I remember that. I could never figure out why all the Jews, who were free to leave anytime they wanted, let the Nazis sweet-talk them into taking them back over and over.
I’m afraid I’m not getting the hate on this law either. This particular application, maybe, but we certainly don’t have enough facts to know for sure.
But clearly if my neighbors repeatedly have loud, even violent fights that require calls to the police (but never end in charges or one person moving out) I’d want the landlord to kick them out. In fact, I might even want the landlord to have to kick them out, which seems to be what this law requires.
I’m really not sure what civil liberty is being violated here that got the ACLU involved. I guess there claim is that one member is being denied her right to call the police because if she does she’ll get kicked out? I’m afraid that doesn’t quite cut it for me.
I can’t tell if you actually being earnest here or suffering some sort of stroke.
Just in case it is the former, let us all remember a few facts that non-stroking individuals may find relevant:
- The victims of the Holocaust did not enter the death camps of their own free will.
- When they realized what was going on, the victims of the Holocaust were not allowed to leave. In fact, they were prevented from doing so. By people with guns and dogs.
- In general, victims of domestic violence also have people with guns and dogs in their situation - except those people are the ones offering to arrest the abuser and direct the victim to a shelter. So, really, not the same thing at all.
- The victims of the Holocaust did not choose to remain in a situation where their young children would also be victims. In fact, they tried (whenever the situation allowed) to flee. This woman chose for some time to keep her young child in an abusive situation.
- No Jew, never, not even once, thought, “They only kill us because they love us.”
But other than that, the situations are completely the same.
You don’t see any difference in the agency of the beaten woman versus the drunk?
If you had one tenant who raped another, you’d naturally evict both–gotta provide relief for the rest of the tenants from the slut that allowed that to happen!
Playing pretty fast and loose with causality there, aren’t we?
How do you know it’s not the other way around? That people with a justifiable fear of being murdered by their crazy ex are more likely to get a restraining order.
You can’t? Really?
It is Friday. If he isn’t whooshing, we’re allowed to beat him up and take his lunch money. 
That’s correct. People sometimes say outrageous things because they mean them, and sometimes for other reasons. It is not always obvious which is which.
You could have just cited Godwin’s Law and moved on.
We are assuming that is always the fault of an abusive ex husband or current boyfriend.
I have an acquaintance who lived down the street until a few weeks ago. She was evicted. She kept having screaming matches at 2 or 3 AM with her lover. Thing was, it wasn’t always the same lover. There were 3 or 4. She was the common denominator.
Sometimes its a sad issue of domestic abuse. Sometimes its a sad issue of people who are volatile idiots who don’t know how to act.
To answer a question upthread, “why isn’t the boyfriend in jail” it’s almost certainly because either the domestic violence was actually mutual violence (something that wouldn’t be in a salacious outrage news article), or the woman declined to press charges.
If a woman continually gets beaten, resulting in police being dispatched and the entire rental community being disturbed and she refuses to press charges, I fail to see why you would not evict that woman. She is making a choice to continue in that relationship, and if that relationship causes problems for the entire community then she needs to go.
As for differences of agency, based on personal experience with domestic abuse victims and alcoholics, I’d say they’re both pretty similar. Both make choices that put them in their predicament, but both have deep psychological reasons that make it very difficult to escape from making those choices. But sadly, that doesn’t mean you let them ruin your life too.
Additionally, as a land lord you have a responsibility to your tenants in toto to provide them with a reasonable living accommodation. If one tenant, regardless of the circumstances, continually ruins that experience for all other tenants you need to act.
Got a mouse in your pocket?
Well, you’d be wrong. Because my Google-fu is weak I could not find the ordinance online so I pulled the complaint and ordinance exhibits. There are actually 2 ordinances at issue, the old one and the new one. The old one was in place until Nov. of 2012. Eviction proceedings originally went forward against Plaintiff under the old ordinance. During these proceedings, Plaintiff’s landlord testified that she was a good tenant, paid rent timely, and the only reason he was bringing the eviction proceedings was due to the ordinance.
Then there is the new ordinance. Under the old ordinance, the landlord could face losing his license for these violations. Now, he just gets fined cumulatively and although Norristown can’t evict the tenant, the landlord is encouraged to do so. Fines can be avoided if the landlord evicts the tenant. Further, if the landlord doesn’t actively pursue the eviction, he/she will face adverse action
The issue is with the “disorderly conduct” definition. It includes "disorderly conduct"as defined here. and “domestic disturbance” when an arrest is not mandatory. However, unless Pennsylvania’s statutes on its own website are not up-to-date, they are not mandatory and are up to the officer’s discretion.
It doesn’t matter if the tenant was involved in the conduct, only that it occur at the rental. As mentioned, a domestic disturbance involves domestic violence which includes intimate partners, former intimate partners whether they live at the house or not.
There is an exception to the ordinance regarding calls for disorderly conduct if the tenant, the tenant’s family member or the tenant’s guest calls in an emergency, but NOT IF THERE WAS A DETERMINATION THAT DISORDERLY CONDUCT AS DEFINED IN THE ORDINANCE OCCURRED AT THE PREMISES. So, even if the tenant wasn’t involved or was a victim, if the tenant calls and there was a domestic disturbance, that is a strike under the ordinance. Doesn’t that make you want to call the police?
Also, the Chief of Police is the sole arbiter of determining whether the police were responding to one of the itemized actions considered “disorderly conduct” occurred. Again, domestic violence is included.
