Chicago Sheriff Still Reluctant to Evict People

[JTFrog]

Vigilante or Hero?

Why one Chicago sheriff is defying the courts and refusing to perform evictions.

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Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What actually occurs during a typical eviction?
Thomas Dart: It's hard to explain; that's why I always encourage people to come out with me. Until you're physically out there, you can't really get the magnitude of what you're actually up to. It sounds like it's an antiseptic process, and it's anything but that. In the majority of the homes I was going into, there were always little kids around—I mean, really young kids, and we're taking them and putting them out on the street. A lot of them were seniors, and a lot of them had issues with dementia. Once again—we're taking them out to the street … Most of these neighborhoods are not good neighborhoods. Once out on the street, we leave. While they're off looking for transportation, the few things they own are being stolen.

I tried to work arrangements with landlords and mortgage holders to get me more information as far as who was in there, so I could try to get social services to them and somewhat mitigate this. And I had no luck.

When did you begin to think there was something wrong with the system?
I can't emphasize enough how stunned people are. if you and your family are sitting in your house, watching TV on a Thursday night, and all of a sudden you hear a knock on the door. You go to answer it, thinking it's a neighbor, and instead it's me and six people in black suits and a battering ram telling you to get out of your house. It was that type of response I was getting at the door.

I got a bunch of stories. One in particular hit all the buttons. We went in, and standing in front of me is a young man, probably early 30s; he's holding two 6-month-olds in his hands, in their diapers, both of them have colds; he's got a 5-year-old, and an 11-year-old with his wife. And we're there to throw him out.

He pulls out a lease he'd signed, which was all valid and notarized. The lease was entered into after the foreclosure had occurred—the case had gone through the courts, but this landlord was such a rotten person he kept renting the place out. If not for the steps we'd put in place, this guy was out in the street with these little kids.

This kind of thing was happening a lot?
I can give you a hundred anecdotes. Whereas these things used to pop up once in a blue moon, this was happening all the time. The number of places we went to where people had no idea; where the occupants were not the right people; where given us the wrong location—they sent us once to evict someone from a vacant lot, where the house had burned down two years before. It is numbers, situations and scenarios that we had never seen.

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http://www.newsweek.com/id/188619

:thumbsup:

[juno jones]

1. K&R! n/t

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

2. Justice supercedes law.

I'm encouraged to know that at least one sheriff recognizes that even though it might cost him his career.

[originalpckelly]

4. The rich people are terrified...

that someone might not think they have to follow one of their contracts. If we don't follow their contracts, then it might mean they can't control us.

Their right to private property might be impaired, or rather, their right to consider everything that defines our lives, including something as basic as where we live, should be considered "their" property.

[originalpckelly]

3. How is this not back door enforcement of a slavish system?

Always keeping people in debt with credit cards and mortgages, always keeping them renting, so that they can never get ahead? You don't play their games, you don't have work or don't work and instead of getting whipped, the police come to your door with a battering ram and six guys in black freaky clothes to throw your ass out on the street.

And here's the kicker:
Do the people who own this system work every day? What happens when they "stop" working? Are they out on the street?