Speaker 1: Hi listeners. In this bonus episode of What Happened to
Speaker 1: Libby Caswell, I want to spend some time talking about
Speaker 1: nuisance laws, what they are, how they're used, and what's
Speaker 1: being done about them. The nuisance law in Independence, Missouri
Speaker 1: played a pivotal role in Libby's story. You may remember
Speaker 1: from episode three that Cindy's house was labeled a nuisance
Speaker 1: after she repeatedly called nine one one to report Devon's
Speaker 1: ongoing harassment.
Speaker 2: I always thought nuisance was the person that didn't clean
Speaker 2: up the trash, or mowed or grass, or had loud
Speaker 2: late night parties. I didn't think it pertained to hey,
Speaker 2: help us here, help us, this kid is egging our house.
Speaker 2: These you know, threatening us.
Speaker 1: The logic of this that they were being punished for
Speaker 1: Devon's threatening behavior confused and angered at Cindy.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a nuisance. It was a very big nuisance.
Speaker 2: It was to us too, you know, we were struggling
Speaker 2: to keep our daughters safe and our other two kids
Speaker 2: and trying to hold down jobs, you know, at the
Speaker 2: same time.
Speaker 1: I first heard about nuisance laws in twenty seventeen, when
Speaker 1: I was a reporter for the Huffington Post. I covered
Speaker 1: a story where a woman was evicted from her home
Speaker 1: and ultimately exiled from her hometown of Maplewood, Missouri, for
Speaker 1: calling to report domestic violence on multiple occasions. At the time,
Speaker 1: I interviewed Saundra Park, who was then a lawyer with
Speaker 1: the ACLU. They brought a lawsuit against Maplewood, arguing that
Speaker 1: their nuisance law was unconstitutional. As a result, the town
Speaker 1: was forced to amend its nuisance ordinance so that domestic
Speaker 1: violence victims could no longer be penalized for calling the police.
Speaker 1: Sondra Park is now the head of the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office. Read
Speaker 1: out to her recently to talk about the nuisance ordinance
Speaker 1: in Independence and its effect on Libby's tragic story. Here's
Speaker 1: our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Speaker 1: I think most people don't even know about nuisance laws
Speaker 1: or nuisance ordinances, so it would be great just to
Speaker 1: hear from you a little bit of a backstory of
Speaker 1: when and where they originated and for what purpose.
Speaker 3: So nuisance laws exist around the country. There have been
Speaker 3: different types of laws like this on the books for decades.
Speaker 3: They became much more popular in the nineties as a
Speaker 3: result of tough on crime type attitudes, where people started
Speaker 3: penalizing minor offenses as a way of possibly getting at
Speaker 3: bigger offenses, so almost like a broken windows theory. Typically,
Speaker 3: when you see justifications of these laws, there's a simplistic
Speaker 3: idea that somehow, once you start penalized owners for police
Speaker 3: calls or for possible criminal activity occurring at the home,
Speaker 3: that somehow the landlord or the owner can stop that
Speaker 3: from occurring. And I think that's just a completely misplaced
Speaker 3: idea about what the relationship between crime and the home is,
Speaker 3: particularly if you think about the domestic violence context. Domestic violence,
Speaker 3: by its nature is usually committed at the home, and
Speaker 3: so once you have a law that is targeting the
Speaker 3: fact that there's a nine to one one call or
Speaker 3: that there's a crime occurring at the home, you are
Speaker 3: going to punish the victim of the domestic violence. I
Speaker 3: think survivors in that situation quickly learn that reaching out
Speaker 3: for police assistance will not provide any sort of safety
Speaker 3: or security to them.
Speaker 1: What are the justifications for these types of policies and
Speaker 1: what specific offenses are they looking to crack down on.
Speaker 1: It seems like sometimes it's about noise or like track
Speaker 1: or other stuff like that. But what typically when policymakers
Speaker 1: have pushed these policies, like, what are they saying to
Speaker 1: justify why they might be helpful.
Speaker 3: So early on, there were a lot of ordnances that
Speaker 3: were more general to physical conditions at the home, like
Speaker 3: things like trash or dead trees. Those are not the
Speaker 3: types of ornances that I've been concerned about or you know,
Speaker 3: had been advocating against. What we saw was a broadening
Speaker 3: of the scope of these ordnances over time, particularly in
Speaker 3: this nineties period that I mentioned earlier, where you saw
Speaker 3: things like drug offenses potentially being targeted. You saw violence
Speaker 3: being targeted without any consideration of who was committing the violence,
Speaker 3: whether the person was actually the victim of the violence.
Speaker 3: Just the fact that violence had occurred at the home
Speaker 3: was going to make that property a target for nuisance enforcement.
Speaker 3: And then we also saw that rather than specifying offenses,
Speaker 3: a lot of cities took a very broad approach to
Speaker 3: these ordinances where they would say, any violation of federal
Speaker 3: state city law can trigger this nuisance ordinance, and it
Speaker 3: could be as minor as a violation, so something very
Speaker 3: low level as an offense, and that is actually, I
Speaker 3: think very typical of the way these laws operate. Now,
Speaker 3: the other types of justifications in the domestic violence context
Speaker 3: in particular, is we've seen victim blaming explicitly in some
Speaker 3: of the consideration of these types of laws. So you'll
Speaker 3: see discussion of the fact that there are repeated domestic
Speaker 3: violence calls, that that's a problem for the city and
Speaker 3: they want that to stop, and rather than actually trying
Speaker 3: to address the underlying issues of domestic violence in the home,
Speaker 3: they want to crack down on the fact that there
Speaker 3: are repeated calls, and so they are taking an extremely
Speaker 3: punitive approach by punishing the folks who are generating those calls.
Speaker 3: I think that the other really flaws philosophy behind this
Speaker 3: type of ordinance is that somehow, if you reduce the
Speaker 3: number of police calls, that equates to reducing crime, and
Speaker 3: we know that's just completely a huge mistake. If anything,
Speaker 3: you are allowing crime to continue to occur and violence
Speaker 3: to escalate because people no longer feel that they can
Speaker 3: reach out for emergency assistance.
Speaker 1: Do we have any research or understanding about how these
Speaker 1: might be unequally enforced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've done that analysis and specific communities in different ways,
Speaker 3: and we've seen that they disproportionately get enforced when the
Speaker 3: calls are about domestic violence. We definitely have seen in
Speaker 3: the nuisance ordinance context where they seem to be disproportionately
Speaker 3: targeting people of color, people with disabilities, as well as
Speaker 3: households dealing with domestic violence.
Speaker 1: So do you think it was intentional for domestic violence
Speaker 1: to be considered a type of nuisance or was this
Speaker 1: just a byproduct of the laws.
Speaker 3: When I first started working on this issue, I maybe
Speaker 3: naively thought it was more of a byproduct situation, And
Speaker 3: you know, the evidence really shows that it is very
Speaker 3: explicit victim blaming in a lot of communities. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to say every community, but we have seen in
Speaker 3: some communities they specifically target domestic violence as a nuisance offense,
Speaker 3: or they specifically talk about domestic violence as a type
Speaker 3: of offense they want to target in adopting this type
Speaker 3: of ordinance.
Speaker 1: If you've listened to the entire podcast, and I recommend
Speaker 1: you do before going any further, you know that the
Speaker 1: Independence Police Department used a local nuisance ordinance to pressure
Speaker 1: Cindy to stop calling them despite Devon's ongoing harassment. When
Speaker 1: I first read how the police described their interactions with
Speaker 1: Libby and their reports, I was horrified. For example, here's
Speaker 1: one incident on August twelfth, twenty thirteen, Cindy called nine
Speaker 1: one one to report Devon swinging a hammer outside her house.
Speaker 1: By the time police arrived, he was nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1: The responding police officer wrote in his report that quote,
Speaker 1: Dispatch advised that IPD had responded to the address five
Speaker 1: times in August twenty thirty for disturbances and building checks,
Speaker 1: all pertaining to Devin. Each time IPD has responded, Elizabeth
Speaker 1: has been very uncooperative end quote. This was the moment
Speaker 1: IPD decided to cite Cindy and Libby for maintaining a
Speaker 1: nuisance property, and it would have ripple effects for months
Speaker 1: and years to come. I showed the reports to Sondra
Speaker 1: Park to get her expert interpretation.
Speaker 3: It struck me that there was no discussion of referrals
Speaker 3: for services. That they seemed focused on the fact that
Speaker 3: the alleged victim was very uncooperative, rather than you know,
Speaker 3: thinking about how they could better work with her, better
Speaker 3: talk with her, and you know that that is the
Speaker 3: kind of language we see where police are turning towards
Speaker 3: blaming the victim rather than thinking about ways of supporting
Speaker 3: the victim. This is a very stark situation of that,
Speaker 3: because when the officer notes her as being uncooperative, that's
Speaker 3: the very same instance where they then turn around and
Speaker 3: serve her parents with maintaining any nuisance residence. So it's
Speaker 3: very clear that they believe that this family is causing
Speaker 3: a nuisance rather than being deserving of support. Law enforcement
Speaker 3: is clearly aware that it's a domestic situation. You know,
Speaker 3: they're labeling some of these calls domestic disturbance, and that
Speaker 3: is often the way police departments code these types of calls,
Speaker 3: which I think raises another question, you know, whether the
Speaker 3: disturbance language frames these situations more in a nuisance type
Speaker 3: situation right, versus calling it like I don't know, some
Speaker 3: other terminology where we would recognize the dynamics and domestic
Speaker 3: violence or abuse happening.
Speaker 1: So we've gone from the summer to the next January.
Speaker 1: She calls the police again, and just just the language
Speaker 1: here of the police. Both Caswell women that police were
Speaker 1: not going to make continual calls to the residents and
Speaker 1: it would be treated at a disorderly house and parties
Speaker 1: could be arrested on future calls. After a stern warning
Speaker 1: and conversation, I elected not to arrest Livy Casa. I thought, like, wow,
Speaker 1: she was actually being threatened with arrest in that case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that really was horrifying to see. I
Speaker 3: think the timeline you're thinking through is very similar to
Speaker 3: what I've seen in other situations, where once the family
Speaker 3: understands that future calls will lead to enforcement, they stop calling. Typically,
Speaker 3: they may make calls again in the future only when
Speaker 3: they feel they really have no other choice, or when
Speaker 3: the violence has escalated to a point that they don't
Speaker 3: see any other way of addressing it. So it's not
Speaker 3: surprising to me that there might have been a gap.
Speaker 3: I think the law is set up to punish families
Speaker 3: in this situation, and then we see in stark terms
Speaker 3: that the police are enforcing or understanding the law to
Speaker 3: do that by stating that continual calls could lead to
Speaker 3: the arrest of the people who are making the calls,
Speaker 3: even though they themselves are not alleged to have committed
Speaker 3: any criminal activity. For me, I mean, this issue has
Speaker 3: always been so disturbing because I really think it's writing
Speaker 3: into law blaming the victim, because the victim can then
Speaker 3: be arrested for having made these requests for police protection.
Speaker 1: So, in your work specifically with domestic violence and these laws,
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about how these nuisance
Speaker 1: laws affect victims of domestic violence and the different ways
Speaker 1: that it affects them in terms of housing, financially, safety.
Speaker 1: I know that they probably have a cascading amount of effects,
Speaker 1: but I'd love to hear it just what you've seen firsthand.
Speaker 3: I've worked with many survivors who have been targeted under
Speaker 3: these laws over the years. I think one thing to
Speaker 3: note is for many survivors, the decision to call the
Speaker 3: police is a very heavy one, and they often will
Speaker 3: have experienced violence for some period of time, often lengthy
Speaker 3: periods of time, before they make that first nine to
Speaker 3: one one call. I'm thinking of one survivor I worked
Speaker 3: with who experienced domestic abuse for seven years before she
Speaker 3: made her first nine to one one call. And when
Speaker 3: she made that call, it was in a city where
Speaker 3: there was a nuisance ordinance. That first call triggered enforcement
Speaker 3: against her home. First, she learns that actually calling nine
Speaker 3: one one, and seeking protection will mean that she loses
Speaker 3: a home for her and her kids. Second, she learns
Speaker 3: that law enforcement, which is often understood by most of
Speaker 3: society as where survivors are supposed to go to seek protection,
Speaker 3: that instead of providing safety, they will threaten your housing
Speaker 3: and possibly impose other types of financial and criminal consequences
Speaker 3: because your call for help is considered a nuisance under
Speaker 3: the local law. I think what's most difficult for survivors
Speaker 3: in the situation is that as a society, we generally
Speaker 3: have sent the message that people who are experiencing domestic
Speaker 3: violence should call the police and should seek protection, and survivors,
Speaker 3: when they then do that, to learn that they are
Speaker 3: going to be punished in this way really undoes any
Speaker 3: sense of there being a foundation of security or safety
Speaker 3: that they could turn to. And I think they really
Speaker 3: then learn that they are very much on their own,
Speaker 3: which they might have thought even before this. And so
Speaker 3: if you imagine a person in that situation who suffered
Speaker 3: for many years, the message that sends is devastating.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about the legal concerns
Speaker 1: with these laws and how you might have challenged them
Speaker 1: in the past.
Speaker 3: Sure, so, I've worked on several lawsuits challenging these laws
Speaker 3: around the country because these laws, the way they operate
Speaker 3: is to punish people once they make the call to
Speaker 3: the police. We think that's a very clear violation of
Speaker 3: people's First Amendment rights, which includes the right to contact
Speaker 3: law enforcement and to request assistance. And we now have
Speaker 3: decisions from various courts recognizing that when these laws operate
Speaker 3: to punish people for their nine to one one calls,
Speaker 3: that is considered a violation of their First Amendment rights.
Speaker 3: We've also challenged these laws on due process grounds because
Speaker 3: usually there really is no process for someone to contest
Speaker 3: whether they should be punished under these laws. There's no hearing,
Speaker 3: there's no opportunity for the family to talk about why
Speaker 3: they shouldn't be punished. It's just an automatic assumption that
Speaker 3: if you violate the law, you will get whatever the
Speaker 3: penalty is. And then we've also challenged these laws on
Speaker 3: the grounds that they discriminate against women. We know that
Speaker 3: in many communities, domestic violence is the biggest category of
Speaker 3: police calls. So once you start enforcing based on calls
Speaker 3: to police, you are harming domestic violence survivors, the majority
Speaker 3: of whom are women. What we've seen is as a
Speaker 3: result of our cases, the cities have appealed the laws
Speaker 3: and pay damages to our clients. We've also used the
Speaker 3: lawsuits to spur on state legislation as well as we
Speaker 3: now have a new federal production and the Violence Against
Speaker 3: Women Act.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like the lawsuits that you have worked on,
Speaker 1: when they've been successful, have resulted in these ordinances being repealed.
Speaker 1: Are we seeing like a move towards getting rid of
Speaker 1: these ordinances? Are really only the ones that you've brought
Speaker 1: a hammer down on have actually made any change.
Speaker 3: It's varied. A lot of times, our lawsuits have helped
Speaker 3: support state legislation which prohibits local laws that punish residents
Speaker 3: for seeking emergency assistance. It's an ongoing project because you know,
Speaker 3: we're talking locality by locality, and so that's why we've
Speaker 3: taken these approaches of trying to focus on state and
Speaker 3: federal level protections. We have seen cities repealing or amending
Speaker 3: their ordinances, but you know, it's a continuing conversation about
Speaker 3: educating folks that these ordinances exist. At the federal level,
Speaker 3: the latest Violence Against Women Act includes a protection that
Speaker 3: applies to cities that receive federal funding through the Community
Speaker 3: Development Block Grant program, which is a pretty widespread program,
Speaker 3: and basically it creates protection from being penalized under ordinances
Speaker 3: for seeking emergency assistance or for criminal activity of which
Speaker 3: you were not at fault. It might not address every situation,
Speaker 3: but the way penalty is described is that you should
Speaker 3: not be penalized by being evicted, by not having your
Speaker 3: lease renewed, or by other types of fines and fees
Speaker 3: or criminal consequences.
Speaker 1: I know we've discussed this, but just sort of just
Speaker 1: big picture, what kind of message it sends to victims
Speaker 1: to be treated as a nuisance, even this language of nuisance.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think about kind of the.
Speaker 1: Shame that Cindy has a little bit around the fact
Speaker 1: that she.
Speaker 3: Was fined, had to go to court.
Speaker 1: You know, this is not a wealthy family, and had
Speaker 1: to pay money for really seeking help that was you know,
Speaker 1: and it was unsuccessful. You know, this did not stop
Speaker 1: the harassment that the family was getting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, in talking to survivors, I've heard over
Speaker 3: and over again the hurt and the sense of abandonment
Speaker 3: that they feel once they learn that the city where
Speaker 3: they live is labeling the violence and abuse they're experiencing
Speaker 3: as a nuisance, and even beyond that that they are
Speaker 3: labeling the survivor as a nuisance. It's a very personal insult,
Speaker 3: But beyond that, it's really a sense of complete abandonment
Speaker 3: as well as understanding that your city is further victimizing you,
Speaker 3: because it's not just that the police are failing to
Speaker 3: provide you with emergency protection. It goes way beyond that
Speaker 3: that they are actually threatening you with punishment that will
Speaker 3: only make you further vulnerable to the violence you're experiencing
Speaker 3: in the first place. And so I think for many
Speaker 3: survivors it's a realization that are not only alone in
Speaker 3: dealing with the violence, but that they also have to
Speaker 3: keep that violence secret from the police.
Speaker 1: In March twenty twenty one, after learning that a nuisance
Speaker 1: ordinance had been used against Cindy's family, Casey Gwynn, an
Speaker 1: Alliance for Hope International sent a letter to Eileen Weir,
Speaker 1: then Mayor of Independence, asking her to revoke the statute.
Speaker 1: She never responded. In late twenty twenty three, Alliance for
Speaker 1: Hope sent another request to the new Mayor of Independence,
Speaker 1: Rory Rowland. They're still waiting to hear back. What Happened
Speaker 1: To Libby Caswell is written, reported, and hosted by me
Speaker 1: Melissa Jelson. This episode was written by Marisa Brown and
Speaker 1: edited and mixed by Jeremy Thal. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Ryan Murdoch. For iHeart Podcast, executive producers are Jason English
Speaker 1: and Katrina Norvel, with our supervising producer Carl catl. Our
Speaker 1: theme song is written by Aaron Kaufman and performed by
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman and Elizabeth Wolfe. Original music by Aaron Kaufman
Speaker 1: with additional music by Jeremy Thal. To find out more
Speaker 1: about my investigation or to send a tip, please email
Speaker 1: me at what Happened to libbyat gmail dot com. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening.