Pubdate: Mon, 29 Aug 2016
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2016 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Authors: Derek Hawkins and Kate Mccormick

FORCED OUT OF A HOME OVER A MARIJUANA JOINT

D.C. Tenants Face Eviction As 'Drug Nuisances' Even When No One Is 
Charged With a Crime

For eight years, Rajuawn Middleton, an assistant at a major downtown 
law firm, lived in a four-bedroom red-brick home she rented on a 
quiet tree-lined street in Northeast Washington - until she was 
forced out over a few cigarettes containing a "green leafy substance."

In March 2014, police arrested her adult son on charges of possessing 
a handgun outside a nightclub. He had not lived with Middleton for 
years, but two weeks later, D.C. police looking for more guns raided her home.

The routine search placed Middleton in the grip of an indiscriminate 
bureaucratic mechanism known as nuisance abatement, a mild-sounding 
term for a process that has had harsh and disproportionate 
consequences for Middleton and other District residents.

Middleton said a dozen officers stormed in as she and her husband 
were helping their 8-yearold son with his homework. Police handcuffed 
the couple, cut open a mattress and dumped food on the floor, she 
said. The search turned up three cigarettes; Middleton said only one 
of them was a joint of marijuana. No firearms were found. No one was charged.

A week later, the D.C. attorney general's office deemed the house a 
"drug-related nuisance" in a form letter sent to Middleton's 
landlord. "The fear and intimidation that results from these 
activities inhibit normal interactions among neighbors and interfere 
with their right to use and enjoy their property," said the letter 
signed by Assistant Attorney General Rashee Raj Kumar.

The letter cited a 1999 law that gives broad power to city officials 
to sue property owners who fail to stop illegal activity at their properties.

The landlord moved to evict. Middleton moved out.

During the past three years, city officials sent out about 450 
nuisance-abatement letters to landlords and property owners, the vast 
majority aimed at ousting tenants accused of felony gun or drug 
crimes, including many bona fide drug dealers. But in doing so, the 
District has also ensnared about three dozen people who were charged 
with misdemeanor marijuana possession or faced no charges at all, a 
Washington Post review of the letters has found.

The attorney general's office in January sent a nuisance letter to 
one property over one gram of marijuana, a legal amount of the drug 
in the District. As a result, the property company forced a 
grandmother out of her Southwest Washington apartment, records show.

The Post found that some cases were driven by an assembly line of 
government agencies that merely processed paperwork and failed to 
differentiate between dangerous felons and people such as Middleton 
and the grandmother in Southwest.

The process is typically set in motion after D.C. police raid a 
residence and then send information about what they find to the U.S. 
attorney's office, the federal agency charged with prosecuting crimes 
in the District. The police declined to discuss the cases reviewed by 
The Post or explain how they decide which properties to flag.

The U.S. attorney's office said they only pass referrals from police 
to the D.C. attorney general's office, the legal arm of the District 
government.

The attorney general's office is supposed to review the cases and 
determine whether a property constitutes a nuisance.

Officials with the attorney general's office now acknowledge that 
their office failed to do that adequately. During the reporting of 
this article they did not point to a single instance over a 
three-year period where they had not issued a nuisance letter in 
response to 450 referrals from police. After the article appeared 
online, they identified seven cases over the past year where the 
nuisance was resolved without the need for a letter.

When presented with The Post's review of all their nuisance abatement 
letters sent since mid2013, the office issued a moratorium on them, 
pending a review.

"We can't just be the rubber stamp for what some other agency is 
doing," said Deputy Attorney General for Public Safety Tamar Meekins. 
"We have to engage in our own independent professional judgment about 
these things."

The D.C. Council passed the Drug -, Firearm-, or Prostitution-Related 
Nuisance Abatement Act in the late 1990s, when officials were 
grappling with the aftermath of the crack-cocaine epidemic. For 
years, drug dealers had used neglected properties across the city to 
store and sell narcotics and weapons, making them havens for drugs, 
violent crime or prostitution.

