Please stop having your friends selling their body on my doorstep... thanks

July 12, 2008 8:00 PM

I'm at my wits end and not sure what I can do about this. My downstairs neighbors are hosting prostitutes. I wish I were making this up. There are a couple of regular prostitutes that go there fairly often. It usually ends with them fighting with the guys downstairs. Tonight there were about 8 guys waiting outside my building which I thought was odd, but what ever. They leered at me as I walked past and one of them turned to the guy who lives there and he shook his head 'no'. An hour and a half later, there was an altercation out back and I heard/ watched the whole fight which involved the prostitute demanding her money and her skirt and hollering about being butt nekid so there was no way she stole anything. Her pimp arrived and scared the guy and the still shirtless guy gave her the money (and her skirt). The prostitute hollered to the guy as she walked away that she warned him that she had a tracking device on her.

I seriously wish I were making this all up. I have suspected this was going on for a while, but simply chalked it up to having a vivid imagination and left it at that. But it has been escalating. A couple of weeks ago the a couple of the prostitutes were hanging out with the guys downstairs on the porch entrance to the building as I was headed out to walk the dog. Some guy walking by tried to talk to them and they yelled at him. I kept walking but happened to be at the same pace as the guy that they yelled at. He turned to me and told me that they were prostitutes and he gets that they have to make a living but that they didn't have to be bitches. I pretended not to hear him and walked in another direction.

I told the assistant in my rental office, but she said 'So do you want me to tell them to stop having prostitutes over?' I get people banging on my door at 3/4 in the morning sometimes (obviously looking for the neighbors- our doors are side by side).

Tonight was the last straw.

I plan to speak with the owner directly on Monday. I don't feel safe with this happening downstairs. Once the owner is made aware, do they have any legal obligation to do anything? If they do nothing- do I have any legal ground to break my lease?

I have spoken to the cops, but it was after the fact. The incidents are fairly quick, so the cops would never make it there in time. I live in Virginia...

Like I said, this seems to be escalating. What can be done?

posted by MayNicholas to law & government (28 comments total)

Um, keep reporting it to the cops? The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Ask to be escalated up to whatever they have of a vice squad.
posted by SpecialK at 8:25 PM on July 12, 2008

Have the cops refused to do a stake-out? Will other neighbors (are there any?) corroborate your story? This is definitely not something you should put up with -- and not even getting into the prostitution, the noise and general disturbances seem like they're not acceptable and probably illegal.

Also, when you were asked, "So do you want me to tell them to stop having prostitutes over?", what did you answer? Seems like the answer should've been, "Hell yes I want you to tell them that! And tell them that using the property for criminal activity is grounds for eviction!" (I think that's standard, isn't it?)
posted by SuperNova at 8:28 PM on July 12, 2008

Incident reports from the police for noise violations will help your landlord build a case for evicting them. File one every single time it happens. I dealt with some seriously rowdy neighbors recently first by going to the window at the local police precinct the morning after a big disturbance (I figured this was the better approach it since it wasn't an emergency) but the police told me to call 911 and get the reports made the same night every time it happens. May landlord instructed me to make the police reports so he could start the eviction process. Believe me, when your landlord calls them saying he has police reports documenting disturbances, and that if the disturbances don't stop they will get evicted, the disturbances will probably stop. Or they'll get evicted, it's a win/win, really.
posted by The Straightener at 8:39 PM on July 12, 2008 [2 favorites]

Crazy thing is- there seems to be more prostitutes in the neighborhood lately. One of them has taken to hanging out on my friend across the street's corner. They called the cops and they came and shooed the woman away. My friend went and spoke to the cop after and the cop confirmed she was a prostitute AND a crack head. I seriously thought when I started noticing the shadiness that I was just being dramatic! Turns out...

My response to the rental assistant was- yes please... but I don't think she took me seriously. Which is why I'm going to speak to the actual owner.

I guess I don't hound the cops, because I don't want to have to speak to them in front of the house (I am a single woman living alone and would rather not draw attention to myself). I can't image you can always call non-emergency anonymously.
posted by MayNicholas at 8:42 PM on July 12, 2008

Find out where your local precinct/police station is located and speak to someone there. There will be a window right inside the front door that exists for exactly this reason, so you can dialog with an on duty police officer about non-emergency issues face-to-face, that's exactly what that officer is posted there to do. If you go first thing in the morning on a weekend I guarantee the place will be dead, you won't have to wait in line, and the guy at the window will be thankful for the company.
posted by The Straightener at 8:45 PM on July 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

It sounds like the prostitution is irrelevant; your building has become a noisy and possibly dangerous place where fights break out routinely. This is a matter for the police.

