prevent drugs and other crime problems. The city's Office of Planning and Development Review (formerly the Bureau of Buildings) expects to hold four seminars next spring. The training is free; training manuals cost $10 each and are available through the agency. For more information, call 503-823-7955. Today, the little house with white shutters stands in ruins, a reminder of illegal drug activity, its unseemly effects on Portland neighborhoods and its fierce attraction to rental properties, where police estimate at least three-quarters of the action occurs. On July 11, drug and vice officers seized evidence of a meth lab in the house's basement, hand grenades and toxic chemicals in a van parked out back. On July 19, a suspicious fire destroyed the garage, and the rest of the house, which was insured, went up in flames in an Aug. 9 arson that awakened neighbors at 4 a.m. Both fires are under investigation. Hankerson, who in 20 years of property management occasionally had suspected drug activity but never had it confirmed so dramatically, is stunned and filing for bankruptcy because of the added financial strain. And she thought she was savvy about that kind of thing. "We talked to (him) about drugs; we were so strongly against them, I felt (he) wouldn't do anything out of fear," she said of the tenant, who, unbeknownst to her, had previous felony convictions, including one that was drug-related. Later, when he called from jail, where he was being held on new charges of possession, manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine, "he denied any involvement," she said. "But I think he felt bad about it."A Foot In The Door Neighborhoods surrounding such properties suffer not only from the drug activity itself, but from its byproducts: belligerent behavior, loud noise, graffiti and other vandalism, stabbings and homicides. That's what John Hutson discovered living across from Hankerson's rental. "Kids were coming and going from there all night long," he said. "My daughter told us the night the place was busted they were racing their motorcycles up and down the street. It's been a real quiet neighborhood, except for that house." While the criminals, who can cook as much as $15,000 worth of meth in 40 minutes, may care little about disrupting the peace, they care deeply about not getting caught. Rentals offer less risk. And criminals know exactly what they are looking for among the city's 89,000 rental units: Rundown houses and apartments, near pay phones and bus stops, that lend a sense of anonymity, with landlords who don't care enough, or simply don't know enough, to keep them and their drugs out. A criminal records check, which costs as little as $20 per prospective tenant, would give many landlords all the information they need to keep bad renters out, experts say. Yet only roughly one-quarter of all landlords effectively screen potential tenants, according to John Campbell, a nationally known rental consultant. And that's despite the demographic reality that rentals tend to attract a younger, less established crowd that just happens to commit a larger percentage of all crimes, said Campbell, a Portland resident who battled a drug house on his own street. "It's not an indictment of rentals," Campbell said. "It's just the way the world works." The net result -- especially during high vacancy periods like this one when landlords feel they can't be choosy -- is that drug criminals get a foot in the door, close it behind them and then privately go about the business of making and dealing drugs. When exposed, their handiwork can be shocking, especially to unwitting property owners: Entire rooms, even entire rental homes, turned into elaborate marijuana growing operations with hundreds of illegal plants, glowing white walls and blazing lights. Gaping holes cut into walls and attics to provide ventilation, and hardwood floors rotting and buckling from drip-watering systems. Jury-rigged electrical systems, to disguise the intense energy drain of grow lights. Bedrooms and kitchens littered with the glassware and crystalline substances of meth labs, and enough toxic chemicals splattered on floors, carpets, walls and appliances to render properties unfit for habitation without extensive rehabilitation. Secret drug-making rooms in hollowed-out areas beneath foundations, or in attics, and behind staircases. Floors strewn with the tin cans, cigarette cartons and snack wrappers of a drug lifestyle. The police don't pretend they know all the places where illegal drug activity is occurring or that they can bust everyone involved. "We aren't trying to evict every drug addict in the city of Portland," said Officer James Harding, the Police Bureau's Drugs and Vice Division's drug-house expert. "Some people would like us to, but we can't realistically do that." Instead, they attack the problem where it becomes most obvious, such as at the 95-unit El Moro apartment complex on Southeast 122nd Avenue, where police say drug activity has been chronic. Earlier this year, the city sued to close the complex under the city's decade-old chronic nuisance ordinance, the first time the city had used the ordinance against an apartment property. Since then, some prosecutors have even advocated creating criminal sanctions for the landlords of nuisance properties. But, as the 18-month El Moro investigation showed, ridding rentals of drugs can be a painfully slow process, especially for neighbors. It can take months, even years, to detect and develop strong evidence of drug activity, police say, especially because drug criminals are a moving target. When police get too close, the drug criminals pick up and move on, often to another rental. A smattering of statistics suggest what police are up against: • The Drugs and Vice Division's hot line rings as many as 50 times a day with tips from people who suspect their neighbors of dealing and manufacturing narcotics. Some police officers can point to 20 addresses, many of them rentals, that they personally are investigating for drug activity. • Between July 1 and Sept. 30 this year, the Drugs and Vice Division received drug-related complaints for 583 different addresses. Eighteen of those addresses had six or more complaints. In August, police mailed letters warning property owners of suspected drug activity 44 times, and well more than half of those involved rentals. • Since January, Northeast Precinct has mailed 26 chronic nuisance letters for suspected drug activity, including 10 involving problem landlords. Six of the 10 went to one landlord, Sgt. Phil Barker said. • Of the 143 meth labs raided since 1990 in Portland, 43 were discovered in the past year, suggesting an increase in that type of activity, according to the city's Office of