Owner's Adult Son Dealing Drugs In Our Complex

I have seen posts where an association has taken steps to remove a problem renter, but our situation is a bit trickier.

We are a small, eight-unit townhome complex in California. One of our owners moved in with her son when he was 14. He is now 31 and still lives with her. He has never been employed and has a long history with our local police on drug possession charges. Other owners, including myself, witnessed him engaged in suspicious activity within the gated complex that we believed to be drug sales. The first three years I lived here (right next door to him) the police came to get him twice. In June of 2006 one of our owners saw him bring some people into our gated common garage and begin a drug transaction. She called police and they arrested him and recovered a pound of marijuana. But he was only given probation and he returned immediately back to his mother's home. We thought his arrest would finally give us the legal means to remove him, but our lawyer said our CCRs did not give us that power, despite the standard "no illegal activity" clause, and an enforcement section that specified "injunctive relief".

Now once again over the last four months he has been seen bringing people into our gates and conducting drug sales. We have been in contact with police, but they keep telling us how hard it would be to catch him in the act. We researched security camera systems, but can't really afford one that would cover all the areas we would need to. His mother is and always has been in complete denial and whenever it is suggested to her that her boy is breaking the law she accuses us of discrimination and threatens to sue us.

Is there any legal remedy for the HOA to force her to make him move out, short of adding language to the CCRs that specifically state that guests and relatives of owners can be voted out of the property if they violate the covenants enough times?

You have a real dilemma, my heart goes out to you. You would think that these are the type of problems that HOAs would be designed and equiped to handle. Unfortunaltely they really are inadequate when it comes to serious issue like this. Does their front yard have any weeds you can cite them on?

Hi Tami,

My suggestion is to keep working with the Police and call them when you see suspicious activity. This guy obviously feels that your HOA is a "safe" location to bring people into to sell them drugs, so the more often the Police show up to check things out, the less comfortable he'll feel dealing drugs on your property.

It's more of a criminal matter than an HOA matter, so trying to force him out under the rules of the HOA could be along difficult process. Hopefully the Police can bust him with enough drugs to send him away for a while.

Time to share (with MOM) all the FACTS that you know. Not what you "think" is happening, but what you know for sure.

Remind her that SHE is putting herself in a dangerous position because of HIS behavior. That may have more impact than anything else you try to do to HIM.

Unless you hire a security person for a little while to monitor ALL residents' activities, there is nothing you can do. The short-term cost may be worth it.

Before hiring a security guard, I would speak to the local police about having an officer or two spend a couple of evenings "visiting" in your homes. Even drug dealers and users are creatures of habit and I suspect much of the dealing happens around the same time each evening. If the police chief won't agree to that then you may be able to hire an off duty officer with arrest powers to patrol your community.

If you get no help from the police complain loud and long to the politicians running for election/re-election for the city council or ideally a sheriff running for office. The squeaky wheel gets the grease; especially in an election cycle and no one wants to appear weak on this type of crime.

Here are my thoughts:

I would not try and use CC&Rs to kick him to the curb. I would instead speak with community affairs office of your police department. Most every state and city have means of seizing property involved in a drug deal (including the mother's house). Tell them you are very aware of the difficulty in busting the guy and ask how you can help.

If that doesn't get you action, then escalate by calling a city council member. And if action doesn't call, contact him/her again and again. And contact other council members. The squeaky wheel tends to get the grease. Be nice but insistent that they do what they can to help you in this mess. And don't be afraid to talk about politicians who are soft on crime. The catch is that you should be ready to stand behind the politician who helps you get rid of the drug dealer. Perhaps your board can agree to allow campaign signs. And get each owner to agree to placing one if feasible. (This last part has to be owner action not HOA action.)

Another thing you can do is to install two cameras. Aim them directly to get footage of everyone going in and out of the gates. Put a sign up to alert people to their presence. It is best if you can keep the exact whereabouts hidden. And in fact, you might want to have them installed ahead of fake cameras that are decoys and placed where you can catch someone messing with them.

The thing is that nobody in the drug trade wants their picture taken when making a deal. And if they are sure that they will be filmed it will be a discouragement from doing the deal in that location. You are right to not want to brazenly take footage in the flesh. Three jerks killed a co-worker of mine this year for his tire rims. You can imagine what they might do for drugs.

As a note, you do need to realize that if the police are trying to catch him again in your complex that adding the cameras is not the best thing to do. The cameras will send him to another location to make the deal. And if they catch him elsewhere then they won't be able to link him to the house and thus seize the house.

I know the idea of seizing the house may sound harsh. But that is the price of denial and enabling drug dealers. Keep in mind that the mother is an accessory to the activity since she clearly knows it is happening and allows it in her house. Do not show the woman pity until she grows a spine.