Modeling the law after zero-tolerance policing policies in New York, 
council members gave city attorneys and community groups power to sue 
landlords who failed to combat illegal activity at their properties.

The broadly worded law can cover any property where police have 
served a search warrant for drugs, weapons or prostitution or that 
has prompted repeated complaints from neighbors.

Police search thousands of properties each year, identifying between 
100 and 200 per year as potential nuisances, records show. Police did 
not provide The Post with any written guidelines or policy for how 
they flag properties as nuisances. A police spokesman said 
supervisors select the ones where people "have engaged in drug 
trafficking, the sale of weapons or prostitution."

Police send those cases to the U.S. attorney's office for the 
District, where a paralegal forwards them to the D.C. Office of the 
Attorney General, said a U.S. attorney's spokesman.

At the attorney general's office, a unit of five lawyers in the 
Neighborhood and Victim Services Section is supposed to examine each 
case to determine whether the property fits under the nuisance law.

Landlords who receive letters have two weeks to eliminate the 
nuisance or the city can sue to seek damages or seize the property. 
The nuisance letter does not require an eviction, but roughly half 
the letters reviewed by The Post included a pamphlet outlining the 
eviction process.

Landlords, tenants and advocates said the attorney general's office 
almost always urged landlords to pursue that course.

"Unfortunately, that means a lot of tenants are dragged into court 
who shouldn't be, and a lot of landlords are being forced to bring 
these [eviction] cases even when they don't have enough evidence," 
said Beth Harrison of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia.

Rob Marus, a spokesman for the attorney general, said that most of 
the cases reviewed by The Post occurred before Karl Racine became the 
first elected attorney general in the District and took office in January 2015.

Marus acknowledged that the letters used by the office failed to 
inform landlords of steps they could take short of eviction. He said 
the office is now revising the language of its letters to encourage 
landlords to consider other options.

In the majority of cases reviewed by The Post, city officials 
targeted serious offenders.

In one case from 2013, police raided an apartment in the Dupont Park 
neighborhood and uncovered 548 grams of crack, 22 grams of heroin and 
five guns. The attorney general deemed the property a drug and 
firearm nuisance and told the landlord to take action. The landlord 
sued the tenants, and they moved out.

Last year, the attorney general's office used the law to shut down an 
electronics store in Bloomingdale where police seized more than 800 
packets of synthetic marijuana. And, in one of the biggest cases to 
date, the District in January won a $3.3 million judgment in a 
nuisance action against a landlord who allowed tenants to operate 
brothels in Dupont Circle.

But D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who sponsored the 
nuisance law in 1998, said people such as Middleton were not whom the 
city had in mind when the council approved the ordinance.

"Is someone who has a joint in a house the nuisance we're looking 
for?" Evans said. "The immediate answer would be no."

'I was really scared'

Jasmine White, an advisory neighborhood commissioner for the 
District's 5th Ward, got caught up in the nuisance law after she 
rented a room in her Fort Totten apartment to a cabbie. For two years 
the arrangement worked well. Her roommate wasn't home much, and White 
said she used the solitude to study for her master's degree at the 
University of the District of Columbia.

In March 2014, U.S. Park Police caught the roommate speeding in Fort 
Dupont Park. During the stop, officers smelled marijuana and asked to 
search, records show. They found eight ounces of the drug inside his 
car. Police arrested him on a charge of possession with intent to 
distribute. He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

The next day, police showed up at White's apartment and asked if they 
could search the roommate's bedroom. He was not home, and White 
hesitated. She did not have access to his room, she told them. She 
said she would feel more comfortable if they returned with a search warrant.

"That is when they became hostile and started to threaten me about 
what they would do with my apartment, what they would do to me for 
not letting them in," White said. "I was really scared."