When someone pounds on your door in the wee hours, call the police.

When someone has a fight in the yard, call the police.

At the very least, call in a noise complaint for every noisy outburst. I know you say the cops won't make it there before the incident is over, but at the very least, a visit from the cops A) alerts the nieghbor in question that the activities are a disturbance, and B) creates a record of the incidents, which the landlord might use as leverage to get the tenants to either quiet down or move out.

Possible C): According to my previous landlord, in some locations, the police will report disturbance-related visits to the landlord, and sometimes fine the landlord, which in turn applies pressure to fix the problem.

Your local police department can advise you whether to use the emergency or non-emergency number. When neighbors of mine had frequent domestic disturbances and frequent loud all-night parties, my police urged me to call through the 911 line, to provide a consistent log of the calls from me and other neighbors.

My landlord was only responsive to complaints accompanied by a call to the police, and he explicitly told me that a trail of police visits made it easier for him to cancel their lease. (Even assuming this is accurate, leases and laws vary from place to place, of course.)

In most of the leases I've signed, I agree that my lease can be terminated if I engage in illegal activities on premises. Does the lease for your building say the same? If so, your landlord does have the authority to "to tell them to stop having prostitutes over," and they're simply choosing to stay out it.

on preview: because I don't want to have to speak to them in front of the house (I am a single woman living alone and would rather not draw attention to myself).

Tell the police this when you call them. Tell them you don't feel safe coming out front to talk to them. The ploice only once requested an interview with me when I called in the domestic disturbances I described above. I didn't know any more than what I'd told them on the phone, anyway, which was "Someone upstairs is screaming again."
posted by Elsa at 8:49 PM on July 12, 2008

Everyone already said what I was going to, but I wanted to let you know that you have my sympathies. My husband and I lived in the same kind of situation for a whole year. Prostitutes with 4" long black-and-purple fingernails tapping them on our windows to get our cats to come peek through the curtains. Scary fights in the middle of the night. Not feeling safe alone - and always having to keep the curtains drawn - because of the seriously sketchy groups of people always hanging out on the porch. You will get through it ok, it just really sucks.

You are planning to move when your lease is up, right? It sounds like the whole area is going to crap.
posted by GardenGal at 8:53 PM on July 12, 2008

Ugh, yeah, you're not alone, well I remember the crack dealing and prostitute funtime across the hall back in my bachelor days. The lesson I learned is, if you leave your door unlocked when you go out for a cigarette, someone may go in and jack your stereo and take the roll of quarters you bought to do your laundry. Seriously, the lesson was I needed to start living in better neighborhoods.

My problem neighbors got busted and evicted but it took a long time and there wasn't much the tenants could do about it (these people know how to survive on the margins: I suspect it's not an accident they tend to wrap up their drama inside the time it would take for the cops to come if someone were to call them. It's hard for the cops to get something solid in these situations because no matter how obvious the situation is for you, you're not witnessing the actual crime. It took a ton of pretty crazy crap for my neighbors to get evicted. Even after they left I still needed to move: the neighborhood was just too damn sketchy and I was sick of it.
posted by nanojath at 9:30 PM on July 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

I think it's important to note that how the police respond is also related to the city. When I lived in a very small college town (pop: 10,000 w/ students 16,000) the police were very quick to respond noise complaints, and my neighbors were arrested because they'd had the cops called on them maybe three times. Obviously these cops had nothing better to do than break up an international student's party where five Indian men were yelling, "drop it like it's hot" at three in the morning. However, if you live in a larger area with more crime and you complain about just noise they may not have the time/energy/funds to care. I think it is important to call and say you suspect there are illegal activities that are endangering the neighborhood. It sounds like the area may have enough problems that also require the police dept.'s attention. If you feel threatened, and I believe I would too, you deserve their attention.
posted by Derive the Hamiltonian of... at 10:46 PM on July 12, 2008

When I moved here a year ago the neighborhood didn't have this problem. It all started about 4 months ago. I'm concerned because prostitution only brings more trouble to a neighborhood.
posted by MayNicholas at 10:48 PM on July 12, 2008

Tell the cops it's a regular thing, and request that they step up and do a regular patrol. If there's a vice squad set up with your PD, ask that they get involved. If cops can be convinced to cruise down your block every 30 minutes or hour during peak, uh, selling hours, there's a good chance the whole 'ho operation will get squeamish and move on permanently.
posted by brain cloud at 11:04 PM on July 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

What's been said above is good. As a jaded veteran of the good-neighborhood-gone-bad wars, absolutely call the cops every time you have a halfway decent excuse. (They may not want you to call 911 for a noise complaint, but they sure will for a fight.)