Tammy,

One thing that will help is if you can have the arrest effected on the property. That might give the police the reasonable cause needed to search the house. If they can find drugs (or related stuff) in the house then you are on your way to justice. That would enable seizure of the house. It would also be a real awakening for the mother. Even if they don't find what they are looking for I doubt she would want that to happen again to her. They would disturb every single nook and cranny in the house looking for the drugs.

The thing is to talk to the police about what it will take for them to do this. Let them know you are very serious and will work with them. Listen to them when they speak of difficulty and ask them how you can help.

Perhaps you can track when he does most of his deals. You might be shocked at how predictable the guy is. Few things are truly random. But try and have a good conversation about the problem. Preferably you will have several long talks with police before you talk to the politicians. This will give you more credibility.

Hi Michele. My initial question about HOA involvement was whether or not we could legally force the son out of the complex, as he is not an owner or a renter, but really qualifies as a guest. Our history with him is long and ugly. He would bring friends into the common garage, drink beer, urinate there, then leave the beer bottles lying around. He would throw trash out of his car onto the curb in front of our building, shoot off fireworks from his roof, verbally abuse other owners and our neighbors. His file of complaints is almost an inch thick. He has never shown any respect for the complex or the people who live here, and seeing him conducting drug sales within our security gates again while still on probation from the last arrest has gotten us to the very last inch of our collective rope. Warnings to his mother only get us lots of attitude and temporary relief.

We do have a "nuisance" clause in our CCRs, but the Enforcement Rules of it are very vague. It mentions injunctive relief and monetary repayment, but not "we can kick you out". Getting a court to compel compliance is not something we had thought of, so thank you for that suggestion. Anything that will make his mother seriously afraid of losing her home is more likely than anything to make the difference.

Several of us have been documenting everything we've seen over the last few months, including license plates and descriptions of the people who show up to see him. The information has been given to the police and we have pledged to do everything in our power to help them. We will give them a reasonable amount of time before we work our way up the political ladder.

Thank you for your reply.

Another thread from a few days back could help - the one on security cameras. Think about putting one at the front and back gate and in the common garage and it might help, as I'm sure his friends don't particularly want to be on camera.

Joe

We currently have one of these homes. Here is what we were told to do, did and were able to do through me being president of the HOA.

Call your local Narcotics Office and give them his information. Write down every tag you see him selling too and turn it in. Try to get pictures of the transactions without putting yourself in harms way. You could even hide one of your own camcorders facing in the direction he is selling.
Contact your local Community Liason with the Police Department and start a Blockwatch. Having that Officer at hand to give information too is wonders of help. Check with your neighboring communities and see if they have a Block Watch as well, if they do pass this information onto them so they can be the eyes on this situation as well. Then if your budget allows you, hire a private security officer (we obtained a officer on our local force, because they can do more) to roam the neighborhood for a few hours.

Make his house a "hot" house. Druggies do not like coming to buy drugs from a house that is "hot".

After our actions our drug dealers were taking their business across the street....ooops blockwatch there as well, a friend of mine that I shared our information with. Now the Drug Dealers take their business elsewhere. Don't know where, but it is not in my community or the one across the street.

I have 5 officers on hand that I can speak to at any time about this and although we have not had a major bust with this home, we have managed to push it out of our neighborhood. We live in a big city and to have these connections has been a miracle, but it was just the issue of getting a hold of the correct people within the police force.

We have a similar situation in my complex. Drug dealing is not only illegal and immoral, it brings crime into your community, putting every resident at risk.

We finally hired security, but not just any security guards. I hired off-duty police. It's not a cheap solution, but it has stopped tresspassers, vandalism, and forced the local drug dealer to take his business elsewhere. One of our officers even stopped a car theft in process. Security Guards from a security company do not have the ability to make arrests. Off-duty police do. Initially we had coverage every day, now we have 6 4-hour patrols per week at irregular times (you don't want them knowing when the police will be there).

Do you have a clubhouse? We also upgraded our clubhouse and put in wireless internet so the local police would have a nice, quiet place to go to fill out their paperwork. (That's why you see so many police at Starbucks with their computers. They need the wireless connection to get their reports in.) We even installed a special parking spot for them, obviously announcing that this property has an ongoing police presence.

The residents who were used to getting away with their activities were unhappy, but the majority of our residents were thrilled with the results. Again, off-duty police are more expensive, but they're not as expesive as you'd think and now that we've had them here for some time I find the local police have a more protective attitude toward our complex. It was a real win for us. I believe it's a much cheaper solution than a long, drawn-out court case.

