Explaining deputy landlord-tenant officers, who carry out evictions in Philly

Philadelphia’s unusual system for carrying out evictions came into glaring light Wednesday when a deputized landlord-tenant officer shot a 35-year-old woman during an attempted lockout in North Philadelphia.

The shooting raised questions about these officers, who are independent contractors hired by a for-profit law firm to serve final notice and carry out court-ordered evictions. It’s one of the more mystifying corners of the city’s legal system.

What are landlord-tenant officers? Why does Philly hire people to do evictions? Who are they accountable to?

We break it down.

Philadelphia’s Municipal Court hears most landlord-tenant disputes. Unlike other Pennsylvania jurisdictions, this court allows a private attorney, appointed by the president judge and known as a landlord-tenant officer, to enforce eviction orders stemming from these cases.

This attorney deputizes private security contractors, known as deputy landlord-tenant officers, to deliver court notices and, later, perform on-site lockouts. In exchange, the attorney is granted the right to collect millions in related eviction fees from landlords. It’s a for-profit business.

It’s a source of widespread confusion, even in law enforcement circles.

In other jurisdictions, sheriffs and their deputies typically carry out eviction orders on behalf of the local court system. In Philadelphia, the Sheriff’s Office can and does perform some evictions, including landlord-tenant cases that are appealed to the Court of Common Pleas.

But property owners must pay fees for someone to carry out legal eviction notices and lockouts — and the landlord-tenant officer charges cheaper rates for its services.

For example, as of 2020, the office charged $95 to deliver a writ of possession, which is the legal term for the final notice before a lockout. The sheriff charges $343 for that same service as of this year.

Since colonial times, Philadelphia and other Pennsylvania counties have directly elected constables to enforce tax collection and court orders, including evictions.

But, by the mid-20th century, these roles had been made redundant in Philadelphia and came to be associated with political patronage and corruption. Public outcry followed a 1969 incident in which a constable sought to auction off the furniture of an impoverished family that was evicted after documenting squalid living conditions.

The constable system was abolished after a subsequent lawsuit, and replaced with the judicially appointed landlord-tenant officer as a reform measure.

Despite their name, deputy landlord-tenant officers are not sworn law enforcement personnel.

Rather, they are private security contractors hired by the landlord-tenant officer and deputized by the courts to carry out a judge’s writ of eviction. Officers who perform evictions are required to carry firearms, but they do not have the power to make arrests or perform duties of a police officer or sheriff.

That would be attorney Marisa Shuter. She’s the appointed landlord-tenant officer, and the officers she hires are her deputies.

Shuter worked for the court’s prior landlord-tenant officer and was appointed as a successor in 2017 through a noncompetitive and nonpublic process.

She is the wife of Municipal Court Judge David Shuter and the daughter of former President Judge Alan K. Silberstein — a relationship that gained scrutiny in a series of news reports in 2020.

The number varies. There were seven to eight contracted deputies throughout 2020. Nearly all are retired police officers, constables, or private security guards, according to Shuter.

Shuter has said the deputies are licensed to carry firearms, provide their own weapons and vehicles, hold court-issued identity cards, and badges.

Because the law office is privately run, the exact nature of that training remains hazy. Shuter has said her contractors are trained to make evictions a “peaceful, smooth, safe, and non-confrontational process.”

Unlike actual law enforcement officials, these officers are independent contractors of the courts. They are not government employees, meaning their names and backgrounds are not necessarily public record.

Neither the court system nor the Landlord-Tenant Office requires the officers to be accredited law enforcement officers.

Housing advocates have long criticized the Philadelphia court system for outsourcing evictions to a for-profit law firm, calling it “a ‘pay to play’ system where poorly trained landlord-tenant officers are financially incentivized to perform evictions.”

Community Legal Services, a legal aid group that represents low-income tenants, said Wednesday that volatility is inevitable when private citizens operating as officers show up — often with little to no notice of when they intend to appear to perform a lockout.

Evictions have escalated into violence in other cities, even when enforced by sheriffs.

Law enforcement officials in Philadelphia said Wednesday’s shooting was the first in recent memory involving a landlord-tenant officer.

But the eviction business has led to confrontations over the decades.

Before Shuter’s appointment, in the 1980s, a tenant threatened to shoot himself during one encounter, and another deputy was himself shot and killed while enforcing an eviction order in West Philadelphia in the 1990s.

Staff writer Abraham Gutman contributed to this article.