Philly Halts Landlord-Tenant Officer Evictions After Third Shooting In 4 Months

After another violent incident during an eviction in Philadelphia, the city's controversial landlord-tenant officer has agreed to stop carrying out lockouts — for now.

A contractor hired by Marisa Shuter, the official landlord-tenant officer for Philly's First Judicial District Municipal Court, shot a tenant in her leg when conducting a lockout Tuesday, according to a police statement reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer. The 33-year-old tenant was in stable condition and a man was in custody after the shooting, which occurred at the Grace Townhomes complex on the 2200 block of East Auburn Street in Kensington.

Shuter agreed to suspend lockouts effective immediately, Municipal Court President Judge Patrick Dugan announced through 1st Judicial District spokesperson Martin O'Rourke. The suspension was voluntary, not a court order or a legal decision of any kind, O'Rourke told Bisnow in an email. 

"Marisa Shuter, the current LTO, has agreed to suspend all lockouts immediately, until the Court has been assured that the LTO and all of her employees and contractors have received the most up-to-date training in the use of force and all up-to-date de-escalation procedures," O'Rourke's statement read, in part. "The suspension of all lockouts will remain in effect until the LTO is confident that all individual LTOs are appropriately trained in de-escalation and use of force."

The Kensington shooting is the third time a contractor hired by the LTO has discharged a weapon during a lockout in four months. In April, a tenant in Sharswood survived being shot in the head while getting ejected from her apartment. In June, an LTO contractor fired at a tenant's dog and missed, WHYY reports. 

These sorts of incidents are bound to happen in a system where private contractors can act as officers of the court despite there being no official oversight into their qualifications or training, multiple elected officials told Bisnow in April. One such official, District 3 Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, held a hearing in June in which she lambasted the use of a private LTO.

After the April incident, state Sens. Nikil Saval and Sharif Street introduced a bill that would ban municipalities from using private contractors to enforce writs of possession, the official document that authorizes a lockout. That bill has yet to receive a committee hearing, WHYY reports.

While the LTO is on pause, the sheriff's office will continue to carry out evictions. Landlords who win eviction judgments in municipal court have always had the option to contract those lockouts with the sheriff, but the LTO tends to be both cheaper and faster, Bisnow reported in April. One reason LTO lockouts happen more quickly is because of Shuter's office's policy not to notify tenants they will be locked out ahead of time.

In a joint statement released Wednesday, Gauthier and Councilmember-at-large Kendra Brooks asked the court to not let the LTO resume lockouts until it had developed policies for notifying residents of upcoming lockouts, publicized its training protocols, and identified and disciplined its deputized contractors involved in dangerous incidents.

“We cannot think of any other aspect of our justice system that operates as recklessly, opaquely, and dangerously as the landlord-tenant officer and her private security contractors," Gauthier and Brooks said in their statement.

"We owe it to our residents to bring transparency, accountability, and oversight to this government service. Our neighbors facing eviction should not have to worry about being shot by an untrained private security contractor while they are enduring one of the most traumatic moments of their life."

Though Shuter has not made any public statements since before the Sharswood shooting, her office sent an email to landlords that had contracts with her office.

“Evictions cancelled,” Shuter’s office said in the email, which was also posted on HAPCO Philadelphia’s website. “Due to exigent circumstances, the following evictions scheduled for this week cannot proceed at this time. Once we receive further instructions from the court, we will get back to you.”