Poway Drug Measure Unused, But Useful : Law: Landlords in Poway say the measure is a help but officials and landlords in some other cities take a different view.

Poway’s City Council made local history a year ago by enacting the county’s first municipal ordinance requiring owners of rental housing to evict tenants found to be using or trafficking drugs.

Since that time, several other cities have followed Poway’s lead and imposed a drug eviction law that threatens landlords with criminal penalties if they don’t act to move out the lawbreakers.

“It is just another bolt in our quiver in the fight against drugs,” said Poway Councilman Jan Goldsmith. “It puts the city’s resources behind the landlord in his effort to keep his property drug-free.”

Yet, in the 12 months since Poway’s anti-drug legislation went into effect, the eviction law has not been used. Not once. In fact, the city has never even gotten to the point of telling a landlord about a problem at a rental unit.

“Frankly, I’m surprised,” Poway City Atty. Stephen Eckis admitted. “I had expected that by this time the sheriff’s department would have referred some cases to me for my review.”

Under the Poway law, which was promoted by Goldsmith and supported by the San Diego Apartment Assn., a landlord must remove or act to evict any tenant who is found to be using, selling, manufacturing or giving away illegal drugs of any kind. After the owner has been notified by the city attorney that substantial evidence has been collected to show illegal drug activity occurring in or around property he owns, the landlord must act or face misdemeanor charges that could bring a maximum penalty of up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The city law is actually much weaker than the state law most municipalities use, which allows law enforcement to seize the property.

Still, Betty Wheeler, legal director of the San Diego American Civil Liberties Union, has qualms about the Poway drug eviction law.

“It raises questions about what would happen if someone within a household is culpable (of dealing drugs) and others are not,” Wheeler said. “When a grandmother is visited by a grandson who deals dope, for instance, is it fair to evict the woman for the actions of her grandson?

“I think that this law is drafting landlords into unpaid military service in the war on drugs, that it is easier to go after a paper tiger (landlords) than directly at the bad guys (drug traffickers),” she said.

Wheeler also echoed the concerns of ACLU officials in New York City, where a 179-year-old “bawdy-house law” has been taken out and dusted off to be used to evict drug dealers from both public and private housing. New York ACLU lawyers objected to the practice until it was changed to provide due process and legal representation for the tenants facing eviction on charges of conducting illegal activities.

Ted Kimball, an attorney and president of the San Diego Apartment Assn., calls the drug eviction law a “right-to-know law” that protects law-abiding rental property owners from much stricter state statutes that allow law enforcement officials to seize the property and levy fines of up to $25,000 against the landlord in drug abatement cases.

He cited a case earlier this year in which a 74-year-old Pasadena man facing a $25,000 fine for allegedly allowing illegal drug trafficking on his property was shot to death when he went to the rental unit seeking information about the alleged drug dealing.

“The city refused to give the man any information with which he could defend himself,” Kimball explained, “and he died trying to find out.”

Without the local drug eviction ordinances, San Diego County landlords could be facing the same dilemma--required under the state statutes--of being required to prevent any illegal activity on their rental property but unable to obtain enough information to act to evict the tenants or to defend themselves against liability claims for not acting to end the violations, Kimball said.

Kimball said the SDAA hopes to persuade all local governments to enact ordinances like Poway’s, which include the landlord in the drug enforcement process. Similar ordinances are now in effect in San Marcos, Solana Beach, Chula Vista, La Mesa, El Cajon and several other of the county’s cities, he said. County laws also give the landlord “the right to know when his property is in danger.”

Sheriff’s Capt. Jay LaSuer, commander of the Poway sheriff’s station, said he had not sent any drug eviction notices to Poway officials for action against landlords during the first year of the ordinance. He has several drug investigations “in the works,” he said, but is not yet at the point of notifying any landlords about a problem on their property, much less encountering resistance from them.

And in the eight or 10 earlier drug cases that have come up during the past year, the landlords evicted the tenants before even being notified by the city, LaSuer said.

