As reported by WFLA News Channel 8, strangers broke into the home Sharkey shared with his wife Danielle, changed the locks, then moved in. The squatters, Julio Ortiz and his girlfriend Fatima Cardoso, then refused to leave.
…and of course…
Specialist Sharkey called the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office from Afghanistan to deal with the situation and his wife flew to Florida from Hawaii, where Sharkey is currently stationed. Ms. Sharkey went to the house and had a sheriff’s deputy with her but was unsuccessful in removing the two squatters. Instead, after Ortiz told the deputy that there was a verbal agreement, the deputy told Danielle that it was a civil matter and he could do nothing.
I could think of several ways to remove squatters from my home - none of them involve calling neutered LEOs.
I believe there were many similar squatting scenarios in FL, where homes went into foreclosure, were essentially abandoned, and squatters moved in. FL really needs to look at its laws with regard to squatters rights.
Yep, they suck. A friend is an HOA president here in FL, and they had an owner of a home living in Peru that hadn’t been paying their dues, and they could not be reached. The tenants in the home had a very vague lease, it appeared that it was assembled using info on the owners that was easily obtainable using public records. It didn’t state to whom the rent was being paid to, and when asked about it, the answer was a look of ‘I don’t know.’ The rules of the HOA made it possible for them to put a lien on the home and then start the eviction process. (I don’t know how long that took.) Fortunately, the squatters moved out under cover of darkness before things got too far along in the process. It’s suspected that this is what they do ‘professionally;’ find homes owned by people who live out of state or are in foreclosure, and then squat until the jig is up, finding a new place/victim when it looks like they will be kicked out of their current digs.
Ive run into this pretty often as a LEO. There is a quasi legal term called “standing” when it comes to property. Basically it means that someone has established residence in a home. Its supposed to be used to keep people from kicking out residents on a moments notice. Once a person has developed standing in the residence the police are not going to remove them. Only way, at least here in Az, to get them out is an eviction or a restraining order.
This applies to sub leases as well. That’s why I always tell people to be very wary of who you let stay with you.
Again, it really can’t be that easy, can it? What’s to stop me from breaking into your house while you’re on a vacation (or even out for breakfast with your family on Saturday) and posting up? I’ll move my furniture in, change the locks, and my dog will be there too. When you show up I’ll just call 911 and tell them that you’re threatening me and produce my fake lease I made using tax records.
Don’t think this is localized to FL. May happen more in FL due to people owning vacation homes that really aren’t their primary residences and are left unattended till snow bird season starts. Probably the same in other vacation locales. I’ll chat with my MIL as she is a realtor to see what TX has to say.
In the OP seems like the guy is overseas and the wife is at current posting in HI. So there is nobody to go and ventilate the squatters.
I’ll keep it clean and simple for you… Police deal with CRIMINAL actions / Police do not deal with CIVIL actions (like the one cited above, verbal agreement = verbal contract = civil issue)
The issue is not an agreement, it’s people showing up while you are not home and setting up shop like they own the place.
I saw something on the news about it happening a few times here in north Texas as well. It’s a real bitch to get them out legally from what I read on it. Personally I would just pull the same shit on them and wait until they left and break into my own home and change the locks back(and insert a big ass new German Shepard at the same time).
I have read that this is a real problem in the UK when people go on extended holiday. Dipshits move in, trash the place, and it takes the courts months and sometimes longer to evict said bastages. I would rather burn the bitch down than pay a second rent while someone was living in my house illegally.
Says you. Care to prove it? Exactly, you can’t. However the actual property owner can prove that they have a legal right to be there, and can take legal action to remove the squatters.
Now lets just play the hypothetical game on this one. How many lawsuits do you think would come out of the Police forcibly removing the alleged squatters? Public outcry(you know the “jackbooted thug” stuff that floats around daily)? Youtube videos? I would guess it’d be a shit storm. But then again there’s the other side of the card, no lawsuits, videos, some public outcry(as seen here and the news article, I assume mainly because it involves someone in the military), and simply telling the owner is a civil issue?
I’d personally go with the later and legal option of telling the woman “its a civil matter that needs to be handled through the court system, that’s why its there after all” (<use that line every day)
You take a very hostile tone amigo, I didn’t notice that I was rude in my post. And whats with the “because it involves someone in the military” comment? I have to assume it would piss anyone off to find someone in their home that was not supposed to be there, including you.
