Intruder in the ‘hood

There is a homeless, probably mentally disturbed guy who has been trespassing at our (closed) community pool since December. He shows up at random in the evening. About a week ago, he inexplicably tore up a bunch of pool furniture, which moved him from “nuisance” to “problem”. We’ve got video, and so far the cops have been called 3 times, they’ve confronted him in the pool area each time - and let him go.

We’re pushing very hard to get him arrested (although the cops told me he’ll be a problem forever, and if he’s arrested, he’s get out in hours). Last night I swore out a complaint on the guy.

Here’s my question: what kind of duty does the Board have to inform the neighborhood? It gets dark early, families go out and walk, this guy has been seen walking in the neighborhood, I’ve seen video of the guy acting out at the pool. I’m “concerned”.

Additionally: how best to inform the neighborhood? How to tell almost 600 families to be cautious, yet not cause people to panic and freak out?

Future question: how to make the guy go away? But right now, I’m wondering about spreading an alert. The Board has barely started to discuss the matter. I feel like we need to alert people; not sure the rest of the Board will agree.

Thank you,

Bill

This is where a neighborhood watch comes in. It should be separate from the HOA completely. However, it may have all the same people in it plus renters/residents. I see nothing wrong with telling people to be aware of their surroundings and potential danger. Let them know the limits the HOA is facing getting the police to do anything. The HOA may look into getting a restraining order but that may be hard to do. Something would need to talk to a lawyer about.

We had a guy that was a sexual predator type. He exposed himself to a woman at our pool. He grabbed me in a inappropriate way in the pool. The police were looking for him. He also would go naked in front of his windows a lot. The sad part is that he was married with kids and a boy scout leader. Was not much could do about the situation as standing naked in your window is not against the law. So instead I warned the neighbors to never be alone with him. If there were men at the pool, I would ask them to make sure not to leave the women alone with him. He eventually moved. However, I did make sure that people did avoid him if possible.

I agree that the board has a duty to alert the community. They need to handle it carefully, though - you don't want panicky neighbors pulling a gun on the guy, or on each other when they're out late at night. I'd advise the board to present "just the facts" as you outlined them, and put the info in the newsletter, on the community website, etc. The board may also want to consider hiring some form of security until this guy moves on. Right now it seems like he's only into vandalism - but you don't want unqualified people assessing whether or not he poses a danger, or trying to handle the danger themselves.

If the board won't take steps, consider spreading the word yourself. Again, just the facts. Ordinarily I avoid social media like the plague, but this is one time where posting info on an appropriate website may be helpful.

Thank you, everyone.

ElleN, I may steal your words practically verbatim. I’m hoping the Board will see the wisdom in making this information public. If they don’t, I’ll go rogue and do it myself (thank you, Cathy).

Bill

Good idea. Was actually thinking about something like

"Please do not confront or antagonize this person. If you see him trespassing in the pool area or committing a crime, do not confront him and instead call 911 if you can do so safely"

Also pondering: including the police case number, the person's name (which is public record) and his photo (from security cam video).

(I've already had one person object to describing him as an "asian male", even though the policeman wrote "a/m" on the report).

Thoughts?

Again, I appreciate your input on this!

Bill

Before instructing owners to call the police if they see this guy, I think your HOA needs to get a (texas) "no trespass order."

Excellent!

Thank you. I hope it works out okay.

I hear ya on the overall problem. I'm not sure where you are in Texas, but compounding the problem here in Austin is the fact that APD and the CoA are having 'issues'. Both of the cops I've talked to recently gave me sob stories about how "well, it's been rough lately, everyone is being moved around and doing extra jobs and ..." (and also blaming liberal bleeding heart judges who consider a homeless trespasser "just a guy who wants a warm place to sleep at night"). It's pretty obvious the police aren't really "into" helping with this kind of thing. And to be honest, I can't blame them: when I went up to the pool on Sunday night to formally tell the trespasser that he was trespassing&yadda - that was a real low point for me, personally. I ran for the Board to help little old ladies deal with rotten PMs and such. Not this crap.

"My" trespasser - let's call him "Lex", because his initials are "LL" - seems mentally off, but also after watching him on video for many hours, he's also something of a predatory animal, living off the land. I probably won't win any friends by saying that, but it's the truth. Lex isn't just bumbling around; I get a definite sense that he is practicing a kind of 'stealth-craft': he frequently changes clothing (which makes him more difficult to ID); he seems to be using our pool as a cache for small items he shoplifts from local stores; he's got backpacks stashed around in various places filled with clothing, shoes, etc; he seems to be aware of the security cameras and tries to avoid them; he wears a hat, pulls up his hoodie hood, and keeps his head down whenever he's talking to people, which seems to make him a lot less memorable; he shows remarkable economy of movement and effort (he pushed a big pile of shoplifted items through the fence to the outside of the pool, then walked out through the gate - leaving it just a tad ajar, so it could be re-entered - and collected the items); and so on. He's very good at being meek and humble when the police talk to him, which I believe is something that does not come naturally to most people. Although when our porter confronted him back in January, Lex took off running. I think Lex has some intelligence about him, but mostly I think that Lex has been doing this for a long time, and his 'craft' is largely based on a large base of experience.

I could be completely wrong. In any event, I don't want him to be hurt or killed - which has been suggested to me - but I'm not sure what can be done to help this guy. What little experience I've had with "chronically homeless" persons suggests that *they don't really want to be helped". They *like* the life they're leading, and they aren't particularly interested in joining the rest of society and getting a job and etc. But I'm no expert. The police know of him: "EDP history, narcotics user, known to carry weapons, described as homeless, no warrants."

Oh - I'll mention that an oddball idea I've been considering is *tearing down the shed at the pool*. Since that seems to be Lex's focus whenever he comes to visit. It's a small 'private room', surrounded by a fair amount of open space, and I think he likes it because he doesn't think he can be trapped there (versus the pool bathrooms, which each have one door and even tho he's a scrawny li'l guy, I would not want to corner him in such a space). We'll probably get fence extensions and see if that works. The night before last I saw a different homeless person - a woman on a bicycle - get through the locked front gate simply by extending her arm far enough through the gate gaps that she could bang on the pusher-latch widget on the inside and Open Sesame! So there's that, too *sigh*.

In the meantime: God forbid I should get pulled over with an expired registration!

Bill

I've spent some time in Berkeley, circa 1989. Actually, that was my first encounter with chronic homelessness. At the time, one of the larger issues with the homeless was that many of them didn't bathe. Like: *ever*. I don't know that it was neglect so much as a conscious avoidance strategy on their part: other people simply did not want to be near them because they smelled so awful. It's difficult to imagine any police officer taking such a person downtown to be processed.

I'm not certain if they were 'homeless', but there was another group of people who I thought of as 'panhandlers'. As one might expect, they kept themselves clean. Which was kind of a prerequisite for approaching people and asking for spare change. The downside was that if you didn't fork over some $, they got very rude, very fast: cursing and yelling and so on.

I don't know what it's like now. I guess college towns are magnets for all manner of 'persons of the road'. When I was moving into my freshman dorm at UIUC, I was accosted by some guy with a sob story about how he'd been abandoned by his friends, and could I spare him a dollar, or anything so he could go home?

Bill