[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]
Yesterday’s post, taking off from an article in the New York Times (August 17, 2013), demonstrated the real-world consequences of an abstract-legal-principle law that simplifies a lawmaker’s job by deciding that if there’s “too many” disturbances at someone’s apartment, then either the tenant or the landlord must always be to blame, even when they’re not. In June, 2012, Lakisha Briggs admitted back into her apartment her ex-boyfriend (and apparently the father of her three-read-old daughter), who though released from prison had not released his anger:
Then came his most violent attack yet: an assault with a broken ashtray that left a gash on her head and a four-inch stab wound in her neck.
Not Ms. Briggs but all too common
Before she passed out, Ms. Briggs begged her neighbor not to call 911 because of the eviction threat.
The neighbor called anyway. Ms. Briggs was taken by helicopter to Philadelphia for emergency treatment.
That goodness for the neighbor; she probably saved Ms. Briggs’ life.
Mr. Bennett is now serving a sentence of one to two years for aggravated assault.
Where he, at least, will get fed and sheltered.
Leslie Chew, whose life was better when he was in prison
Norristown officials instructed her landlord to evict her within ten days or lose his rental license.
Observe how this law, like others we have encountered, interposes itself into the landlord-tenant relationship. Neither of them want Ms. Briggs evicted, and both of them would like nothing better than for Ms. Briggs to be kept safe from her boyfriend. Any law like Norristown’s that puts both of them in the wrong is badly drafted, to begin with, and then guaranteed to be ignored wherever possible.
“I was afraid I’d lose my house, my job and, what’s next, my daughter?” Ms. Briggs recalled.
She’s not wrong to worry so; the child-custody services are among the most possessive.
A legal aid lawyer put her in touch with the ACLU, and the city backed away from the eviction demand.
Retreat in the face of confrontation has long been the infallible hallmark of the bully.
Ms. Briggs moved anyway, to a location she hopes Mr. Bennett will not discover when he is released.
Ms. Briggs moved for her own personal safety, not because of some blustery threat from Norristown.
Responding to the lawsuit, Norristown officials stressed that they had policies to protect victims of domestic abuse.
What a relief – I’m sure that, upon hearing of Norristown’s anti-domestic-violence policies, Mr. Bennett mended his ways instantly.
God, that was a revelation
They said Ms. Briggs had failed to comply with an instruction to obtain protection orders against Mr. Bennett –
Here in Massachusetts, a woman was brutally murdered, slashed to death, one day after her apparently psychotic ex-boyfriend was released from jail, and when confronted with the public outrage, the district attorney said in effect that it was her fault for not attending her release hearing – a hearing of which she had no notice.
That’s “alleged” slasher, you know
– and also against her troubled older daughter, then 19, with whom she had repeated arguments.
The bond is different between a mother and her daughter versus a woman and her convict ex-boyfriend.
The police had been called to her home ten times in the first five months of 2012 and said they had seen no evidence of physical injury.
Perhaps they had not – suspects’ rights and all that – though I expect the police knew full well what was happening in Ms. Briggs’ home.
Counselors for battered women warn that, as happened with Ms. Briggs, the police do not always perceive the abusive aspects of conflicts and the victims — often scared, financially vulnerable and in emotional knots — may not speak up.
The powerless need protecting from those who are both powerful and malevolent. Laws are not always the best or even preferred means of doing it.
“I really doubt this policy ends up saving the city money,” said April A. Hartman, a lawyer with Legal Action of Wisconsin. “Milwaukee spends a significant amount of money dealing with the consequences of homelessness and housing instability.”
With all due respect to someone with whom I agree on the conclusion, Ms. Hartman’s argument is specious and irrelevant. A city is allowed to do stupid things with its money, and one cannot sue a city to stop it being stupid.
This city dares to be stupid
Many critics of the laws call them “fundamentally flawed,” in the words of Sandra S. Park, a lawyer with the ACLU who is helping to represent Ms. Briggs.
I agree that such laws are fundamentally flawed.
In this, proximity-eviction laws are very different, in my view, from stop-and-frisk, which I think is sound policy and legal. A landlord has a right to grant access to common areas of his or her building to officers of the law, or to withhold that access from the general public, and a member of the public does not have a right of access to private property.
Among the rights of ownership
The critics, including landlords who say they are caught in the middle, argue that the police, not landlords, should deal with criminal activity and severe disorderly behavior.
“The problem with these ordinances is that they turn victims of crime who are pleading for emergency assistance into ‘nuisances’ in the eyes of the city,” Ms. Park said. “They limit people’s ability to seek help from police and punish victims for criminal activity committed against them.”
That is quite correct; these laws are badly designed, damaging to society, and probably hurt more people than they help. I wish them gone.
Begone!
The suit “fails to take into consideration the health, safety and welfare of all neighbors who live in proximity to a disorderly house,” Norristown said in response.
That is undoubtedly true … and equally irrelevant. Whether the law is bad policy isn’t the ACLU’s problem, nor the basis of its suit.
In a federal lawsuit being watched by legal aid groups elsewhere, Ms. Briggs has challenged the Norristown ordinance as unconstitutional.
Though no Constitutional lawyer, I can’t see how the three-strikes-eviction law is Unconstitutional. The ACLU will argue it violates a person’s right to due process in the criminal system, but the law applies not against residents but against landlords, and forces them to take action. Ms. Briggs is harmed, but does she have standing?
If a law is bad policy, Constitutional litigation will not overturn it – and may cause the defending lawmakers to dig in more deeply.
If a law is bad policy, repeal it, and do that by making the case not into a hyperactive judicial system but rather the old-fashioned way – by politicking on the policy merits.
Ms. Briggs is standing tall