My point was I can understand the beyond frustrating and infuriating feeling of coming home from vacation only to find some jackass living there with my locks changed. Then after calling the police and being told there is nothing that can be done, you will have to take them to court. Well, I guess I will just go to to a hotel , buy all new clothes for work, and spend a ton of money on lawyer fees, while I wait for the next month to a year while the court decides. Meanwhile said jackass squatter is trashing your house and stealing anything of value they can carry out or sell.
I am not saying it’s the officers fault as he probably doesn’t have any other choice, but there is a problem with the system. I have no idea what it needs to be better but you have to admit there is a problem if it is this easy to squat in someones home.
That would be different. The squatters in this case have a possibly legitimate claim here. They say the friend let them move in. The friend says he just hired them to fix the place up. If they are lying or not they didn’t just break in and set up shop.
In your hypothetical case, as a LEO, I would investigate it further and probably find the evidence needed to arrest the burglars for burglary and maybe ID theft.
A few years ago this was a real big problem in Las Vegas. In my old neighborhood (nice gated community, all newish houses), there were some foreclosures that had squatters living there. They would forge a lease from public records with the bank as the landlord, then get section 8 money to “pay” the rent. They had someone get a PO box and claim to be a management company that collected the rent payments.
It was awful and those scumbags ruined so many houses. Once the bank found out about the squatters, they would either pay them to leave or start eviction. The squatters then would just strip everything out of the house - appliances, copper wire, bath fixtures, tile, brick, windows, etc. and move on to the next house. There were a few houses where they stole the garage doors and all the exterior windows. The shell of a house that was left was usually damaged extensively and would require a ton of work to get it habitable again. It was terrible and there was a huge spike in property crime. At one point, it got so bad that LVPD wouldn’t respond in any reasonable time so the HOA ended up hiring an armed guard service to patrol. We also had an “unofficial” owner’s armed patrol as well. Thank God the real estate market improved and this kind of thing isn’t so common now.
It reminded me of experiences in the third world, and shows just how thin the veneer of society is.
When my grandfather died, he left his wife with two rental properties.
The first was rented to some biker types, my grandmother didn’t want to discriminate against somebody with long hair and really had no idea what she was dealing with. For three years they lived in the property and paid her a total of $0 in rent. She called the police who told her there was nothing they could do and advised her to hire a lawyer. She hired a lawyer who she paid for a few months who was not able to successfully evict the tenants.
In the meantime they also destroyed the property to the point that after three years the property was declared uninhabitable which is the only thing that got the “tenants” out of the house. The property was then deemed to be some kind of code and zoning hazard and my grandmother promptly got a bill from the city stating the cost of repairs that would be required to bring it back up to code.
Rather than pay 2/3s the cost of the home to repair a property that was left to her 100% paid for she basically let the city take over the property since she didn’t have anything close to the amount of money needed to repair the damage.
So to recap.
Grandfather leaves her a free house.
She rents to the wrong damn people so they won’t think she isn’t a nice person.
They pay zero rent for three years and destroy the home.
She hires a lawyer who accomplished nothing in the few months she paid him.
City informs my grandmother that she must make repairs to the home that are about 2/3s of the actual value of the property.
My grandmother lets the city have the property just to get out from under the mess.
She had a second property that my grandfather left her but after the experience with the first one she never advertised it as available for rent. She basically did nothing with it and it sat neglected for years. There were several break ins that she was unaware of and she simply turned off the water but didn’t drain the pipes so the first winter they froze and burst and in the spring thaw they leaked and created a bit a flood damage.
It also appeared that she had several people living in the house based upon the number of bucket toilets she found later. She sold this property at a substantial loss due to the collapse of the housing market and the poor condition of the property after several years of neglect, break ins and homeless people living in it.
First off, I’m not anyone’s “amigo”. Secondly, I didn’t notice that I was rude in my post, or referenced you being rude in yours. Maybe I missed something. Fact is, a civil issue needs to be resolved in the court system. It doesn’t need to be solved by the Police…I mean good golly what kind of Police State would this be if they just started throwing people out of their home???
This happens all the time. Homeowner lets friend “watch” the house, Friend rents out the home without authority of homeowner to dirt bags, homeowner comes back and finds dirt bags living in his home. The dirt bags aren’t really at fault here, the middle man friend making a buck off of renting the home is the bad guy.
Mr. Sharkey can make demands all he wants. He needs to file some paperwork and actually do something about it and have them EVICTED. The law is the law, have them served and evicted. Either you want the Police to work within their authority or you don’t. Its pretty simple.
If you don’t like your local laws, work to have them changed.