The other part of the equation is the community response. How many of your neighbors do you know? How many of them call the cops? How many of them have complained to the landlord?

Outside your building, is there a neighborhood watch? This can be as simple as a telephone tree and a couple of signs, but this is often not enough to really deter activity, alas.

Look into whether your community has a nuisance ordinance. Ours allows the chief of police to summon a landlord for a meeting whenever there are X number of arrests at an address in Y months. If you have such an ordinance remind the landlord of this. Under the ordinance, with a letter certifying a nuisance, a landlord can go to court and evict someone with three days' notice and no opportunity to remedy.

My experience is that getting people arrested is great, but getting them evicted is even better. A fight arrest might mean they're out of jail the next day with a court date in a couple of months or longer. But an eviction means they're really gone and they have an eviction on their record which means it's harder for them to live somewhere else. Compared with the criminal justice system, this is incredibly effective.
posted by dhartung at 11:32 PM on July 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

The funny thing is- my friend across the street the called about the prostitute on their corner- knew it was a prostitute when she stood up and started shaking her wares at the passing cars- while holding on to ... the neighborhood watch sign!
posted by MayNicholas at 11:53 PM on July 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

You might also consider looking into whether the circumstances allow you to break the lease early. This would obviously depend on the terms of your lease and local regulations, but you shouldn't be required to live somewhere unsafe.
posted by happyturtle at 2:14 AM on July 13, 2008

KEEP reporting it to the cops...at the SAME time EVERY DAY (night). Do it often enough and the cops will make that part of their beat because they will be expecting that call from you. Cops will catch them in action, end of story.

Keep it up for about a month. Call EVERY time there is a disturbance. I'm talking 3-4 times a day if necessary. Get the local police dept number and call that number for small things, and 911 for things that make you feel less safe!

Good luck!
posted by hal_c_on at 3:13 AM on July 13, 2008 [4 favorites]

By all means, call the police.

As to the lease, the answer varies by state, but most states recognize the concept of "constructive eviction" in some form. The basic idea is that you can leave if the landlord causes conditions or allows conditions which make it impossible for you to enjoy the quiet possession of the premises. Seek legal advice on this issue. Many cities have a renters assistance project available to address issues like this.
posted by megatherium at 3:37 AM on July 13, 2008

I'm in the same position with my upstairs neighbour. I get people banging on my door too, as mine is next to his. As you say, calling the cops is usually a fruitless exercise, because by the time they arrive the incident's finished and the woman has left.

With a new change of building manager, I'm now getting somewhere. The building owner can't evict someone just for having a prostitute in their flat (nor would I expect them to - people can live as they want to, sleazy or not, as long as it doesn't affect my life) and without any criminal charges, there's nothing to pin on the guy. So the building owner is looking for other ways to put pressure on my neighbour in respect of other breaches of his lease, in the hope that it will become too uncomfortable for him to want to carry on living here. But it's like the drip-drip-drip of the tap, it'll take a long time.

You're entitled to 'quiet enjoyment' of your home. Log every incident, with pictures/video if it won't put you in danger to do so, and keep on and on and on at the building management to do something about it. Keep calling the cops. One day they may even show up while there's a fight going on and make some arrests.

Speak to your local vice officer, see if he'll send a patrol round at night to very conspicuously write down car number plates, or just park up outside or something.

You have my sympathy. There is no quick fix to this, unless there is some serious criminal escalation that results in arrests and eviction.
posted by essexjan at 6:34 AM on July 13, 2008

Don't go to the cops, go to the media. Call your local news station and say only this: "There is a brothel in my building." The rest will work itself out.
posted by parmanparman at 6:48 AM on July 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

I can't image you can always call non-emergency anonymously.

