Sometimes, I don't understand those who collect their paychecks from the criminal justice system. Do you have to check your common sense at the door before you assume authority in this county?
Samantha Prekker, 17, "moved into" the house I rent on Friday, February 14, 2014. Now of course, a minor cannot make a contract. Contracts 101.
Legally, you are supposed to be 18 years old to purchase cigarettes: our sheriff deputies periodically do alcohol and cigarette checks at local establishments, with the funding coming from grant programs to keep kids from starting smoking and getting addicted young.
If you were a police officer who responded to a disturbance call at a residence, and a young woman reported she had "moved in" there with her 19-year-old boyfriend, into the home of a mid-20s disabled young man, would you check the child's id and ask her age and address?
I would.
Common sense.
Especially if the young man in his mid-20s had four convictions with fines of over $1,000 in the municipal court for hosting at least four people at an underage drinking party on Jan. 9, 2014. (The sheriff's office publicly supports the "those who host, lose the most" slogan -- using grant money, I believe -- especially now during prom/graduation season. It's targeted at school kids, but maybe some of these hosts are already out of school? Big Point here is: my home is not hosting these parties. As for me and mine, we will serve the Lord, not alcohol to minors. Separate addresses, premises, but shared house rules. Respect.)
Especially if the young man at the address previously had been identified as a "vulnerable adult" and a "follower" of friends, plenty of whom probably know he has a monthly check arriving and a rented home, that this winter became a teenage/young adult "drop in" shelter.
Here's what happened to me, here in Barron County, Wisconsin:
In the early evening hours of Friday, February 14, I heard vulgarities ("f this and f that" angry arguing), thumps on the wall, and a woman's voice amongst the males ones living below me in a rented house.
I called 9-11, explained there had been previous incidents downstairs (one teenage girl returning home at 3am, whose parents wisely reported to police their daughter had been plyed with Everclear liquor at the downstairs address), and asked the police to investigate. The responding officer later knocked on my door, explained that a young woman downstairs had fallen, and that explained the thuds, vulgarities, and sounds I reported. The officer said the young people had agreed to keep the noise levels down, and indeed, that night they did.
The next night, the 15th, when I followed up on an afternoon inquiry with the downstairs renter, the young woman came onto my property in the rented house -- into the front foyer below the staircase that leads onto the front porch, which is my one and only entrance to the property. (In case of fire, there are windows that open onto the back garage, and although I have not yet invested in a chain ladder, I would get out and drop to the ground, if needed, through these windows. I'm prepared, because I'm older and understand a bit about taking precautions in life.) The downstairs apartment has a back porch two separate entrance/exits, and a separate address than mine. Clearly, these are two units with separate rooms and boundaries.
I laughed when this crossed woman ;came out and told me she and her teen boyfriend (not the downstairs renter) had "moved in". I know the landlord -- he never would have authorized an underage female and her young lover, both with criminal charges against them, to move in legally. He doesn't want trouble here, nor does he want his rental property being known as a homeless shelter drop in, an underage party den, or an otherwise respectable rental unit.
After being quizzed by me as to who exactly she allegedly paid the $100 to that she was claiming was her move-in fee, (the boyfriend allegedly would pay $100 too), I told her she didn't belong on my property. Asked her bluntly to leave. I told her what I paid montly for rent (more than $100) and asked if her payment was going to offset my rent, since she was in my space and constantly smoking. I explained that I had been renting for two winters, had sealed off the upstairs windows with plastic in late autumn, and had an agreement with both the downstairs renter as well as the landlord, that when he occasionally smoked, or had guest that did, he would take the cigarettes either outside, into the basement, or at least onto the back porch or in the garage with the door cracked, so that the smoke would ventilate while the house was closed up during the winter months.
The drafts in the old house exit through my back bedroom. I am an early riser, and when turning in at 9pm or 10pm, it sickens me to be awoken hours later by carbon monoxide second-hand smoke. When that happened previously, I knocked and asked the parties downstairs to consider how others were affected. Most times previously, there was at least an attempt to work together and be considerate of others. The downstairs renter understood this.
Not so young Ms. Prekker, who again, is 17 and a teenager with attitude.
Why she was now "living" in the house, and specifically trespassing onto the part of the property I rented, I do not know. Damn kids..
Now my question to the responding police officers is this: why is this young woman not being cared for by the county's human services division? In the court records, she lists a home address that is only blocks from the house I legally rent.
Why did the responding police officers not run her age, her criminal background, and promptly place her in the police car and drive her home that night? Instead, they removed me from the premises for "disorderly conduct" and left a 17 year old with questionable sexual maturity in the house with a 19 year old man and a mid-20s year old man...