The following day, more than 10 officers, guns drawn, returned to her 
apartment, this time with a search warrant, she said. Police 
handcuffed White and sat her in the hallway as neighbors watched. In 
the roommate's room, they found a small amount of marijuana, 
paraphernalia, shotgun shells and $1,361 in cash, records show.

White, who was not arrested or charged with a crime, explained what 
had happened to the manager of the complex.

"I told him this has nothing to do with me," White said. "He told me 
not to worry about it because I could make my roommate leave." The 
manager confirmed the account to The Post.

That was before the matter landed on the desk of Kumar, the assistant 
attorney general, who sent a letter to White's landlord deeming 
White's apartment a drug nuisance. In addition to noting the 
marijuana, the letter claimed police had found a shotgun, though 
search records show they found only several spent shells.

An attorney for Borger Management - the property manager for White's 
building - and other landlords told The Post that landlords 
frequently file for eviction after receiving nuisance letters because 
they do not want to risk their property in litigation with the city.

Weeks later, White found an eviction notice naming her taped to her 
door. She felt that she had little choice but to settle the case and 
move out. White said she feared that a drug-related eviction would 
preclude a political career.

The roommate received a three-month suspended sentence on the drug charge.

White said she feels like the ordeal has tarnished her reputation.

"As an elected official I had aspirations of possibly pursuing other 
public office," White said. "But now I just don't think that that's a 
possibility."

Charge dropped, still targeted

Larry Tutt said he was nearly put out of his apartment in August 2013 
after police raided his home because they smelled marijuana outside his door.

The 61-year-old is well known to locals near the Farragut North Metro 
station. He often spends his mornings there greeting commuters with a 
bright smile, his signature singsong call of "good morning," and a 
cup for spare change.

Until recently, he rented an apartment through a medical-treatment 
program in the Trinidad neighborhood, a rapidly gentrifying area 
police monitor closely for drug activity and violent crime.

Tutt, who has schizophrenia and walks with a cane, said he had just 
gone to bed one night when police knocked on his door. The vice squad 
officers said they were doing an investigation nearby and smelled 
marijuana coming from his apartment. They asked to search it, Tutt said.

As a younger man, Tutt had many run-ins with the law, including a 
burglary conviction in the mid-1990s that landed him in prison for 10 
years. He told the officers that he smoked marijuana to medicate his 
mental illness but said that if they wanted to search, they should 
come back with a warrant.

The next night, they did. Nine officers broke down his door with a 
battering ram, handcuffed him, flipped over a recliner - one of his 
only pieces of furniture - and dumped drawers of clothes on the 
floor, he said. They found a grinder with marijuana residue and 
arrested him on a charge of misdemeanor possession. He spent the 
night in jail. Three months later, prosecutors dropped the charge.

That same week, however, Assistant Attorney General Argatonia 
Weatherington sent Tutt's landlord a nuisance letter, saying "drug 
and/or gun activity" at Tutt's apartment was harming the neighborhood.

"It is your responsibility to ensure that your property is not used 
in a manner that is detrimental to the welfare of the surrounding 
area," the letter said.

Tutt said his landlord called about the raid.

"He said, 'You're selling big drugs,' " Tutt recalled.

Tutt's caseworkers and family members intervened. They said they 
asked the landlord and the attorney general's office not to kick him 
out, saying he wasn't involved in drug dealing.

After talking with Tutt and his sister, lawyers in the attorney 
general's office realized that Tutt was not a drug dealer and they 
should not have targeted his apartment for eviction, the office said.

Tutt kept his apartment. The landlord declined to comment on the case.

Tutt said he eventually moved out because of the raid. He said he has 
had recurring nightmares about police breaking down his door. He now 
lives in a different neighborhood, where he said he is sleeping better.

'You can fight'

Housing advocates and landlords said the nuisance letters can give 
property owners more leverage to evict tenants they see as problematic.

In March 2014, Howard University student Jeffrey Gibson and four 
other students were renting a rowhouse in Northwest Washington. One 
roommate was about to enter the U.S. Air Force, another was a top 
scholar who managed a GameStop. Two others studied communications. 
Gibson was president of a fraternity for students majoring in 
insurance studies.

