Showing Tenants the Unwelcome Mat

VAN NUYS —  Deputy Jeff Shiroishi pounds on the door of the two-story unit at 7:05 a.m. “Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to evict all tenants of Apartment 14!” he booms. Open the door now!” His partner, Deputy Steve Macias, stands beside him, his hand resting on his pistol.

If Shiroishi and Macias ever visit your home, odds are it won’t be yours much longer.

Steve Macias and Jeff Shiroishi are the Van Nuys Levy Crew, a sheriff’s unit charged with kicking deadbeat tenants out of their homes--about 100 a week. (Levy is an old term referring to the seizure of property.)

It’s a tough job, fraught with peril and heartache. But Macias says all it takes is “a little patience and compassion--firmness, too. You’re the boss.”

That compassion and firmness (mostly firmness) were on display recently as the pair cruised the San Fernando Valley floor in their old prowler.

“Open the door now!” Shiroishi yells again to the tenants of Apartment 14.

Again there is no response. Soon the apartment manager, Dave Crafford, arrives and opens the door with a key.

Macias and Shiroishi have been doing this kind of work together for five years, but say they are still surprised at “how people live.”

“It’s appalling,” says Macias.

Roaches dart across the wall as the deputies enter the apartment. Upstairs they find a man and a woman lying in bed. The couple’s three children, ages 1 to 7, are watching television amid soiled clothes, toys and trash. The youngest is coughing badly.

“Didn’t you hear us?” Shiroishi asks the couple. Putting on their clothes, they say they didn’t.

Shiroishi leads the family out of the apartment and leaves them squinting in the sun.

“I don’t even have shoes on my feet,” mutters the woman, her young children huddled against her. The man is restrained--but also tense and, obviously, humiliated. He says he’s recently been released from jail and that he “knows what cops will do” if they have the chance. Shiroishi and Macias don’t respond--using terse commands and keeping small talk to a minimum. As long as the tenants are moving out, everything is fine.

The Levy Crew’s arrival comes after a long and tortuous process through the Los Angeles Municipal Court system.

First Step: Unlawful Detainer

When a landlord wishes to evict a tenant because of nonpayment of rent or any other reason, the property owner must file an unlawful detainer with the Los Angeles County Civil Court. Once a landlord files a detainer, his tenants have five days to tell the court why they should not be evicted. A judge will hold a hearing and, if it’s in favor of the landlord, the court will approve the eviction.

If the landlord wishes, he or she can pay the Sheriff’s Department $75 to hand-deliver the eviction notice and follow it up. Five days later the deputies return to the property and evict the tenants.

“Usually, they have five minutes to clear out,” Shiroishi says. “Realistically they should be out by the time we get there, but if they have kids or something like that, we give them some more time.”

Macias, 47, has a cowboy’s gait and a counselor’s manner. Shiroishi is a boyish 38. They wear shades when driving and take them off when speaking with tenants. Their soothing voices are barely audible over the spark and crackle of the police scanner and the woeful country tunes that form the soundtrack to their daily drama.

Macias and Shiroishi asked for this assignment. They were marshals until 1994, when the agency was merged into the Sheriff’s Department. As marshals their duties included working as courtroom bailiffs.

They like their current jobs more--in fact, there is a waiting list for the two dozen or so Levy Crew units throughout the county.

“You get to work outside in a black-and-white, you get pretty good hours, you work with people,” says Macias.

Of course, the job also has disadvantages. Emotional labor, for one. They’re stoic about their work, but when asked how they can stomach it, a few chinks in their armor appear.

“All I’m doing is enforcing a court order,” says Macias. “Everyone evicted has had due process. They’ve had their day in court. I’m just enforcing a court order.

But he adds, “I feel sorry for those who just lost their job and just don’t have the ability to pay their rent, especially when they have kids--it’s not their fault they’re getting evicted.”

The deputies say they don’t know what happens to most of the people they evict. The lucky ones, they presume, find shelter with friends or relatives. Others might move into shelters, sleep in their cars--or worse.

