Wait till you read this.
A Court Just Ruled Collective Punishment Is Legal in America
NO JUSTICE
A family faced eviction from their home because a family member who didn’t live with them committed a crime. This is the law of the land in some American towns.
Shortly after 5 a.m. on June 9, 2019, a National Rent To Own van went missing from a commercial lot in Granite City, Illinois. When police pulled the vehicle over a few minutes later, they found a woman and her boyfriend inside. They’d stolen it. Both were arrested and charged.
It was an everyday crime in an everyday steel town, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis.
In the days to come, however, things turned from mundane to bizarre. The woman’s mother, Debi Brumit, happened to live in Granite City in a home she shared with her long-time partner, Andy Simpson, and two of her grandchildren, then a toddler and a baby. They’re good people. Their landlord liked them and wanted to keep them as tenants.
But days after Debi’s daughter stole the van, Debi and her landlord received a letter from the Granite City Police Department. Regardless of the landlord’s preferences, the police said Debi and Andy had to be evicted because of their association with a lawbreaker.
Debi hadn’t stolen the van. Neither had Andy. Nor the toddler. Nor the baby. Not a van thief among them.
No matter. The police did not care that everyone in the house was innocent. Granite City had spoken: Everyone must go.
Welcome to the topsy-turvy and cartoonishly malevolent world of “crime-free housing.” Benign in name, these laws are corrosive in reality. Under Granite City’s ordinance, police routinely forced private landlords to evict entire families if any household member—or even a guest—committed a felony anywhere within city limits.
In Debi’s case, her daughter did not even live with her. The daughter had been in town that weekend only because Debi had checked her into the hospital to get her treatment for substance abuse. When it came to collective punishment, Granite City didn’t sweat the details.
Once in 2019, the city ordered an entire family’s eviction because one household member kicked an officer’s shin at a church picnic. The city ordered another household’s eviction because one member shoplifted from the Walmart across town. Another case started when a household member drove drunk. The police even ordered a woman’s eviction because her child’s father was caught with drugs, and he often cared for their son at her home.
more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a-court-just-ruled-collective-punishment-is-legal-in-america?via=newsletter&source=Weekend
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