Managers’ Lives Matter, Too

-I think lobotomies should be allowed in some cases.

-Dad!

-Really.

-Like, who?

-The guy who sucker-punched Mike. 

-He needs treatment.

-Far away from Mike and the rest of his neighbors.

-He is bipolar!

-He is dangerous.

That’s me and my son.  He and his little sibling had just made a snarky reference to lobotomies.  I made an absurd-but-possibly-not-quite-ironic statement by taking their utterance at face value.  They reacted as thoughtful young people removed from the coalface do.  I played the crusty old fart.

Last Friday, I got a call from Mike, the guy who manages my park in northern New York.  Two days earlier, he had finished fixing a nasty water leak underneath the home of the Tin Hat Guy.  The fix itself was trivial; the problem was getting to it.  The riser that was leaking was in a tight spot underneath Tin Hat Guy’s home.   The only way to get at it was to dig up the narrow space between Tin Hat Guy’s Home and the home next-door.  That meant hand digging to a depth of four feet in a narrow space, much of which was under Tin Hat Guy’s home.

Three months before we noticed the water leak, Mike had excavated and fixed a run of Orangeburg pipe that had collapsed near Tin Hat Guy’s home.  Sewage had been leaking into that area for months before we discovered it.  When Mike called me last week, he told me that he could not find the leak even after the area around it had been excavated.  There was too much groundwater, and you can’t see where an underground pipe is spurting water.  He said,

-I have the trash pump and two sump pumps going, but they can’t keep up.

-You want to get another trash pump from Lowes?

-That won’t help.  It gets clogged.

As we spoke, I was dry and clean, sitting in front of a computer.  I think he was wearing rubber boots and covered with mud head-to-toe.

-You remember the Orangeburg pipe?

-Yeah.

-That was the same trench.  I’m wearing all that shit now.

-Jesus.

-And that’s not all of it.  I found a filled-in septic tank under the home, right next to the trench.

-Under the home?  Is it being used?

-No.  They cemented it shut.  But I broke it open by mistake, and all of that shit –

-That has fermented for a decade?

-Spilled over me.

What do you say to that, while you are sitting dry and clean three hundred miles away?  I adjusted the air conditioning and noticed that there was some dust on the computer screen.  I said,

-What’s Tin Foil Hat Guy have to say?

-He came out and yelled at me because he didn’t have water.  Ron came out and told him to knock it off.  He said the sooner he shut up, the sooner I could get the job done and he would have water.

Ron is the guy who lives at the end of the water line.  He has a big belly, walks around with no shirt in the summer, and helps us with stuff.  His home is well-kept.  He has a low voice, speaks rarely, and has good sense.

-I’m trying, John, but this is bullshit.  I still haven’t found the leak.

-Let me know how it goes.

-I will.

In the end, it took Mike three days to find the leak and fix it.  When I asked him how he felt the day after, he said, “I hurt in places I didn’t know I had”, and then, “Now, I need to collect the leases and catch up on a bunch of office work.  The flooring for 7B just came in, and I want to get started on that.”  I added an extra $1,000 to his usual fee and labelled it “Battle Pay” in Venmo.

Then, two days later, he called me almost crying.  He said, “Shavers just sucker-punched me”.

–What?

-He and two other guys had me up against the office.  Then, he punched me.

-You call the cops?

-They are on their way.

-Anyone else see it?

-Three other people saw it.

-I hope he leaves in handcuffs.

-This is bullshit, John.  I don’t think this can go on any more.

-Have the cops call me when they get there, please.

We were angry when we heard, in mid-2020, that another resident had sold his home to Shavers.  That was because Shavers had lived in the park briefly a year before that.  We had started an eviction suit for lease non-compliance.  He had moved out before it reached its conclusion.  But he was back in July 2020, and with the eviction moratorium in place, there was nothing that we could do about it.

Here are the Facts regarding Shavers’ tenancy, submitted to a candid World:

• He has kept a dangerous Breed Dog that has vexed his Neighbors by barking all night and escaping its Bounds, biting those Neighbors and defiling their Lawns.

• He has destroyed Park Property by vandalizing his water Meter and stealing Water from the Park Mains.

• He has stored all manner of Garbage on his Lot, including a Table, a Sofa, a Refrigerator, and numerous Toys.

• He has flouted building code Regulations by letting the skirting, siding and steps of his Residence decay.

• He has threatened his Neighbors, leaving notes on the windshields of their Carriages asking Women to be Men and Men to be Women.

• He has threatened and physically attacked the Manager of the mobile home Park.

Our efforts to dissolve the Bonds that join the Park with Shavers have hitherto not met with Success.  In every stage of the aforementioned Repressions, we have Petitioned law Enforcement and the Court for Redress in the most humble terms; our repeated Petitions have been answered by repeated injury.

