Have you ever been ARRESTED for showing houses? …. #59

#realtor #arrested #heavyhanded

Intro : A Realtor, his client, and the client’s son were handcuffed after police responded to a possible break in at a home in Wyoming Michigan

Thoughts/Questions

1. The realtor feels as though it was racially motivated. I have no idea. However, I can say that as a realtor myself I have often been nervous about showing homes, ESPECIALLY homes for investors, which tend to be dilapidated, and stuff is often missing from the houses, doors and windows boarded up, etc.
2. Why do I get nervous? Well, think about it. You’re in a neighborhood where all the neighbors know immediately that you aren’t from there. Not because of your color, but because they’ve never seen you at this particular house before. It’s not uncommon to stand in the front yard and try to get a look at the roof condition. It isn’t uncommon to be in the backyard and look for the lockbox to get into the house. And, some people have locks that don’t work just right with the key, so you are throwing a shoulder at the door…kinda looks like you are casing the house and then breaking in.
3. In this particular story, the agent was able to show his credentials and they let them out of handcuffs…but the damage is done. First of all, in Missouri, I don’t carry my license around. I carry around business cards, my phone has a way to unlock supra boxes, but I have no real license that says I am a real estate agent.
4. If I put myself in this agent’s shoes….I’m probably going to jail. That is, I have five police cars with at least one of them having a gun pointed at me. You’ve embarrassed me in front of my clients, and you’ve embarrassed my clients…I’m going to be livid. And…because this sort of thing would eat away at me, I’d probably pop off to an officer. This realtor and his clients did a masterful job of not aggravating the situation
5. For the majority of life I’ve been pro police…but over the last 5-10 years, my confidence in the police has been shattered. Why? For me, It’s not so much the negative media coverage.
a. It seems like the police are trained differently. I think back to my interactions with the police when I was in my teens….police car would pull up. Officer would get out and ask us what we were doing, we would say this or that, and they would be on their way. They would have NEVER put us in handcuffs with their guns drawn. This was in the mid 90’s.
b. We also have speed traps in St. Louis, one of the most famous ones was in a municipality near me, St. George. It appeared that revenue was the only thing they were out for…this was the perception.
6. It’s the interaction with people that has changed in the police department. I don’t want a police officer killed in the line of duty, or anything like that. Now, it seems like, you are now guilty and handcuffed without any sort of presumption of innocence. In this case, what were these men doing that required handcuffs and guns drawn?
7. According to a press release, the police department says they did everything according to protocol. And that’s the problem. Protocol needs to be changed to where you aren’t handcuffing innocent people with your guns drawn.
8. I don’t want to be one sided…the police got a call from a neighbor that someone who had broken in just one week before and had been arrested was back at the house. It’s context, but handcuffing a real estate agent and his clients is gross. It’s not right.
9. I wonder about the neighbor in this situation that did the right thing and called the police when she thought someone was breaking in the house. She was trying to protect her neighborhood, and property in her neighborhood. The problem is that the police handled it wrong. Will what happened deter the neighbor from calling police the next time she sees something strange in her neighborhood? That’s not a good thing.

Source story https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michigan-real-estate-agent-handcuffed-wyoming/

Podcast call in number = 314-274-3964
media@deerwoodrealtystl.com

Check us out at https://www.deerwoodrealtystl.com/