In addition, he showed a letter written by a landlord to a tenant threatening to evict that person if they called police with complaints, rather than the apartment caretaker.
“We’re seeing a lot more people reluctant to call the police because they’re afraid this information could be used against them,” Schempp said.

Andrew Jackson, another PEPP member, said he has witnessed crimes in the apartment area where he lives, but didn’t call police because he feared eviction.

“I’m 100 percent behind the decriminalization of housing units,” Jackson said, “but I and other people I know are being discouraged from calling the police. I know it’s a crime to witness a crime and not report it. But I’d rather keep a roof over my head than report a crime.”

PEPP did not provide information as to how many landlords are discouraging tenants from calling police – a policy the organization says will actually increase crime in multihousing units. Nor did it indicate if it had investigated whether such a policy is even legal.

Instead, PEEP suggested that crime-free programs in Fargo, Moorhead, Dilworth and West Fargo eliminate criminal background checks as part of the screening process. Or as a compromise, Schempp said, include only convictions on the reports given to landlords, as Fargo and West Fargo do.

Moorhead Police Chief Grant Weyland said Minnesota law makes public all contacts with police and the city couldn’t selectively edit the reports even if it wanted to. Moreover, discouraging tenants from calling police “is not a message being sent by law enforcement agencies,” he said. “That’s certainly nothing we would encourage. If there are troublesome landlords – and we don’t see this as a wide-ranging problem – let us know who they are and we will work with them.”

Fargo Police Chief Chris Magnus said he was annoyed that PEPP, which said it has been researching the issue for six months, used a public forum to air its concerns before contacting him.
“I’ve been here about eight months and I’ve never heard from you,” he said. “I’m getting mixed messages from you. I’ve heard you talking about wanting to solve this problem but no one has contacted me. The feedback we’re getting on this program is overwhelmingly that they like the program. If anything, they want the rules to be tightened.”

Both police departments, along with West Fargo and Dilworth, have programs to educate landlords in how to interpret the information found on reports. “It sometimes takes a sophisticated person to understand and put into context some of the information (on the criminal reports),” Weyland said. “But simply not to provide that information is not realistic.”

In fact, West Fargo Police Chief Arland Rasmussen said, the reports serve as a sort of surrogate “nosy neighbor, the kind of person I want living in my apartment,” he said. “If I’m just looking at your complaint sheet, that’s a good nosy neighbor to have.”

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