Gibson and the other students said they and their landlord disagreed 
over who was responsible for the condition of the home, including 
holes in the walls and cracked floorboards. The landlord, Eugene 
Banks, said through his attorney that the students threw parties and 
refused to clean up after themselves. Banks wanted them out, but they 
still had months to go on their leases, his attorney told The Post.

Neighbors complained about the students. Police had visited the house 
dozens of times between fall 2013 and early 2014, according to 
records and interviews.

"We weren't throwing parties," Gibson said. "We were working jobs 
after school and may not get home until 12 a.m. Then we're up doing 
homework until 4 a.m. Our schedules were opposite."

Officers would tell the students to keep quiet, then move on, roommates said.

But one evening in February 2014, police arrived at the home with a 
warrant to search for drugs. In an affidavit, police told a judge 
they had smelled marijuana coming from the house during a recent 
visit to investigate a complaint.

Gibson said he was in his bedroom watching a basketball game when 
police kicked down his door and pointed shotguns at him. Officers 
handcuffed the students and searched the rooms, dumping out cereal 
boxes and emptying drawers. They found a small amount of marijuana, a 
tobacco grinder and an Adderall pill that belonged to a roommate who 
said he had a prescription, according to records and interviews.

Police arrested two roommates and kept them in jail over the weekend. 
They were not charged.

A month after the search, Weatherington, the assistant attorney 
general, sent a letter to Banks calling the house a "drug and/or 
firearm related nuisance."

Banks sued to evict all five students.

At first, Gibson and his roommates contested the suit. They weren't 
drug dealers, they all had clean records and they needed a roof over 
their heads until they graduated, Gibson said.

Banks's attorney, Thomas Hart, blamed the students for damage to the 
house and said they violated their lease by having guests for extended stays.

"They massacred the house," Hart said. "This was not the case where 
out of the blue he just turned on them and kicked them out. It was a 
string of problems."

Shortly after Banks sued, two roommates agreed to leave. After months 
of legal proceedings, Gibson and the others agreed to leave at the 
end of the summer.

Gibson said he and the other students didn't want to be falsely 
labeled in the eviction as drug dealers.

"You don't just have to take what they give you," Gibson said. "You can fight."

Forced out by form letter

When Middleton first moved into her home on 13th Place NE, she said 
she felt like she had won the lottery. Securing a home through the 
city's Section 8 housing program had been a long shot. Many of her 
friends, she said, waited years.

Over the several years that she lived there, she said she worked hard 
to protect the house where she was raising her four children. In 
2011, she said she kicked out one of her sons after he was convicted 
of unlawful possession of a firearm. She said she was worried she 
could lose her voucher.

"There's two people I don't mess with - housing and the tax man," 
Middleton said.

When police arrested the same son outside the nightclub in March 
2014, he was living in Fort Totten, she said. Police said they had 
found him in a car with a handgun in the glove compartment and 
located her address on his ID and in criminal court records. He was 
eventually found not guilty of gun charges.

The police raid at her home turned up hand-rolled cigarettes 
containing "a green leafy substance," according to police documents.

Middleton called her landlord and assured her that no one in the 
house sold drugs. But the landlord told her she had to leave.

"She said, 'I have to believe this because it's coming from the 
attorney general,' " Middleton recalled.

The landlord's attorney, Bernard Gray, said he empathized with 
Middleton but was obligated to proceed with an eviction.

"I take action because if I don't, my client is in jeopardy," Gray said.

Initially, Middleton refused to leave. She said that the landlord 
stopped maintaining the house and that she stopped paying rent.

After several months, Middleton moved to another part of the 
neighborhood. Her new house is smaller, and she said she fears for 
her family's safety. Her young son has been awakened by the sound of 
gunshots, she said.

"The whole process was haywire," Middleton said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom