We had a landlord in our neighborhood who did not care who was in his units as long as they paid their rent. At one point he had people dealing out of the unit. The police eventually arrested the tenant.
The landlord put in another person who, it turned out, was a gangbanger. He began threatening neighbors and bringing in all kinds of unsavory characters and they all hung out in front of the building. Even when they weren’t threatening, they were intimidating others in the neighborhood and throwing their trash and beer cans all over. The police issued several tickets for littering, public intoxication, harassment, etc. and finally arrested him for gang related activities. They had talked to the landlord about the trash problem and his choice of tenants but had nothing they could arrest or ticket him for.
The next tenants he put in, two brothers, were also dealers. They used to keep some of the drugs in the trunk of their car and sell out of the driveway. While the police investigated they continued to talk with the landlord, trying to get him to vette his tenants and he basically blew them off. That’s when the police got the city inspectors, fire marshal etc. involved. They began ticketing him for building and code violations, threatened to condemn his building for fire related violations and generally made his life miserable. The fines added up and he began to get the message.
One of the brothers was stopped for a non-working tail light, they stopped him in his driveway and in the process of issuing a ticket, found him to have drugs in the car, busted. That gave them probable cause to search the house, they got a warrant, and arrested the other brother who was in the house. After these guys were hauled off to jail a city official called the landlord and made some suggestions about choosing his next tenant. The constant inspections and subsequent fines, along with this call, finally got him to be more selective but this entire process took over a year.