Officers can’t manage to serve foreclosure papers to right person
My mother was babysitting when a sheriff or sheriff-like official came to the door of my house in Pennsylvania. He was there to serve foreclosure papers to Scott Stein for property Scott Stein owns in New Jersey. My mother told him that Scott Stein — that’s me — wasn’t at home. I don’t know if she mentioned that I was on a rare date with my wife since we had a free babysitter. My mother assured the officer that Scott Stein owned no property in New Jersey. It’s true. I don’t. Never have. Doubt I ever will. The officer disagreed.
He assured my mother that indeed Scott Stein did own property in New Jersey and it was being foreclosed. He wanted her to take the paperwork he had come to deliver. It must be a different Scott Stein, my mother told him. The officer was sure he had the right house, said it wasn’t that common of a name. I guess he never googled it. There are somewhat well-known Scott Steins. Besides me (to whatever degree I am known to whomever), there’s a writer of magazine articles and video game reviews, a race car driver, a singer-songwriter. We’re all over the google. And there are all sorts of other Scott Steins out there — dentists, lawyers, high school football coaches. My doctor’s office has more than one Scott Stein as a patient and there’s more than one using my pharmacy. I always have to be asked my birth date so they can be sure to pull the correct records up on their computer. And I don’t live in New York or an overwhelmingly Jewish area. It’s a common name where I live nonetheless.
The other day I accidentally left my bank card in the ATM at the bank and drove back a half hour later, when I realized it was missing. By then the bank teller had my card waiting for me. A loan officer at the bank told me, when I came to get my card, that when he heard the name Scott Stein was on the card, he wondered if it was his best friend, named Scott Stein, who had left his card in the machine. It wasn’t. It was me. Scott Stein. Apparently there are multiple Scott Steins with accounts at this bank. Maybe the loan officer’s best friend Scott Stein owns property in New Jersey. I didn’t ask.
But the officer had argued with my mother, insisting he was at the right house and had the right person, until she asked him for the middle name of the Scott Stein he was looking for. It was not my middle name. Finally, reluctantly, the officer accepted that he had the wrong house and the wrong Scott Stein, and left. It wasn’t a big deal — no one was hurt or taken away in handcuffs, but even aside from the waste of time and resources such incompetence causes, it has troubling ramifications. When you buy property, you fill out lots of forms. There are records that include details like your social security number, your employer, your full legal name, other property owned, and so on. How would an officer show up at the wrong house to serve papers to the wrong person?
And if officers can’t manage to find the right Scott Stein when they have a complete paper trail that comes with the purchase of property, and if they insist they are not mistaken and say idiotic things like “Scott Stein isn’t a common name,” and if they don’t bother to even check on the middle name of the person they are looking for before they go knocking on doors to private residences, how often must police show up at the wrong house when they have far less of a paper trail and the word of a shady informant for a drug bust?
And, unlike the serving of papers for a foreclosure, when they show up for a drug bust, they have guns drawn, they often assume that the people in the house are armed and dangerous, they sometimes bring a SWAT team, and, as has been documented, they tend to shoot people’s dogs. In recent years, both police officers and innocent citizens have been shot and even killed because of these mistakes. It’s sometimes far worse than being accused of owning property in New Jersey.
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Scott – to be fair, maybe he was a regular on your old blog site (which I was going to link here, but it doesn’t seem to be responding), and was convinced you were “THE Scott Stein, the one you’re looking for.”
On another note, my ex-wife’s maiden name is Laurie Johnson, and while in college in South Dakota, a police officer came to her door with an arrest warrant for a different Laurie Johnson. So it really does happen. I don’t believe guns were drawn, however.
Officers and most agents of state tend to follow orders without regard for facts or truth. The story you mention is a microcosm of a grander issue. The term “police state” or “nanny state” is usually associated with paranoid conspiracy theorists but bears further investigation. The expansion of all government agencies, a civiliar national security force, carbon taxes , 1 child per family- all are going to be enforced by agents of state who follow orders and people being charged for crimes or offences they did not commit will be the norm and cause the citizenry to revolt. Possibly movements farther right than the Tea Party folk…
Scott – don’t get me started on this. My incident involves FedEx which had two packages going to different Scott Steins on the same day and apparently decided there could only be one. Fortunately, the other Scott Stein’s mother found my phone number on the original mailing label and gave me a call to say my box had been delivered to her son’s house. I went and picked up the package (containing four hockey sticks for my son). FedEx called a few days later…they never did figure it out.
By the way – I’m the Scott Stein, PR guy in Green Bay, Wisconsin – not the Scott Stein in Green Bay who has been arrested a few times or the one with the lousy credit rating or the one from my hometown who gets into a bit of trouble every now and then…
When I was a kid I hated having an unusual name.
Not anymore.
I don’t know- I mean ‘Scott’ that’s a very rare name. And ‘Stein’- also highly unusual.
Scott Stein from Green Bay — welcome. I too am from Green Bay; a stone’s throw from the Pamperin Park Lodge where Poison filmed the “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” video.
Hopefully you are not related to the Norbertine priest named Stein whose hot tub hijinks in De Pere, Wisconsin are well documented:
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2003_07_12/2003_09_19_Nelesen_PriestCharged.htm
So, now that you and your mom gave that officer the slip, what are your plans for that property in Joizey?
:-)
This is slightly off the mark, but only slightly, in that it involves commerce rather than government. When I lived in another town, they painted my neighbor’s house by mistake. Or, rather, they mostly did. When they realized their mistake, two-thirds done, they stopped. I watched them do it, because I thought the neighbor, who was away for the day, had ordered the work. When she came home, she came over to our house and said, “WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO MY HOUSE?” Turns out they were supposed to paint a different, but similar, house up the street. They came back and finished the job. For free. In a different color from the one they started, which my neighbor did not like.
Sometimes hospitals take off the wrong leg. That’s even worse.
The roof was torn off the wrong house in Lubbock Texas this year. Apparently this company uses two crews, one to tear off and one to put on. So the happy homeowner comes home to find his McMansion without the sesame seeds. Strange thing is that the tear off crew also puts a sign in the homeowners yard advertising the roofing company. The sign allegedly disappeared that night after a frantic call from the homeowner to the roofing company. The roofing company at first admitted not to be at fault, then filed a lean on the homeowner for not paying for the removal of the roof. Still is in court after homeowner paid to have his house re roofed by another company. Google it, funniest story i have ever come across in civ pro.