The part I am leaving out is how three times I tried simply to go to bed that night, and three times the youngsters down below made sure that wasn't going to happen. At one point, they lit up their cigarettes and corncob pipes inside the house, then marched out through the foyer onto the front porch, which legally is trespassing -- that is my portion of the rented house, and were going to take it outside. Unfortunately, the young and not so worldly police officers who were on duty that night, allegedly informed the group that they could smoke in the house -- as guests of the renter, they could do whatever they wanted in the home...
Not too smart, considering the police investigation in mid-January for underage drinking, and the complaints from parents and placed anonymously that underage people were coming to this house to do what they apparently were not permitted to do in their own homes.
When the investigating police officer for that incident had showed up on my front porch looking for the downstairs renter, I informed him that they young man below was a "follower"; he was a good kid, and I like him, when he's on his own, but he is only as good as the crowd he is following. I'm not sure of his mental disability, but I had previously gone to the police station last year and asked if there was a community service officer I could speak with regarding the renter. I believed he was a vulnerable adult.
This visit, on October 8, 2013 lasted about 30 to 45 minutes and the officer I spoke with took notes. One of the male guests of the downstairs renter had broken out the window leading onto the front porch, and fled the scene. The downstairs renter was intoxicated extremely that night, and although the police came two times to question him and ask who he was with who had broken the window, no action apparently was taken.
Also, as I mentioned on October 8 during my visit to the police station, twice I had found the same two young men sleeping on my porch -- the second time they were using my freshly laundered clothes as pillows, while they slept on the floor. My dog startled them into awakening, and they explained they were looking for their friend, who had stayed overnight with the landlord, where he helps with the cattle. I was nice enough the first time -- they quickly left -- but the second time, I told them they were trespassing and were not welcome on the premises.
I also learned that one of the young men was the brother of another who had been imprisoned, partly based on my testimony: when I first arrived in Rice Lake, I was entering the libary, and observed a group of 4 young men running, seemingly intoxicated, when one jumped on a car in the municipal lot, squatted and ... shit on a car. (I wish I were making this up...)
Being fresh from Madison, where community service officers operate under a broken windows policy and work with neighborhood groups to police together with citizens, I called it in. Reported what I saw. If I came out to a steaming pile of shit on my car, and somebody observed who did it, I would hope they would open their mouth and speak up as well.
I honestly thought they would track down the "kid", and make him clean up his shit. (I come from a small town myself, where the cops got results by publicly intervening: pouring out beers, confiscating fireworks, laying into people, etc. Of course, we didn't have a jail the next town over, waiting to criminalize dumb kid stuff.)
Little did I know, the man whom I identified by his thick dark hair and the solid color of his tee-shirt as part of the group, was well know to local officers. The responding office -- a female, Officer Jackie -- went to his home, observed him intoxicated, questioned him about his whereabouts, and arrested him. The young man was either on probation for another crime, or had charges against him that included "no drinking" in his bond conditions. The witness/victim's advocate, Mary Hogan, asked me to testify as to what I had seen, and I worked with the assistant district attorney Russ Berg in court.
When I told the downstairs renter his friends had been on my porch looking for him, he was the one who informed me that those two were ok, but he warned me against the one man's brother, who had been in prison, and was simply "no good". That's when I made the connection between my testimony years earlier, and who these people were sleeping on my porch.
When I spoke with the police officer on October 8, and reported both the broken window incident (which had a police report already) and the two incidents of trespass (neither of which I had found sufficient to report), he told me his staff was short-handed, and that all officers were trained to handle neighborhoods reports, which were not crimes necessarily but which a wise police force might want to be aware of. It's the "broken windows" policy of policing, ironically.
The officer also mentioned that he had a proposal to fill an open patrol position, which had been frozen by the city council, who wanted to wait for budget numbers and time, before re-negotiating the employment contract with the local police union. He did not ask me, but I made a public appearance at that meeting, and requested that the council please fill the open position immediately. I explained what I had been told about the community policing policy, the "broken windows" theory, and how it was not possible to implement anything close to that if the officers were short-handed already, requiring overtime just to staff their regular shifts.
The motion passed by one vote, and the next day I received a phone message, thanking me for coming to the meeting and speaking out. I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Unlike many authority figures here in the county, I rent -- by choice -- and understand perhaps better than most how alcohol affects even the best of neighbors, and how personal property -- like cars parked outside, or plants outside ones' door near the windows -- can get damaged by drunks, who often act out unknowingly when they're rolling home after bar close time.
My reason for moving to the house, in fact, with the porch and yard, was because in the larger unit, "box" apartments, there is often no accountability. When the divorced upstairs renter from me reported his guns were stolen from the home by the teenage male guests of his teen daughter who was visiting, I knew it was time to get out of there. Anyone who's ever taken a gun safety class knows that responsible gun owners keep their weapons under lock and key, so that children left alone cannot access them. Apparently, these guns were not locked and simply walked out the door...