ETA, editing expired and changed first paragraph to read:
Well, you’d be wrong. Because my Google-fu is weak I could not find the ordinance online so I pulled the complaint and ordinance exhibits. There are actually 2 ordinances at issue, the old one and the new one. The old one was in place until Nov. of 2012. Eviction proceedings originally went forward against Plaintiff under the old ordinance. During these proceedings, Plaintiff’s landlord testified that she was a good tenant, paid rent timely, and the only reason he was bringing the eviction proceedings was due to the ordinance. Here, the final instance that caused the landlord to evict Plaintiff was allegedly after she broke up with the allegedly ex-boyfriend and he got out of jail slashing her neck and gashing open her head after threatening his way inside.
And finally, to add to the TLDR, here’s a summary from the Complaint. I got it from Pacer and can’t find a free version on the web. Sorry for the redundancy.
Per the Complaint, there were four instances where the police came to Plaintiff’s rental, but nothing was mentioned about strikes under the ordinance. After another incident, where Plaintiff’s 21 year-old daughter , who was living with Plaintiff at the time, called the police for hitting her mother, Plaintiff was allegedly told the police were tired of responding to calls. Despite the boyfriend being arrested, she was charged with nothing.
But, Plaintiff purportedly did not get rid of the boyfriend and the police were called out again six days later because the boyfriend was fighting with her 21 year-old daughter. Boyfriend was arrested again, no charges against Plaintiff. The Complaint states Plaintiff then broke up with the boyfriend and did not get back together with him. About two-and-a-half weeks later, Plaintiff’s boyfriend was allegedly in an alley by her rental and chased her into her home with a brick. Both were cited for disorderly conduct. Boyfriend went to jail.
Just after getting out of jail, boyfriend showed up at Plaintiff’s door allegedly saying “You are going to be with me or you are going to be with no one.” Plaintiff averred she was scared of the boyfriend, scared for her three year-old daughter, and worried that this would be the strike causing her eviction (which it probably would per the ordinance) so she did not call the police.
Per the Complaint, that same evening boyfriend called over friends, but then got mad at Plaintiff claiming she was flirting with the friends. Her boyfriend bit her lip, hit her on the side of the head with an ashtray causing a two-inch gash, and stabbed her neck with a glass shard causing a four-inch puncture wound. Plaintiff was medevaced to the hospital via helicopter.
Three days after the stabbing, the landlord told Plaintiff she would have to be out of the apartment in ten days due to the law. The landlord was asking for leniency for Plaintiff and wanted her to stay but for his rental license. (These are actual emails attached as an exhibit).
Now the new ordinance only fines the landlord at an increasing rate and Norristown cannot evict the tenant. However, the increasing fines (cumulating on a daily basis) encourage eviction and can be curtailed if the landlord evicts the tenant. However, adverse action can be taken against the landlord if the landlord fails to pursue the eviction diligently.
If anyone has better Googling skills than I do right now, the case is Lakisha Briggs v. Borough of Norristown et al. filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, case 2:13-cv-02191-ER. The ordinance is §245-3 of the General Laws of Norristown.
But neither the law, nor the landlord action you describe, depend on any charges. It’s just a matter of police calls, right?
In jurisdictions I’m familiar with, at least, police responding to a domestic violence call are required to assess “primary” responsibility. Why does this new law not follow the precept of that one–that there is an assignation of blame independent of any other action of the victim (or any action at all, if she didn’t make the call in the first place), and that the most important thing is to separate assailant from target?
They were sober but likely not rational. To a practicing alcoholic, alcohol isn’t the problem, it is the solution. To this alcoholic, the fear, shame, and pain of drinking were not sufficient motivation to stay sober. They were just more reasons to get drunk and escape the fear, shame, anxiety, etc. for a while. The fear of further wrecking my life was less than the fear of having to face, sober, what I had made of it.
It was around six months after my last drink when I started to work this out. What seems obvious now, I was oblivious to then. It took not only removing all traces of alcohol from my system, and allowing my brain chemistry to stabilize (perhaps ten weeks) but dealing with life’s ups and downs without drinking and learning that things turn out better when I face up to, and deal with my problems rather than drowning them in ethanol.
I am not attempting to justify their actions in any way. Just pointing out that it is folly to try to apply rational analysis to the behavior of people who are not rational. I would bet that judging them and shaming them won’t change their behavior except perhaps to make it worse. Non-judgmental concern/love is what finally convinced me to seek help. For others I know, it took court orders and the threat or even experience of prison.
I promise to STFU for the rest of the day, but damned if the Complaint doesn’t make it sound like the police and town were harassing the crap out of Plaintiff. Even though a district court judge ruled Plaintiff could stay there if she paid the rent she was withholding and costs for the eviction pleading, Norristown said it had an independent right to enforce the ordinance and again sought Plaintiff’s eviction.
Then she got counsel involved. After much maneuvering, she was allowed to stay. But then the new ordinance was passed that does not change much. So she got to stay in her rental, but about a month after the new ordinance was passed, the Complaint claims Norristown began random rental inspections that just happened to include her rental. Norristown has a population of about 35,000.
I hope this is simply a well-crafted complaint, but a great deal is backed-up by exhibits. Again, not a fan of the ACLU and usually support the police, but…
BTW the Complaint does aver that the week she was due to be evicted she was home from the hospital less than a week, she was in the middle of her pay period and had nowhere else to go. Take it with a grain of salt, but they could conduct discovery to see if it was true.
Commencing Shutting TFU.
Experts do NOT recommend that all domestic violence victims get a restraining order, because they know it can make things worse. Regardless of cause and effect overall, any individual has to consider the factors involved in her particular case and may rightly decide against a restraining order.