In the middle of last month, we served Shavers with a thirty-day notice for non-compliance.  He got angry, had words with Mike.  His wife came to Mike’s home and told Mike that Shavers is bipolar.  My response was, “His right to be bipolar stops where my nose begins”.  Mike said, “His wife seems OK”. I said,

-Poor woman.

-They have two kids, too.

-I have seen them. Cute kids.

-I’ll just deal with her from now on.

-Good idea.

Then, Shavers collected two friends of his, found Mike near the office, put him up against a home and punched him in the face.

Mike sent me a video of the incident shortly after we spoke.  The video is mostly blank, but the audio is very difficult to listen to.  Shavers is saying, “Try me!  Try me!  Imma beacha fuckin ass!  I will fuck you up!”  In the background, you can hear a woman shouting, “Take that somewhere else!  I got kids!”  Mike speaks quietly and not often, but you can hear slaps and punches landing.  I am usually able to watch horror movies without looking away, but I had to force myself to not turn off the recording before the end.

When Mike called, he told me, “I am trying to be the better man, by not hitting back.”  I said, “I know.  And you are.”  I thought of Branch Rickey, telling Jackie Robinson that he had to have the cojones not to hit back when he played with the Dodgers.  But that was seventy five years ago, viewed from the right side of history.  As he walked back to his home, Mike’s neighbor, Jim Funk, shouted at him, “I hear Shavers kicked your ass!”  That must have hurt.

Before the cops left, Mike called me and handed the phone to the officer.  I said, “Why the hell is that guy not in handcuffs?”

-We will send the report to the court.

-You don’t arrest people when they commit crimes?

-No crime was committed.

-Assault is a crime!

-That’s not how the law works.  We will send the report to the court.

-Mike is in danger living near this guy!  Can’t you at least issue an order of protection?

-That’s for the court to do. 

-And meanwhile, Mike has to live and work near this guy?

-Look- I don’t even need to talk to you.  You aren’t a party to the case.

My inner Karen was not helping.  I continued,

-I most certainly am an interested party.  The assault happened on my property.  This clown is endangering my manager and interfering with my business.

-We will send the report to the court.  The judge will do what the judge will do.

The officer said that the report would be ready the next business day.  Since the assault happened late on Friday, that would be Tuesday.  Mike could pick up a copy from the station when it was ready.  When Mike requested a copy of the report on Tuesday, the police told him that it was not available because the case was still under investigation.  Shavers had said that he was not present when he punched Mike in the face.  That necessitated further research.  The report would be ready as soon as Shavers’ claim to have not been at the place where he committed the assault had been fully vetted.

We have three potential legal remedies.  We will continue the eviction case.  The petition and notice of petition can’t be served until after October 1, thirty days including a full rental month after the thirty day notice was served.  The action will be hamstrung by the new New York eviction moratorium, but the new law does allow for noncompliance evictions to proceed in cases in which property damage or threats to safety are persistent and intentional.  One of the causes of action in the current case was that Shavers had been threatening his neighbors.  The current assault, occurring after service of the thirty day notice, shows that his behavior is persistent.  You can’t get more intentional than a punch in the face.  Mike is a neighbor, as well as the manager.  We might be able to obtain an order of protection against Shavers once the police, the prosecutor and the court get their act together.  We can also file a tort suit that seeks as a remedy an injunction whose effect is roughly equivalent to that of a criminal order of protection.

The problem with all of these remedies is that they are slow and Shavers is a ticking time bomb.  While the arc of justice finds its course, he could harm Mike.  Until we get rid of him, he is trashing the business.  I raised this when I spoke with Mike the day after it happened.  He said, “This is bullshit, John.  I want to move out.”  I said,

-Do what you’re going to do.  I understand that this is your decision.  If you want to take a week off, I can stay up there to mind the shop.  You can go to the cottage and decompress.

-I can’t come home to this!  I don’t want my kids to be around it!

-It’s easy for me to say, but we are making progress.  Jim Funk is moving out.  Balboa has come around.  Assiniboine is my problem.  I think Shavers signed his death warrant by hitting you.

Jim Funk is the neighbor who said Shavers had kicked Mike’s ass.  Balboa’s home had title problems.    Assiniboine stopped paying in January, when she entered the Witness Protection Program. 

-What would you do, John?

I paused for a beat.  Mike didn’t need more bullshit.

-I can’t answer that.  I’m not on the front line like you, and I am a different person from you. You do what’s right for you.  All I can say is that the rational thing to do would be to stay, and that I hope you do stay.

-I want to see if the lawyers can help us.

-So do I.  Let’s see if one or more of the lawyers can work their magic.