I had been notified by this situation from a neighbor across the hall, who was studying at the community college to be a police officer herself. She was having a broken window fixed by the landlord, when she informed me of the gun thefts, and to keep my eyes and ears open as to any teens who should not be on the property. (She made sure I knew who the friends of her own teenage son were, as well as already knowing the high schooler, who lived full-time with his father upstairs. None of this was formally done, or frightened, or in need of a "victim coordinator", just basic common sense. ie/She heard guns were missing by kids that weren't supposed to be around the propery: she opened her mouth and told me; had her own broken window in the back room fixed.)
But when I asked the landlady about this, she downplayed the gun thefts, and explained why she had not informed the tenants herself: "Oh Mary, those boys weren't even supposed to be over visiting the girl," she explained. She simply was clueless about why that did not make it all better: if a father doesn't know who is coming and going in his own home, and bullets easily can be fired through walls and windows, all the more reason to have the guns removed from the premises or safely locked up, until the teenage children can be trusted.
So in short, I thought my worries were over when I rented the big old house with only one downstairs tenant. This man was a bit older than me, quiet, disabled, and a non smoker who did not bring guests over to party at all hours. I never considered him vulnerable to any young friends, nor was I ever awakened, repeatedly, in the middle of the night by smoke, noise, trespass or property threats. But he moved back to Milwaukee last May, and the new tenant in his 20s, a good worker of the cattleman landlord moved in...
Let me stress again, I like this guy. He's got style, rare in a rural community. When it's working season and he's in contact regularly with the landlord, working at the farm, life is great. It's the friends whose behavior here is questionable: I don't think the renter even knew the ages of the young people being brought to the property. All the more reason I wish we could have worked together to address any vulnerabilities in the system and how to prevent them.
The final incident, that occurred only weeks after the underage drinking party, concerned an anonymous call that came in on the sheriff's tip line. Apparently a police officer responded on the Friday or Saturday of Martin Luther King day weekend, and told the group below to keep it down, after he apparently confirmed that there were underage people present, but they were not drinking.
I didn't know any of this until the following morning. I certainly didn't text in the tip, but guess what? The kids thought so! They told me this the next day, and reported they would damage my car when I had knocked at 6a.m, and asked them to move a vehicle that had blocked my car in. Hungover and rude, the young man came within inches of hitting my car, as his tires were slipping on the ice, he said, and he had to "rock it", with no choice of coming so close to my car...
I got the number from the responding officer and called dispatch, who clearly stated the complaint the night before had been texted anonymously, and was NOT from the upstairs tenant. Unfortunately, that never got related to the party below, so all night long they smoked and partied it up, apparently to teach me not to call the police on them.
I filed a 6-page handwritten complaint the next day, after being up all night, outlining the previous issues, and explaining some of the drawbacks of anonymous reporting, I left 3 messages for the county victim coordinator, Mary Hogan, whom I had met that one time previously, and who I later learned was not happy with my newspaper reporting on court trials and charges. Apparently she is the one who determines who is a victim in this county and qualifies for services, and clearly, I was not in this class.
When I finally did ask the receptionist to hold the line and track her down in the building, as I wasn't sure if my earlier messages had been getting through, and allowing for her being off on the MLK day holiday, she explained while I could seek a restraining order, it would be hard to determine which one of the friends would be the appropriate subject of a restraining order, since they were apparently acting together. Also, the cost deterred me. I was working with the landlord to address these issues when the 17-year-old allegedly "moved in."
Again, I knew the landlord was not in agreement with this, particularly since the young lady had lewd and lascivious conduct charges against her, from sexual contact with an adult man in front of two even younger teen girls. I don't want that where I live; the landlord doesn't want that in the building he owns.
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After I was arrested, the downstairs renter, and the young couple, moved a homeless woman "Chrissy" and her pitbull "Leonard" into the house for the following week. They brought the dog out onto the foyer area, and introduced it to my Yorkie mix, with the teenage boyfriend stating, "See, the dogs get along. Why can't we people get along?"
The landlord then came over, and cleaned house.
I'm not sure what he said, but he put everyone except the downstairs renter out, permanently. Things have been nice and quiet around here.
About a month later, the truancy officer came looking for the girl, who was long gone but had registered at this address for her alternative school. By then, the downstairs renter informed me, she had been transported across state lines, a visit to Florida with her boyfriend.
I still wonder why the police did not care enough about this child to either take her home, or to find a good foster family where she could learn boundaries and grow. I don't think 20-something men and teenagers are going to do a good job of raising her, like a proper family could, even a trained foster one.
Minors shouldn't be "moving in" in the middle of a cold long winter, with odd collections of people like that. When the police learn of it, they should call county services (for the homeless lady with the dog; especially for the underage woman; and maybe for the disabled as well, who is still learning how to set his own houseguest policies.)
