# Keeper of a Disorderly



## USAF286 (May 20, 2011)

What are your thoughts on Keeper of a Disorderly? Where I work we don’t deal with it too much, but this is more geared towards departments with colleges in their town. 

If the landlord/property owner is willing to be as cooperative as possible in maintaining order at their property and the tenants eventually leave, could or would this be held against them in the future with new tenants?

Thanks for the input and again, not my area of expertise!


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## EUPD377 (Jan 30, 2020)

So I don’t work in MA, but we have a law that looks very similar in regard to keeping a house that is a “common nuisance”. Our courts are accepting of charging the landlord if it can be proven that they have a history of always having rowdy tenants. We have done it before for houses that are constantly rented out to students and used year after year as party houses. We’ve stacked “common nuisance” tickets onto the landlord every time we go out there (as well as noise ordinance tickets and everything else we can get) onto the renters. Eventually the landlords start to get pissed about paying a couple hundred dollars in fines every week and does something about it. 

If a landlord cooperated and took care of business one year then had shifty tenants causing problems again the next year, we could in theory charge them as the keeper of a common nuisance, but we’d prefer to work with them to take care of it without costing them money in fines. However, if they do not cooperate or don’t move quickly enough, we can use the previous conduct at the house as well as this year’s pattern as evidence in court. 

A lot of how this works is probably gonna depend on what your local Court thinks though.


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## Sooty (Nov 1, 2018)

Wait - it doesn't mean cluttered?
Whew!
Asking for a friend of course!


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## Roy Fehler (Jun 15, 2010)

I’ve charged it a few times, if nothing else it gets the full attention of the property owner. Just articulate in your report the dates, times, and case numbers of when the police have been called to that address in the past, and the outcomes.

It won’t hurt a property owner in regards to future tenants, it might actually make them screen them more thoroughly.


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