The Swat team

Daejeong, le 16 mars 2021

Stephanie and I sold our last Canadian property this past month. We have owned properties since the 1980’s. We have had tenants since 1992 after buying our first triplex. We lived in that house for 28 years. It’s a three story building with one large family dwelling on each floor. In 2010, we bought the sister building immediately next door. We then had five apartments to rent to tenants who became our neighbors. Over the years we had close to twenty different tenants in those apartments. We saw all types of people, families with children, roommates, students… We had good tenants and not so good tenants. We had good neighbors and not so good neighbors.

These houses are very well situated in the beautiful borough of Verdun in the city of Montréal. We are a short walk away from a métro station taking us downtown in less than twenty minutes. The mighty St-Lawrence River is no more than two minutes away. We are surrounded by bike paths taking us anywhere and everywhere. Also, it is possible to walk to the commercial street where you will find grocery stores, convenience stores, a hardware store, banks, flower shops and many cafés and restaurants. Our houses were about one hundred years old but are very well maintained and quite large for the area with balconies in front and back. The dwellings are never difficult to rent.

This is the story of the third tenant we had on the second floor immediately over us.

I had just put up a for rent sign on the fence of the house when Louise* comes to the door. We don’t really know Louise but we’ve seen her often on the street. She lives less than two blocks away and is quite noticeable as she walks her St-Bernard several times a day. We have said Hello often but no more. She introduces us to Hank* saying he is a friend just coming back to the city searching for a place. He lives on his own and is moving to be closer to his two sons. After visiting the apartment and a rather short, but pleasant, conversation, we are in agreement on the conditions and we decide to rent to Hank.

Hank seems to be financially comfortable. He is very well dressed, wears very expensive shoes (Steph sees shoes), drives a recent car and has beautiful vintage furniture. He pays his monthly rent in cash, sometimes with American money and most of the time, before or on the 1st of the month. When he is late, and it’s never more than a few days, he comes with a gift, like an expensive bottle of wine. He is very quiet and very clean and rarely has any visitors. His sons come once in a while and are very well behaved. So far so good!

There are a few incidents. On Friday nights he sits by himself in his dining room and listens to loud music while drinking. Most of the time it is not so bad for us but a couple of times we can clearly hear Adele’s lyrics. One night, Stephanie decides to go up to tell him it’s loud enough that the dishes in our cupboards are rattling. Within seconds, the sound is back down to a reasonable level. The next morning there is a note in my mail box stating that my wife is “NOT COOL”.

Hank has been with us for almost three years when on a beautiful late Friday afternoon we hear a very loud “BANG” and feel the house shaking as if a truck ran into the corner of it. I immediately run outside the front door to see what happened. The first person I encounter is a police officer in full riot gear holding an automatic rifle telling me to go back in. I do, but also notice that there are children with their parents on the sidewalk across the street looking at our house. They are coming out of the daycare that is immediately in front of our house.

Our house is on the corner of a street so I decide to go out he back to go around and see what the hell is going on. In the middle of my backyard there is another full gear riot guy also holding an automatic weapon. This time he is pointing it at me telling me to go back in. My response is “Get out of my back yard! Don’t you know that there are children here? My grand-daughter might come out any time”. My daughter Jaya and her family lived immediately next door and we shared the same large back yard.

Anyway, I did go back inside the house, this time from the side door to immediately go out again in front. At that time Hank was being brought down the stairs in handcuffs with his head down, not looking at me. A crowd had gathered across the street to watch the show. I approached the superior officer for him explain. “We had to smash Hank’s door down to go arrest him. The Swat Team and automatic weapons were necessary because we were expecting resistance from Hank.” I was so mad with this whole operation. I told this officer: “There has be a better time or way to do this other than 05:00 PM when the street is full of people and children.”

At the time, I was a city councillor. The following Monday I get a call from the mayor’s administrative assistant: “Hi Alain, how are you, is everything OK?” “I’m fine thank you, what can I do for you?” “Hemmm, it’s because we have concerned citizens about the police being at your house. Some of them think you have been arrested.”

Some days later I met with the chief of police of Montréal. He had two off the record comments for me: “There was no danger because Hank is not the type to pick a fight with the police and the officers wanted this to be over early enough to start their weekend.” I will not comment here to what my reaction to this was. I let you guess.

Louise came to empty the apartment and it was only three years later that we saw Hank again. He had been in jail convicted of crimes that went along with his role as an enforcer for the bikers. He happened to walk in front of our house with Louise and one of their sons (Oh yes, Hank and Louise are an item and she also is the mother of the two boys) while Stephanie and I were working in the front yard. He very quietly walked up to me to say he was sorry about what had happened, turned around and left.

* Louise and Hank are not their real names.