Ex-homeowners [San Diego cop and wife] charged in house damage

The Press-Enterprise ^ | Friday, October 1, 2010 | SARAH BURGE

[Inappropriate Laughter]

In what could be a first in Riverside County, a former homeowner is charged with a crime in connection with damage to a property in foreclosure.

A San Diego police officer and his wife have been charged with a felony in the trashing of their six-bedroom tract home, which was in foreclosure, in the French Valley area of southwest Riverside County. From stones smashed off the facade to dye poured on carpets, the damage totaled $200,000, according to court records.

The extent of the damage and the "obvious malice" pushed the case into the realm of criminal behavior, Riverside County sheriff's Sgt. Mike Hatfield said.

Sarah Burge/The Press-Enterprise Among items taken from this French Valley area home was the garage door.

[Mouton]

Let them trash their jail cells.

[utherdoul]

destroying property in that manner that doesn’t belong to you should be a hanging offense. Or at the very least they should be made to work to pay the damages.

[mikey_hates_everything]

Should have left the outside appearance intact. Almost any inside damage "could" have happened before the foreclosure and be just as costly. It was their house at one time.

[normy]

So you don't pay your bills and then are pissed enough to do this? Now people know how landlords feel.

[pingman]

A$$hole landlords are made, not born.

[beckysueb]

It isn’t “their house” until its paid for. Somebody put out real money to build that house and it wasn’t the sorry pieces of trash who destroyed it.

[normy]

LOL, yeah, while I don't own rental property I do have customers who call me out after tenants have left. Sometimes there is thousands of dollars in damage, sometimes only hundreds. Pitiful.

[SamAdams76]

Must be Democrats. This reminds me of when Clinton left the White House in 2001 and many of his staffers defaced WH property on the way out the door, such as leaving behind anti-Bush graffiti, removing the “W” from keyboards and even stealing chinaware and such from the WH and Air Force One.

[beckysueb]

I rented a very nice attached studio once from what seemed like a very nice but a little flaky old lady. Shortly after, I married my husband who is a very good decent man. There was a door that connected our apartment to her house but it had a gazillion locks on it that hadn’t been disturbed in years and a large couch in front of it. Anyway the landlady got it in her head that my husband was trying to get in her apartment. She came over a few times and hinted, then she asked me right out. I told her we had no interest in her house and were not trying to get in there. So the next day when I came home from work, she had been in our apartment and she said she had proof that we had been trying to get in her apartment. She said there were wood shavings behind the couch. I pulled the couch out and it was a few dead moths. We moved shortly after.

[blam]

So many low-life's these days.

It's becoming 'cool' to be a worthless low-life.

[pingman]

Had a crackwhore try (unsuccessfully) to burn my place down after I finally evicted her.

When the cops questioned her, I was the bad guy; she “didn’t know anything” about the fire. No case.

Spent a whole summer fixing the damage, then sold it. Never going there again.

[riri]

In my last house, we had a divorcee down the street who foreclosed. Her parents, who by any other measure were normal, upstanding citizens of the community, it would seem, came to the house in the early evening and stripped it off all the stuff they wanted. They didn't trash it and I can't remember what they took but four or five things, some small some not so small.

I couldn't even believe it.

[sportutegrl]

The WSJ had an article on this a while back. Previously, the forclosed people were so ashamed, that they would turn over the house in as good a condition as possible. Now it is so common for people to trash a home before being evicted that the banks are offering them cash, if they leave it without trashing it.

[ladyjane]

A$$hole landlords are made, not born.

What an odd statement to make.

[pingman]

Only odd if you’ve never been one, only to find out the property rights you thought were yours, in fact, weren’t.

[RideForever]

Actually you are wrong. The borrower is the only one putting real money on the table with his promise to pay and his payments. The bank only issued a ‘credit’ for the original principal and the Fed Reserve printed the paper to ‘back’ it. There was no corresponding transfer of tangible assets on the bank books for the loan.

[Larry Lucido]

A San Diego police officer and his wife have been charged with a felony in the trashing of their six-bedroom tract home, which was in foreclosure, in the French Valley area of southwest Riverside County. From stones smashed off the facade to dye poured on carpets, the damage totaled $200,000, according to court records.

A Detroit couple did the same thing. The damage was $1.50.

[Oatka]

Should have left the outside appearance intact. Almost any inside damage "could" have happened before the foreclosure and be just as costly. It was their house at one time.

Anybody leaving their house due to a foreclosure should take a video of the inside just before they leave. Take a shot of that days TV newscast with a note that there's no VCR or DIVO playing an old show. Makes it a lot harder for the bank to blame you if the place is trashed later on.

[CodeToad]

We are in the market to buy a house. EVERY LAST HOUSE that has foreclosed has been damaged. Not a single one has not been. In most cases the appliances have been remvoed. In many, the entire kitchens have been destroyed. This is common place and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.