Public Nuisance No. 1

What happens when the city wants to evict you but your landlord doesn’t? He could lose not just a tenant, but also his property.

Bob Brown owns a house at 1339 Ogden Street; for the past five years he’s rented the carriage house to Michael Pisarck. Last December Pisarck was arrested and charged with possession of drugs, but the charges were soon dropped. Since then, Pisarck says, he’s cleaned up his act. Brown wants to give him a second chance.

But the city may not let him. The property and its occupant are now targets of the Denver Police Department’s nuisance-abatement unit, which identifies and seizes “problem” homes in the city–even when it is the tenant, and not the owner, who’s considered the problem.

In January 1997 the city overhauled its nuisance ordinance to make it easier for residents to complain to authorities about problem properties. But the new ordinance–and the way it’s been applied–has drawn its own share of complaints. In the case of one house on Humboldt Street (“This Property Is Condemned,” March 5), despite numerous calls from neighbors and dozens of visits from police, no one could prove wrongdoing, and the property remains in the hands of its owners. In Pisarck’s case, though, it took only one visit to declare the property a nuisance.

“There’s nothing arbitrary about the police-department side,” insists Lieutenant David Bricker of the DPD’s nuisance-abatement unit. “We follow due process stringently.”

And the unit’s own procedures require that when a person has been charged with possession of drugs on a property, that person must vacate the property. “Mr. Pisarck is not Public Enemy No. 1,” says Bricker, “but his conduct has brought him into criminal nuisance. We’ve handled a lot of cases and have yet to let a drug dealer or user stay at the premises.”

The carriage house Pisarck has been renting is filled with aquariums and heavy-metal memorabilia. It’s often filled with people, too–friends who need a place to stay for a while. Last December 7, Pisarck was home with his brother, his girlfriend and another woman when two police officers, Craig Alexander and Daniel O’Bannon, arrived.

The cops said they’d received information that Pisarck’s roommate, who was subleasing a room in the carriage house, was using or dealing drugs from the address. The roommate wasn’t in, and Pisarck wouldn’t let the police search the roommate’s room without his permission. But Pisarck allowed the cops to search the rest of the house.

The police turned up an ounce of marijuana and, in a wooden box of sand and seashells in Pisarck’s room, a plastic bag filled with a small amount of methamphetamine.

“I was dumbfounded,” says Pisarck. “I was more surprised than the cop was.”
But this was not Pisarck’s first run-in with the law–or with bad roommates. He was charged with misdemeanor larceny in Colorado Springs in 1985, a charge he says was dismissed. In 1992 he was charged with felony forgery in Lakewood–a charge, he says, that stemmed from another former roommate who forged his name on a check. And Pisarck admits he has on occasion used meth and marijuana, as have some of his guests. “We’re occasional users,” he adds, “but not junkies.”

“Pisarck admits that he uses meth to the officers,” says Bricker. “They find it in his bedroom. Is it an appropriate solution to evict his roommate? I don’t think so. It’s very clear Mr. Pisarck is a narcotics user. He has tried to blame this on everyone he can.”

Pisarck says he suspects his roommate may have planted the meth in his room, but he has no proof–other than the fact that he readily allowed the cops to search his room–and the roommate has since flown the coop. The cops arrested Pisarck for possession of a controlled substance, and he spent the night in jail.

When he got out, he changed the locks on his carriage house, threw everyone out and moved his roommate’s stuff to the garage. A few weeks later, the DA’s office dropped the drug-possession charge because Pisarck had cooperated with police in trying to apprehend the roommate.

By the end of January, Pisarck had the place to himself and no charges hanging over his head. He figured that was the end of the problem. “It felt so good,” he says. “The house is mine again. The only one I know is here are my cats.”

Then came the letter, dated February 4, from Bricker’s office, ordering Bob Brown, owner of the property, to evict Pisarck within thirty days.

“What pisses me off is, after I took things in my own hands and solved the problem, months later this paperwork hits me,” says Pisarck.

Brown stood by his tenant. “I never had a complaint about him before,” says Brown, adding that Pisarck, a house inspector, helped maintain the property. “It seems like they’re being a little hard. We don’t seem to have a lot of rights.”

According to city ordinance, a property can be declared a nuisance and the city can move to seize it if any controlled substance is found there. (The only exception is if the find is fewer than eight ounces of marijuana.) In the carriage house, says Bricker, the officers found one ounce of marijuana, two pipes, two snorting tubes and .078 grams of meth.

“We’ll never know if officers found everything there,” Bricker adds. “Perhaps he had a small amount because he sold some. Perhaps he used it all. I don’t think [eviction] is too severe.”

But Brown did. He sent a letter to Bricker in late February, asking the lieutenant to cancel the order and promising to supervise Pisarck and the property. The abatement plan stood, Bricker responded.

“Narcotics were recovered, and Mr. Pisarck admitted they were his,” he wrote. “In light of these facts, a promise by Mr. Pisarck to ‘clean up his act’ is inadequate.” Bricker did, however, extend the eviction deadline to March 25.

On March 23 Brown reluctantly served Pisarck with an eviction notice; the landlord says his tenant is paid up until the end of April. But Bricker says his office will inspect the carriage house this week. If Pisarck is still there, Bricker’s unit will file a request for a restraining order to seize Brown’s house.

Brown will have ten days to file a response; a hearing will be scheduled within twenty days after the response is filed. If the judge signs off at the hearing, Brown’s house will belong to the city. (According to Bricker, the unit has removed tenants forcibly before. “We give ’em ten minutes to grab personal items, change the locks, and then we take possession of it,” he says.)

To attorney Elizabeth McKendree, who was consulted by Brown and Pisarck but does not represent them, the “idea of civil forfeiture is very distressing. The effects of it can be very dire. They’re not taking away a luxury boat. This one seems very, very high-handed.”

Brown says he doesn’t want to fight the city, but he also wants to do right by his tenant. “I’ll tell the judge what happened,” he says. “I’d say I had to force him out. But I would like him to stay if it can be arranged.”

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