Blythe Street. 8:30 a.m. Macias and Shiroishi are going to vacate a second-story apartment that has been a hive of violence and drugs. The manager tells them the evictees’ apartment was recently raided by narcotics detectives. Neighbors have also called the police because of loud fights and suspected spousal abuse there. Child welfare workers removed a boy from the home six months ago, the manager tells them.

‘You Never Know What You’re Going to Get’

Whenever Macias and Shiroishi arrive at an apartment, they try to collect as much information as possible before going in.

“You never know what you’re going to get,” says Shiroishi.

A year ago in the northeast Valley, a man shot himself to death as deputies tried to pry him away from his home. On another occasion deputies evicted a man who had installed a video camera and a crossbow rigged to shoot if the front door were forced open. Luckily, no one was hurt in that incident, Shiroishi said.

The deputies ascend the stairs to the Blythe Street apartment and stop at the door.

“Los Angeles County sheriff’s to evict all occupants!” Shiroishi shouts. The next-door neighbor shuts her door as the deputies stand ready.

A skeletal little woman allows them inside where she and her boyfriend are collecting a few of their things. There are boxes, scattered toys and plants. The couple have been expecting the eviction.

The boyfriend is a wiry man about 6 feet tall. His hair is shaved off except for a square patch at the back of his head.

As the three walk away from the apartment, the woman lightly touches her boyfriend. “Stop pushin’ me, will ya?” he yells.

As they move out of earshot, Shiroishi says, “See? His wife barely nudged him and he went off. Just imagine what he does when he’s alone.”

“I feel sorry for their kids,” says Macias.

Once in a while, the deputies stumble upon situations so bad that they call child welfare authorities. But usually they can’t do much unless they see abuse occurring.

More often they find people beaten down by bad luck, lost in addiction or suffering from mental illness. They find recluses, pack rats, outcasts ranging from the pitiful to the deranged.

Shiroishi remembers a woman who had stopped eating and had wasted away to 60 pounds after her husband divorced her and won custody of her children. One man tore off his clothes as deputies entered his house.

“I guess it was a defensive mechanism--like we wouldn’t evict him if he was naked,” Shiroishi says.

Although the man was a senior citizen, several deputies were needed to wrestle the desperate man to the ground.

There have also been cases when death preempted evictions.

The Case of the 750-Pound Evictee

Perhaps Shiroishi and Macias’ most memorable eviction happened on Fulton Avenue. The tenant was a bedridden, 6-foot-5, 750-pound man.

“He told us, ‘You’re not going to move me,’ ” Macias recalls. The man wasn’t being defiant, says Macias, “he just had a better grasp of the situation.” The man was unable to stand, much less walk.

After busting a gurney, the deputies called for backup--it took 13 men to hoist the tenant out of the apartment and into an ambulance bound for a local hospital.

At about 9 a.m. the deputies arrive at another set of dingy apartments on Parthenia Street. The evictees have already left the unit. The apartment is a mess, and a stench wafts out the broken door. Macias puts his hand over his mouth.

“And my wife wonders why I always get sore throats,” he says.

Again the apartment manager has the scoop about the tenants, a recovering heroin addict and her young daughter.

“I didn’t want to let her in at first,” the manager says. “But her social worker vouched for her.”

Eventually different men started visiting the place, the landlord continues. There were loud arguments. The police came. She fell behind on the rent.

The deputies had met the woman’s mother the day before. She lives in the same complex--or she did until the deputies evicted her.

They mention this in passing. Sure, it’s a bit strange that a mother and her daughter were evicted a day apart--but just a bit. People lose their homes every day. All kinds of people. The elderly, the newborn, the disabled, the able-bodied; single, married, employed or not--Macias and Shiroishi don’t make the decisions. They just execute the order and try not to think about it after they clock out.

By lunchtime the deputies are done. They’ll spend the rest of the day shuffling paper. At 2 p.m. they’ll go home. Tomorrow will bring another list of evictions.