Philadelphia’s for-profit eviction system is a dangerous travesty | Editorial

Three separate shooting incidents by private security contractors attempting to evict residents in Philadelphia was cause enough for alarm. But a lawsuit by a woman shot in the head by one of the contractors underscores the city’s absurd for-profit eviction system, which is largely farmed out to one attorney who operates with little oversight, regulation, or accountability.

The shootings prompted state lawmakers from Philadelphia to rightly propose ending the use of private firms to enforce evictions as landlord-tenant officers, a system that has been marred by heavy-handed tactics, including sudden lockouts, as detailed in a 2020 Inquirer editorial.

The rest of Pennsylvania uses elected constables to oversee evictions, but Philadelphia privatized its system in the 1970s after a series of corruption scandals capped by an officer selling the possessions of evicted families. But over time, any reforms were lost in a system shaped by cronyism.

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In 1986, then-Municipal Court Judge Alan K. Silberstein appointed attorney Robert H. Messerman as the landlord-tenant officer. In 2006, Messerman hired Silberstein’s daughter, Marisa Shuter. After Messerman retired, Shuter was appointed landlord-tenant officer in 2017.

Shuter employs a handful of retired cops, suburban constables, and private security guards to carry out evictions. These deputy landlord-tenant officers are licensed to carry a gun but are not sworn law enforcement personnel and can’t make arrests.

Before the pandemic, nearly 20,000 evictions a year were filed in Philadelphia, resulting in more than 5,000 lockouts, while Shuter’s firm was paid more than $1 million a year for its work.

The city’s Municipal Court does not put the eviction business out for competitive bid. In fact, Shuter doesn’t even have a contract. In lieu of a document that could provide some regulation and oversight, Silberstein’s daughter has something better: the kind of family and political ties that have long pervaded the city courts.

Silberstein, who died in February, was a longtime ally of Philadelphia Democratic Party boss Bob Brady. Shuter’s mother, Dveral Silberstein, a schoolteacher, served on the city’s long troubled Board of Revision of Taxes for 15 years before her husband took her place in 2007.

Shuter’s husband, David C. Shuter, was elected to the Municipal Court in 2006 and presides over some evictions, an arrangement ethics lawyers say is a conflict of interest.

The landlord-tenant officer’s deputies receive court-issued badges but are independent contractors who use their own guns and vehicles. Law enforcement accreditation is not required, and any regular training is unclear.

Lamont Daniels, the deputy landlord-tenant officer who shot Angel Davis in the head during an eviction confrontation in March, operated a business that provided armed security guards to nightclubs. In 2021, Daniels received his own eviction notice for unpaid rent in a case that was closed less than five months before the shooting.

In June, a second shooting involving a tenant’s dog during an eviction in North Philadelphia fortunately resulted in no injuries. Earlier this month, a deputy landlord-tenant officer shot a 33-year-old woman in the leg during an eviction altercation in Kensington.

After the third shooting in four months, the city’s court system agreed with Marisa Shuter to suspend all evictions until the security contractors received training in the use of force and de-escalation procedures.

But more training is not going to end the conflict of interest between Judge David Shuter and his wife or alter the no-bid financial scheme that rewards unregulated private contractors based on the number of evictions they execute. Nor will it bring any accountability to what has long been an opaque, vigilante-like system.

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Earlier calls by former City Councilmember Helen Gym to investigate the private eviction operation went nowhere, as did calls to abolish the arrangement. The recent shootings have spurred Council to renew efforts to examine the use of private contractors by the landlord-tenant officer. It remains to be seen if the latest effort will just be more Council grandstanding.

In a perfect world, the private eviction system would be eliminated, and the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office would take over the duties. (In fact, the Sheriff’s Office handles some evictions, but at roughly three times the cost.)

But the bigger problem is the Sheriff’s Office has a long history of corruption and incompetence. There is little confidence current Sheriff Rochelle Bilal is up to the job. The best solution is for the deputy landlord-tenant officers to be eliminated and the eviction duties folded into a reformed Sheriff’s Office that reports to the mayor.

Until then, Philadelphians who are at risk of losing their home to an eviction may also be at risk of losing their lives.