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Comment by rllearneratwork | Hacker News Reader

In 90-ies, when police and courts stopped doing whatever they have been doing during USSR collapse, the vacuum of "law enforcement" was filled with criminal gangs. So businessmen would pay some gang for their business protection. Specifically, a landlord, hotel owner, etc. would be paying a local gang so that they enforce "laws" and resolve disputes.

LA has a bunch of gangs/cartels operating in it already. Is this something that is already happening? What prevents them from offering a "service of getting rid from problem tenants"?

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LA has a bunch of gangs/cartels operating in it already

So do Dallas, Atlanta, Tuscon, Indianapolis, and a bunch of other extremely red cities which have an excess of law enforcement. It turns out that the amount of law enforcement isn't related to the presence of gangs.

What prevents them from offering a "service of getting rid from problem tenants"?

Because outside of Hollywood movies, life doesn't actually work that way. If problem tenants suddenly started disappearing, it would be pretty easy to follow the clues back to the gang and the landlord, and the punishment for both would far exceed the economic benefits to the landlord or the gang. Law enforcement many turn a blind eye to drug sales when they have to triage prosecutions due to limited prison capacity, but they aren't going to turn a blind eye to murder.

"life doesn't actually work that way" - it absolutely does. When society fails to enforce laws, criminals step it. I lived through that reality during USSR collapse. I'm sure many other people in collapsing/collapsed countries can relate. Your movie experience is the one which isn't relevant, not mine lived experience.

When I was in high school (during the 80s, in St. Louis, Missouri), I had a teacher that was essentially a slumlord. He once told us about how he provided free rent to a house full of bikers, like a biker gang, in exchange for "property management services", mostly forced evictions. He told one story that I wish I could forget: a Black family moved next-door to one of his rental units. He sent the bikers over there to intimidate them into leaving. The bikers burned the house down; a child died in the fire. No one went to jail. I just remember our teacher talking about this like it was no biggie.

So your teacher admitted to a group of children/teens that he essentially funded a group to (in a racially motivated way) burn down a house in which someone (a child no less) died? Do I have that right? I might be off base here but I think your teacher was a real jerk!

The landlord is the obvious person to investigate when the tenant is "rid of"

Nah, such services already exist. You just have some extremely loutish, heavy-hitting-seeming dude "move in" with the squatter with a legit lease. The mission is to be so foul and unpleasant that the original squatter leaves.

In other contexts due to jury nullification, prosecutorial misconduct and similar you might actually see vigilante groups for hire. The opening scene from The Godfather was based on reality.

That's another can of worms in itself.

My experience representing wealthy client is that you don't want to be the person worth millions of dollars in some lawsuit against someone worth almost nothing.

While the tenant can always declare bankruptcy for money they owe you, engaging in illegal activity against a tenant could easily result in you owing that person far more than the nuisance and lost rent from them living in your backyard.

Reality is the landlord has a lot more to lose than the tenant, so what you're describing is completely impractical.

In ex-USSR that would mean just having the judge either be part of the gang offering protection or have the gang "talk" to him/her for a potentially additional fee. A subscription type of fee was more common though.

There's nothing to investigate if he's just paying a group of people monthly dues, and, entirely unrelated to that, an unknown group of people commit crimes that just so happen to affect the problem tenants. I could see this happening.

Accessory to murder, racketeering, and various other laws handle your "one neat trick prosecutors hate!"

I'm not advocating for it, just making the observation that it seems like it happens elsewhere and seems to be reasonably realistic. Gangs providing "protection" for money is a relatively normal thing, yes? I use quotes here since you're also buying protection from the gang itself.

But could you really be prosecuted if there was never any explicit discussion for getting rid of a tenant? Am I responsible for the unrequested criminal actions of a group that I also happen to pay? Is it racketeering if they offer other, legitimate services? These are all asked genuinely, I'm now morbidly curious if it's possible to get away with it, haha.

judges and prosecutors are not stupid, most of the time they are just overworked, so yes, as soon as someone directs their attention to this bulletproof setup, it falls apart and you go to prison

Hey, I have no other way of contacting you because I guess you can't reply after a certain amount of time but the Logitech mouse I was referring to was the Logitech G Pro series

I didn't reply at the time because I wasn't sure if they had upgraded to USB C but I can confirm that as of today, October 8th, 2023 Logitech is still selling $130 mouses with micro usb ports.

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