“It’s almost funny how it has worked out,” LaSuer said of the drug eviction law. “In several instances, when our men go in with a search warrant, the landlord is right behind them, following them in with an eviction notice. It’s almost as if they were waiting for us.”

LaSuer admits that the city’s drug eviction law is not his department’s first choice of weapons in fighting drug activity in Poway, “but if you are fixing your car, you need a lot of different tools and this one--the city ordinance--might be just the tool we need in some instances,” he said.

Poway apartment owner Larry Quate hailed the Poway law as a boon to local landlords.

Before the drug eviction law went into effect last year, Quate said, “I went to the sheriffs with questions about some of my tenants that I suspected of drug-dealing and they told me, ‘Our hands are tied. We can’t tell you anything.’ So we weren’t in on things. We couldn’t act before the problem became worse. It was a headache and fairly costly because they usually trashed everything before they moved out.

“Since the Poway law was passed, the sheriffs have been able to share their information with us. We can keep an eye on certain tenants and eliminate our drug problems before they become major ones,” he explained.

Other cities such as Vista and Oceanside, which have a healthy supply of moderately-priced rental housing and also thriving illegal drug activity, have declined to go the way of Poway’s eviction ordinance. They contend that the misdemeanor charges threatened against landlords who do not respond to the city’s orders for eviction of the drug suspects are tantamount to a slap on the wrist, an inconvenience rather than a penalty.

Vista, which like Poway has contracted with the county for law enforcement by the county sheriffs, rejected the drug eviction law in favor of the more direct methods of the California Drug Abatement Act, a specialized nuisance law which, with a court order, allows:

* Seizure of personal property which is involved in illegal activities.

* Closure of a building for any use for a period of up to one year.

* Assessment of a maximum civil penalty (against the property owner) of up to $25,000.

* Payment of damages equal to the fair market rental value of the property for one year (by the owner) instead of closure of the building.

* Imposition of criminal penalties on the owner, a fine or prison term, for failure to comply with an abatement order.

Susan Reynolds, Vista assistant city attorney, persuaded Vista city council members last December to reject the drug eviction ordinance and take the more direct route of attacking drug traffickers through state law; seizing their equipment and assets and closing down their places of business.

“We can use the state law more effectively than city ordinances,” she said. “It is not our job to inform a property owner in advance. . . . It is the job of the landlord to keep illegal drug activities off of his property.”

She said that drug abatement--a civil process--can be accomplished as quickly as through court orders. It also benefits the city and the law enforcement agencies with the profits from sale of seized assets.

Sgt. Matt Matney of the Carlsbad Police Department narcotics division said that city follows federal asset seizure laws in conjunction with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the regional Narcotics Task Force.

The city’s fight against drugs, which has been in operation for about two years “has compiled an impressive record of enforcement considering the small number of officers we have,” Matney said.

Carlsbad and Oceanside are fighting an influx of Los Angeles gang members who have migrated south from Los Angeles and brought their drug-dealing pursuits with them, Matney explained.

“Crips and Bloods are embedded in Oceanside and they are moving into Carlsbad,” he warned.

At a county-sponsored workshop held in Carlsbad recently to educate property owners on how to deal with drug activities at their rental units, Matney outlined telltale symptoms pointing to drug activities that landlords should report.

“Look for things that don’t fit,” he advised landlords. “Lack of a job, payment in cash, ‘street lizards’ congregating around the place, late parties, lots of traffic in and out of the place.” He also mentioned the use of guard dogs as a sign of drug activity. Noxious odors, from chemicals used in drug manufacture, is another clue that should be passed along to authorities.

“And look at people’s garbage sometimes,” Matney said. “It tells a lot.”

State drug abatement laws became available for use by cities shortly after Poway passed its drug eviction ordinance, Poway City Atty. Eckis explained. Poway has since passed ordinances incorporating state enforcement codes that allow the city to participate in the largess seizures bring.