Planning and Development Review. Officials don't track rentals specifically but say many contaminated sites -- flagged with bright orange warning signs -- are rentals. So far, 18 of the 43 properties have been rehabilitated, but the bureau is still working about 30 active cases. Getting Smart About Drugs Authorities say that only a small percentage of money-hungry landlords blatantly cater to the drug crowd and that most property managers want to keep out crime. But, despite good intentions, many landlords are oblivious to drug activity, they say, either because the criminals put up a good front or because amateur property managers simply lack important training. "The law is becoming more and more complicated, but a vast majority of landlords don't have the necessary expertise," said Sharon Fleming-Barrett, president of the Oregon Rental Housing Association Inc. She's referring to the "mom-and-pop" type landlords who make up a big segment of Portland's property managers, people who got into the rental business through inheritance or by accident and who, increasingly, turn to Fleming-Barrett, a management consultant, for help with drug-related evictions. Five years ago, Fleming-Barrett might have served one 24-hour notice of eviction for drugs each year and one 30-day notice, but now it's more like two dozen a year total. In one case, she evicted the same woman three different times from three different rentals for drug and gang activity; in another, she helped landlords evict their own drug-dealing children from a rental. "Bad tenants with illegal intentions actually search out the least-informed landlords," she said, and they often allow other troublemakers to crash at the rental property with them. "It's easy for them to tell what class of landlord they're dealing with." Norma Scheurer, an 81-year-old Portland landlord, is a prime example. She demolished one of her rental houses, at a cost of $12,000, after police busted a meth lab there last year. Her tenant at the time was the son of her former renters, and he, in turn, had rented out a bedroom to someone involved with drugs, she said. In hindsight, Scheurer realized why he always met her outside when she came to ask him for late rent, she said. "I figured he was like one of my sons. But there's no way he couldn't have known about it." Police officers see the same kind of ignorance among landlords, especially absentee owners, and say it makes their jobs that much harder. "I understand that people rent to make money, but my concern starts when they start running down livability in a neighborhood and when police have to go there on a nightly basis," said Robert Slyter, a neighborhood response team officer for East Precinct, where crime specialists say many large apartment complexes are magnets for drug activity. "Most of the people aren't slumlords," agreed Kevin Warren, a neighborhood response team officer for Southeast Precinct. "They just don't have a clue. They don't know what to look for, and they don't do their homework." That may expose landlords to legal liability. Last year, a Portland landlord settled a lawsuit for $250,000 after the family of a car-crash victim accused him of negligence. The woman was killed by a suspect speeding from the landlord's rental, a suspected drug house. The family argued the landlord knew or should have known drugs were being dealt there and could have prevented the crash by evicting the tenants, who, according to court documents, had been evicted from a previous rental for drug activity. Some landlords, fearing such consequences, are getting educated. For about a decade, the city has sponsored a low-cost landlord training seminar developed by Campbell, the rental consultant. Hundreds of landlords, including Hankerson, have participated, 800 in the past 1½ years alone. Slyter organizes a monthly meeting of landlords in East Portland, where, for the past 14 months, about 40 people have regularly received education regarding drug detection, tenant screening, evictions and the prevention of crime through strict enforcement of even the most mundane tenant rules. Drugs are typically the forum's hot topic, and last month a guest speaker from the Drugs and Vice Division gave a kind of show-and-tell using a box of illegal narcotics so that landlords could see what meth, cocaine, heroin and marijuana look and smell like. For some, it was their first close encounter with the substances, which police say they need to be able to identify in case they find them in their rentals. "There's probably somebody here right now whose property is being used to facilitate a drug transaction," said Officer Mike Krantz, looking out over the audience. Landlords who don't get smart about drugs, he said, usually find out the hard way, "in the middle of the night, when we come knocking on your door." Sunday, November 7, 1999Reporter Robin Franzen can be reached at 221-8133 or at robinfranzen news.oregonian.com Related Web Site:Forfeiture Endangers Americans Rightshttp://www.fear.org/
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Comment #1 posted by Ross Regnart on February 01, 2001 at 13:31:08 PT:
Surveilance Camera on Streets
Soon bartenders will have to provide patrons with masks so street cameras will not know who they left with...Soon citizens will be afraid to attend political groups out of concern they will be cataloged as such. ___________________________________________________________CNN ReportSurveillance at Super BowlsFace-recognition software, retina scans, fingerprint identification programs; it all seems like something out of a sci-fi movie. But these technologies are fast becoming a reality in everyday life. At last week's Super Bowl game hidden police video cameras zeroed in on the faces of fans as they walked through the gates of the stadium. The surveillance system also captured images of people walking the streets during the week leading up to Super Bowl Sunday. The images were then fed into computers. Specialized software sent 128 facial characteristics - everything from the width of nose to the angle of a cheek bone - into a data base. The images were compared to portraits of known criminals and suspected terrorists. The system identified 19 people as having a known criminal history, but no one was arrested. Private companies gave the surveillance system to Tampa police free of charge to use as an “experimental project." The American Civil Liberties Union says capturing people’s images without their permission is a violation of privacy rights. “It’s going to be used as a tool of law enforcement to round up ‘the usual suspects’ and to hassle people on the street,” says Barry Steinhardt, ACLU’s associate director. 
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