Constables deliver bad news at their peril

Leila Navidi

Las Vegas Township Deputy Constable Robert Wyant, right, with locksmiths Jacob, from left, and Joey Ingersoll, knock on the door of a house to enforce an eviction in May. Lenders usually mail notices of default and impending foreclosures to landlords, not to the property being foreclosed, leaving many tenants in the dark until the last minute while their landlords continue to collect rent.

By Abigail Goldman (contact)

Sunday, July 27, 2008 | 2 a.m.

It’s like a sick sort of game show: What’s behind Door No. 1? Abandoned furniture? A man with a gun? A rabid bichon? A housewife wielding a frying pan?

Because they’re the bearers of get-out-in-three-days eviction notices, constables in Clark County are some of the most vocal critics of the foreclosure process as it applies to renters. This is because they’re the bearers of bad news.

And although nobody likes delivering disappointment, that’s not really the issue. The problem is that blindsiding people is dangerous.

Bob Wyant, a Las Vegas deputy constable, has seen bullets fly through front doors. He’s had to fight people who start problems. One guy saw Wyant, walked upstairs and shot himself in the head. A woman locked herself in her bedroom with a blazing barbecue grill, trying to give herself, and her cats, carbon monoxide poisoning.

When the guy with the badge starts explaining he’s going to change the locks because your landlord is behind, well, Las Vegas Constable Robert “Bobby G” Gronauer said, people can kind of flip out.

Once a house has been seized, the owner has three days to vacate. When that house is rented, however, the owner is often long gone, dodging angry tenants as he did the bank. Constables find themselves enforcing the three-day rule on someone who had no warning.

On one idle weekday, Wyant and a locksmith met outside a house in Summerlin to deliver the bad news: Whoever’s inside needs to get out now, and we’re changing the locks. And if you don’t get out, we’ll drag you out. In Wyant’s case, he knocked, and knocked again, and again. Eventually, the locksmith got on his knees and started jamming thin instruments into the keyhole — nothing doing. The doorknob fought back, and after a few minutes, the problem was revealed — the lock was jammed full of glue. And nobody was inside. The house was empty.

Wyant pasted a safety orange sticker across the door frame: “Warning — keep out.” It looked like a crime scene. The Las Vegas constable’s office doesn’t chart evictions by type — renter, homeowner, apartment dweller — but it does have a total tally. From January to June, constables handled 19,877 evictions. About half of those required an officer to serve the eviction notice in person.

No matter how many notices they serve, evicting renters never gets easier, Gronauer said.

“We don’t enjoy this,” he said. “Hell no, we don’t enjoy this.”