Our summer was so quiet once we got an off duty Police Officer in the neighborhood. We will bring them back next summer or any time in between as needed.

The homeowners were quite happy about this as well.

I am surprised your decs and bylaws do not give you the authority to remove this guy and/or his mother. This is really a scary situation for you.

We paid for an CPD Officer to come out 2 times a week with irregular hours for two months. The charge was $35 an hour with a minimum of 3 hours. I have heard private security companies are cheaper. BUT off duty officer's can arrest and do everything else including making official reports as if they were on duty for the city.

Good luck with this. Stay safe and reread your bylaws, there should be a loophole in there somewhere. This is why we buy into these types of neighborhoods, to have somewhat control over living peacefully.

We were just able to evict some tenants (renters that rented from the original owner - whom was not helpful but will pick up the legal bill) that were causing problems with neighbors, harboring pitbulls illegally, not following any regulation we have set forth, disturbing the peace........and on and on!

Tamara,

It's not unusual for that specific language to NOT be in governing documents.

We cannot kick a resident or a resident's guest out of the development.

I'm sure Condo and townhome associations might have a bit more leeway, but even then, these aren't renters with the board being the landlord and able to evict. These are people who own their own homes and/or units.

What our documents DO provide is a legal remedy to enforce the CC&Rs that do exist, including the "nuisance" clause. That will often be court-ordered compliance, but I seriously doubt if a court would order an eviction of either the resident or members of the resident's family.

We have just recently hired a uniformed police officer for 10-hour patrols a week (40 hours a month). These are random hours, at his scheduling, and he patrols our retention basin/lake area and the 8 blocks of our subdivision.

The monthly fee is $1,200 per month and the contract is a month-to-month contract. We are trying it out for a 2-month period.

He began his patrols last week and has already arrested one person (someone cutting through our neighborhood driving on an expired license), and given out 7 speeding and parking tickets.

He has approached several groups of people at the lake area and the ones who could not provide proof of address within Grandel Farms were told to leave. They did.

We had tried a security service and the problem is that they do not have arrest powers, should something require an arrest, and, quite frankly, people (kids?) don't take them as seriously as they do a uniformed officer.

But, even if you go this route, you should still consider pursuing trying to obtain an injunction against the resident. They need to know that they are responsible for the activity that goes on in their unit.

Rules matter.

Tamara, it's ironic, my brother lived in a condo community in Georgia where a man had purchased a unit for his son to live in. The son and his roommate were a complete disruption with loud parties, and sold drugs and the HOA forced them out with no police involvement. Yet in our case after an arrest where our guy was seen by a witness bringing people into our common garage and conducting a drug transaction, where the police arrived in time to see it in progress (unfortunately, all parties ran out a door on the opposite side of the garage than the one the police entered from), where they recovered over a pound of marijuana sitting on our guy's car hood and arrested him hiding in his mother's unit...our lawyer tells our covenants don't give us the authority to do anything at all, except institute small fines for infractions. And previous HOA regimes had never even written a fine policy, so we couldn't do anything except write a stern letter to his mother. At which point she threatened to sue *us* for libel and slander, insisting that her son's arrest had nothing to do with the complex!

Thank you both for the rates you paid for off-duty police. I am in complete agreement that a private security firm would mostly be a waste of money. We need someone who has arrest powers. And we need a lawyer to handle an injunctive relief case for us.

Hi Brian, and thanks. My cameras are simple DIY security cameras with no audio capabilities. They are motion activated through software on my computer. The first one (that he knows about) just does frame grabs of activity right outside my front door and has been used only to try to establish activity patterns while I'm at work, as well as deter activity right outside my door. My intention with the newer camera isn't necessarily to get something so incriminating that it will get an arrest, as I don't believe that's possible. What I want is proof of the activity to eventually show his mother and to provide to police with the hope that they can use it as a stepping stone for further action. I told the Narcotics officer about my front door camera and he immediately asked if I had been able to record any transactions, like it would be helpful. For the short term we'd like to see this guy caught again and charged. For the long term we'd like to see him move out of our complex. If neither of those things can be achieved we'll go the deterrence route, with a full blown video security system and signs.

You could look into a banning program. Our board has considered this before, other HOA's in our area do have them in place. I don't remember all the details as it's been a while, but our county police department has a program that we could have signed up with, for liability reasons our lawyers recommended against it and we're still without a program in my neighborhood. For people who continually cause problems, you provide a bannign letter, which gives them notice that they are not welcome on HOA property. Violations are considered trespassing, and you can have them arrested for that. It may be mroe useful for outside people coming to your community tha tthey do not live in, I'm not sure how his residency status affects things, it may be yet another kink... But do talk to your police department and see if they have such a program and how it works.