I do. I call all the damn time on my neighbors. My cell phone comes up "wireless caller" and I check the police logs regularly, even going down to the station to read the binder, to make sure I'm not showing up (and to see who else called the cops on them and what for - I need to know). You could always ask the PD if you can make a report anonymously because you fear for your safety.
posted by jerseygirl at 6:54 AM on July 13, 2008

Contact your city councilor, call the police every time there is prostitution-related trouble, call you landlord. Repeatedly. Or use the opportunity to break your lease.
posted by theora55 at 9:22 AM on July 13, 2008

You don't say where you live in VA, but in most large-ish cities there's a tenant advocacy organization (like TENAC here in DC). They'll know the local tenancy laws and regs backwards and forwards and can be a great resource for you.

Good luck with your situation and I hope you get to move soon!
posted by orrnyereg at 9:59 AM on July 13, 2008

I'd be worried that the prostitution is a symptom of a bigger problem, specifically drugs. It's all part of the same dynamic, and it all tends to happen on the same corners (where the girls are making money to service their habit, ditto the pimps, and the dealers have set up shop where their customers can find them).

Bottom line, if this problem extends to more than just one neighbor, it's time to move.
posted by drmarcj at 10:27 AM on July 13, 2008

I had the same problem, but thankfully our next-door neighbor was finally evicted. We tried to be diligent about locking our doors (first floor apartment), but every now and then we'd forget and have random people walking through our front doors.

We put up with it until one night a half-naked girl walked into our apartment, drugged out of her mind. Her jeans--the only real clothing she was wearing, were soaking wet because it had recently snowed and she had been stumbling around and had fallen into the snow drifts. I was sure if we didn't call the cops she would freeze to death on the streets. When the cops finally showed up, she had already left. I ended up walking around the neighborhood in the middle of the night because I just knew the cops hadn't found her and she was still out there. Sure enough I found her just a couple of blocks away. I gave her a warm sweater my SO was planning to donate to the Salvation Army, then proceeded to follow her until the cops finally showed up (I was on my cell phone the whole time talking to them while following her... truly pathetic police work).

If the prostitution didn't stop, I'd hang a sign on my door letting people know the brothel is the OTHER apartment, not yours. Something like:

BITCHES AND HO'S NEXT DOOR ==>>

If the assholes aren't going to leave, and the police aren't going to do anything, and your landlord isn't going to do anything, and you can't break your lease... well, at least this will hopefully mitigate against random entries.

Still, might be a good idea to start looking into apartment insurance.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:52 AM on July 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

Just to emphasize: document everything. Log, note, date, video/audio if possible and plenty of 911 calls to corroborate. Try and convince other neighbors to do the same. If the police can't/won't help, being able to drop twenty pounds of documentation on a news producer's desk moves you from someone with a problem to someone with a story.
posted by Skorgu at 12:16 PM on July 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

depending on where you live, do you have a town councilman or alderman who represents your district? talk to them and ask them to put some pressure on the police as well.

and document document document.
posted by rmd1023 at 12:54 PM on July 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

Every time you call to complain, the police make note of that, even when they don't seem to do much at all about it. And I'm pretty sure they use these incidence reports and the like to decide what gets moved over to vice, whether to increase the number of foot patrols in an area, etc. So as others have said, keep calling the police. If you never call, they'll never know what's up. (This is how it goes in Canada.)

Also, it might be worth breaking your lease.
posted by chunking express at 6:18 AM on July 14, 2008

Seconding rmd: Escalate.

Start taking pictures and video. Discretely. Then send the pictures and a note about the situation to the local paper, your local city councilman, assemblyman, the mayor and any other politician you can think of. Keep calling the police and logging the calls and tell the council and the mayor and whoever else that the police aren't responding to your complaints and not arresting anyone. Identify your landlord by name. Create an email list of local politicos and their staff and send them an email every time something happens or when you call the cops and they don't respond. Start showing up at townhall and city council meetings, maybe drop 20 into a councilmember's campaign fund so that you get invited to events. They'll lean on the police for you.

That's what constituent service is for -- turning the squeaky wheel into feedback through concert-sized speakers.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 11:02 AM on July 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Screw the other advice: get the hell out.

Single woman living alone in a neighborhood getting that dangerous over the course of four months? Property manager not taking the situation seriously? Find another place to live and get out, as quickly as possible. Hopefully you can break the lease, but either way, you need to look out for your safety above everything else.
posted by letitrain at 8:38 AM on July 15, 2008 [1 favorite]