Isabella County Tenants Beware! Sheriff's Department Can & Will Evict You Without Due Process!

The Rent...

This page is going to make me sound like a pompous ass but please just read the content with an open mind before you slap that label on me…

For most of my readers, their first question of me is this:
Were you current on the rent?

My answer is:
YES! We were not only current on the rent but were in fact paid ahead on the rent.

My questions to you now are these:
What does my answer do for you?
Are you now sympathetic to my problems?
Are you going to take my answer and not ask the same question of the landlords?

The reason that this question is so troubling to me is this…

1st, You have just asked me to tell you one side of a story that requires Due Process in a court of law to get you an accurate answer to. Isn’t that a fair statement? This question is in fact irreverent, is it not? This is a “Cart Before the Horse” line of questioning because you are looking for the outcome or result of Due Process that hasn’t had time to have taken place yet, right? Your question and any weight given to the answer from either the landlords or the tenants removes due process from the equation does it not?

For the same reasons that I would not presume to expect for you to take my word that my family was paid ahead on the rent, I would also expect for you to not assume that we were behind on the rent as claimed by our landlords. Out of fairness to both the landlord and the tenant, this question and the answer to this question can only be determined through arbitration… Through Due Process in a court of law where both parties get to make testimony on their own behalf. This is the “Civil Eviction Process”.

If you are to find relevance in the answer to this question from either the Landlords or the Tenants, what relevance does it have for you?

Are you thinking that allegations of being behind on the rent is justification to skip Due Process in a court of law?

Are you thinking that allegations of being behind on the rent is justification for a landlord to exact their own form of justice on a tenant? If you do feel this way you are asking to live in a lawless society are you not? If you feel this way, how do you quantify a value for my wife’s wedding dress that had been hermetically sealed, preserved for our own daughter’s wedding someday? What value should be assigned to that? How much of the back rent (that doesn’t exist) does this one single item (of the many taken) satisfy in your opinion?

If you are thinking that the answer to this question, either way you choose to look at it, suggests that we really don’t need a legal system to resolve our issues and that each of us should take the law into our own hands and settle our problems the best we can right? If this is the case then I should have been able to call 9-1-1 and request an armed state actor to act on behalf of my family and to level the playing field right? Then we could have let the cops shoot it out with each other and whoever’s cop wins gets the house!

Deputy Steinert didn’t feel that it was relevant to ask us this question and he took allegations from the landlord as the only facts of the matter. The landlords claimed we were five months behind on rent and that we were trashing their house and had forced them into foreclosure. These unsubstantiated and false allegations made outside of a court of law were used as justification to relieve my family of our home and our possessions in Deputy Steinert’s curbside courthouse where due process was served without a transcriptionist and without even a simple police report.

When I went to the Michigan State Police Post in Mount Pleasant, one of the detective’s first questions to me was, were you late on the rent? In answer to his question I told him that we were paid ahead on the rent but I made the mistake of telling him that that question didn’t have any relevance and boy did he get pissed! This cop claimed to have 13 or 16 years on the force so who was I to tell HIM that his question had no relevance. Then he told me that if I was still in the lobby of the Michigan State Police Post by the time he came around the counter that I would be arrested for criminal trespass. Am I the only person that thinks that there is a problem with this?

Hopefully at this point you now agree that the dispute over rent is the civil component of our issues that has yet to be resolved in a court presided by an actual judge. The fact that this issue has not been resolved yet should make the details of the question irrelevant either way correct? If my family were five months behind on the rent and trashing the house do you think that I would put up this website? Late or not late on the rent does not authorize an unlawful eviction by the STATE (period!)

With that said how do you then justify displacing a family from their home?
The answer is YOU F*$&%NG DON’T!!!

There is not one single thing that can be said or done that would justify what has happened to my family from any legal perspective.

If you can agree that “rent” is the civil component where does the rest of what happened come into play.

What are all the civil aspects? The landlords claimed that we were five months (out of seven) behind on the rent and that we were trashing the house and that we had forced them into foreclosure. These are all civil issues. In court, we would have proved them all lies. Now that we have become crippled by the state we are unable to fetch toilet paper let alone resolution to any civil issues. This website and my ability to put it out there for people to see marks the extent and the totality of my ability.

Deputy Steinert, before arriving on the scene, had taken all the testimony of the landlords and gained empathy for them. He decided that he didn’t like us (the tenants) before he even got to the house and decided to become an agent for the landlords.

I must have told Steinert twenty (20) times that the landlords did not have an eviction order and he absolutely refused to consider this and this just fueled his rage as he thought that I was telling him how to do his job? The only one single item that mattered and that would have justified the actions being taken against my family was missing and he didn’t care to hear about it.

I asked Steinert to call into his office for backup on the decision he was making (that was having a MASSIVE negative impact on my family) and he asked me if I was THREATENING him! He was at my family’s house telling me that a landlord can lawfully change the locks on the house that was leased to us simply because they “owned” the house and I was threatening him? I even asked Steinert to think about going home tonight to his house and finding the locks changed and he told me that wouldn’t happen because he pays his bills and that we shouldn’t expect to be able to live here for free.

I asked Steinert who I could talk to that would be able to reverse his decision and he told me that no one could or would reverse his decision and that his decision was final. I then asked Steinert if he was our Judge, Jury and Executioner to which he replied, “Yea! That’s right! I’m your Judge, Jury and Executioner!” Then threatened our arrest (my wife and I) if we didn’t leave peacefully so we left.

The truth of the matter was that the landlords had sold the home to a third party and needed to transfer possession. None of their allegations were true. They had lied to police but the lies should not have been regarded by the police as factual. In fact, none of the allegations from the landlord should have been given any weight or even considered at all! It isn’t the cop's job to settle civil disputes (they will be the first to tell you that) and it certainly isn’t their job to displace a family of four (4) without a court order as a state actor while under color of law!!! Without Due Process.

My wife is so scared of the police that she dosn't want her name here! She and the kids are living outside of the state of Michigan out of fear of the police here and I am the only one that knows where she is living now out of that same fear. I have them in my own protective custody!

A small donation will go a very long way
for this family as they continue to put
their lives back together!

The family would like to offer you their
sincere appreciation for your considerate
contribution!