After she was notified that her abatement plan was rejected, Sherrena stapled a copy of an eviction notice to her next letter to the police. The district captain wrote back, “This notice serves to inform you that your written course of action is accepted.”
Now Thirteenth Street was a nuisance again, with issues upstairs and down. Most of Crystal’s 911 calls were on Trisha’s behalf, but once she had also called after getting into a roaring argument with Arleen. The police officer on the phone was asking Sherrena to explain why her former and current tenants were living together. Sherrena told the officer how Crystal and Arleen had met. When the officer asked Sherrena why she had allowed such an arrangement, Sherrena replied by saying that she had felt sorry for Arleen. “But neither of them have a pot to piss in,” she said. “And they don’t have a window to dash it out of.”
The officer laughed.
“She did wrong for trying to sublease my place,” Sherrena said. “You know, Crystal doesn’t quite understand that it’s her place, but it’s not her place.”
The call had embarrassed Sherrena. “I’m steady trying to work with these low-quality people,” she said after hanging up. She had been content to “turn a blind eye to Arleen still being there,” but now the police were involved. The officer advised Sherrena to toss them both out. Sherrena decided to start with Arleen. She called her and began yelling into the phone. “I’m sick of the bullshit,” Sherrena said, “sick of this motherfucking shit….Tired of you throwing your fucking weight around when you’re the one who owes. When your kids didn’t have nothing to eat who was it that went to the church and got a big box of food, milk and stuff like that for them, when you first got there, who had spent her money and she didn’t ask for it back, and you know—hello? Hello?”
—
The police had called Sherrena on a Saturday. She had told Arleen to be out by Monday. Sunday morning found Arleen sweeping the carpet as Trisha looked on. On the kitchen counter, cornbread was still caked in the pan, the brown edges giving way to the spongy yellow middle. The night before, Arleen had made muffins too, and boiled pinto beans and neck bones. Her brothers had come over to eat, smoke, and throw spades upstairs at Trisha’s. They drank but knew not to offer Arleen a cup. She almost never drank alcohol, didn’t like the feeling. “Thing I hate about Milwaukee,” Arleen said, “is that the rent is so high.”
“High!” Trisha agreed, clicking her tongue. “I pay upstairs four hundred and fifty for a one bedroom?”
The house was quiet with Crystal and Jori at church. Jori had gone with his dad. Jafaris sat silently on the floor, coloring. Arleen tried to calculate how much time she had. If Sherrena served the writ the next day “that’s still another five days to get my stuff outta here before the sheriff come.”
Trisha nodded.
Arleen sat down at the table and looked at Jafaris while talking to Trisha. “We in this house. So I didn’t think about moving. I didn’t have to think about my kids changing schools. I didn’t have to think about none of that. No sense in crying,” she said, straightening up. “I might as well wipe my tears and do what I got to do.”
She called Sherrena. Arleen started and stopped. Her words caught at the bottom of her throat. But she managed to ask Sherrena if she could stay until Thursday. Sherrena said no, and Arleen protested. “That’s Crystal! Ain’t no police been called ’sides Chris beating up Trisha. It’s been her!”
—
In the last decades of the twentieth century, as the justice system was adopting a set of abrasive policies that would swell police forces and fuel the prison boom, it was also leaving more and more policing responsibilities to citizens without a badge and a gun.3 What about the pawnshop owner who sold the gun? Isn’t he partially responsible for the homicide? Or the absentee landlord who failed to screen his tenants? Didn’t he play a role in creating the drug house? The police and courts increasingly answered yes.4 It was in this context that the nuisance property ordinance was born, allowing police departments to penalize landlords for the behavior of their tenants.5 Most properties were designated “nuisances” because an excessive number of 911 calls were made within a certain timeframe. In Milwaukee, the threshold was three or more calls within a thirty-day period. The ordinances pushed property owners to “abate the nuisance” or face fines, license revocation, property forfeiture, or even incarceration. Proponents argued that these new laws would save money and conserve valuable resources by enabling police departments to direct manpower to high-priority crimes.
In 2008 and 2009, the Milwaukee PD issued a nuisance property citation to residential property owners every thirty-three hours.6 The most popular nuisance activity was “Trouble with Subjects,” a catchall designation applied to a wide variety of incidents, including people refusing to leave a residence and loud arguments. Noise complaints came second. The third most common nuisance activity was domestic violence. The number of domestic violence incidents—most of which involved physical abuse or a weapon—exceeded the total number of all other kinds of assaults, disorderly conduct charges, and drug-related crimes combined. One incident involved a woman having bleach thrown in her face. In another, a woman was “hit [on the] head with a can of food.” Two involved the battering of pregnant women. Box cutters, knives, and guns were used. In one incident, “the caller stated that [her boyfriend] just sprayed her with lighter fluid and also set a piece of paper on fire.”
Most nuisance citations were addressed to properties on the North Side. In white neighborhoods, only 1 in 41 properties that could have received a nuisance citation actually did receive one. In black neighborhoods, 1 in 16 eligible properties received a citation. A woman reporting domestic violence was far more likely to land her landlord a nuisance citation if she lived in the inner city.7
In the vast majority of cases (83 percent), landlords who received a nuisance citation for domestic violence responded by either evicting the tenants or by threatening to evict them for future police calls. Sometimes, this meant evicting a couple, but most of the time landlords evicted women abused by men who did not live with them.8
One landlord wrote to the Milwaukee PD: “This is one girl in one apartment who is having trouble with her boyfriend. She was a good tenant for a long time—until her boyfriend came around. Probably things are not going to change, so enclosed please find a copy of a notice terminating her tenancy served today.” Another wrote: “I discussed the report with [my tenant]….Her boyfriend had threatened her with bodily harm and was the reason for the [911] call. We agreed that he would not be allowed in the building, and she would be responsible for any damage to the building property and evicted if he returned to the property.” Another wrote: “First, we are evicting Sheila M, the caller for help from police. She has been beaten by her ‘man’ who kicks in doors and goes to jail for 1 or 2 days. (Catch and release does not work.) We suggested she obtain a gun and kill him in self defense, but evidently she hasn’t. Therefore, we are evicting her.”
Each of these landlords received the same form letter from the Milwaukee PD: “This notice serves to inform you that your written course of action is accepted.”9
The year the police called Sherrena, Wisconsin saw more than one victim per week murdered by a current or former romantic partner or relative.10 After the numbers were released, Milwaukee’s chief of police appeared on the local news and puzzled over the fact that many victims had never contacted the police for help. A nightly news reporter summed up the chief’s views: “He believes that if police were contacted more often, that victims would have the tools to prevent fatal situations from occurring in the future.” What the chief failed to realize, or failed to reveal, was that his department’s own rules presented battered women with a devil’s bargain: keep quiet and face abuse or call the police and face eviction.11