Dozens of Police Evict Georgia Family at Gunpoint at 3am

Tony Gosling tony at cultureshop.org.uk
Wed May 16 00:34:24 BST 2012 

Iceland did the opposite, it arrested the banking gangsters and assisted
homeowners.
Foreclosures aren't disconnected events happening to "those people". They
happen every day and not just in our town but our 
neighborhood, our street, next
door to us, to our co-workers, our friends, and our family members.


Dozens of Police Evict Georgia Family at Gunpoint at 3am
The eviction might have been another anonymous 
descent into poverty were it not for Occupy 
Atlanta activists who tried to help the family stay.
May 5, 
2012  | 
http://www.alternet.org/story/155292/dozens_of_police_evict_georgia_family_at_gunpoint_at_3am

Emacs!


Four generations of a Georgia family were evicted 
at gunpoint by dozens of sheriffs and deputies at 
3am last week in an Atlanta suburb. The 
eyebrow-raising eviction, a foreclosure action, 
might have been another anonymous descent into 
poverty were it not for Occupy Atlanta activists 
who tried to help the family stay in Christine Frazer’s home of 18 years.

The eviction came as Frazer, 63, who lost her 
husband and then job in 2009, had been 
challenging the foreclosure in county and federal 
courts by seeking to restructure the terms of a 
delinquent mortgage. However, the latest holder 
of her loan, Investors One Corporation—the fourth 
company that bought her mortgage in an 
eight-month period—allowed the eviction to 
proceed even thought it was "negotiating" new 
loan terms with her attorney one day before the police raid.

DeKalb County Sheriff Thomas Brown told an 
Atlanta talk radio show a day after the raid that 
a dozen squad cars and dozens of deputies were 
needed for the dead-of-night raid because Occupy 
Atlanta had set up tents on Frazer's property, 
and his perception of the Occupy activists in 
other cities led him to believe they could be 
armed. He also said he timed the eviction to avoid media coverage.

“I made the decision that we were going to do 
this at 3am for a couple of reasons,” he told 
WAOK’s Derrick Boazman. “Number one, I have seen 
the various Occupy groups in various cities 
operate before. It was an ugly scene in Oakland. 
I have seen them firsthand in Washington. I’ve 
seen them on Wall Street. I’ve seen them in Atlanta.”

“I will not participate in a mass demonstration 
arrest with television cameras when I am not sure 
I can trust the people who say they will offer 
passive resistance,” Brown said. “Our 
intelligence told us that there were at least 10 
Occupy Atlanta folks there on the property; that 
turned out not to be the case. Our intelligence 
told us that the family had vacated the house; 
that turned out not to be the case
 We made the 
decision to have enough resources there to make 
sure it would not get out of hand.”

But out-of-hand does not even approach how 
Christine Frazer described the raid, saying in 
the days since the eviction she and her family, 
including her 85-year-old mother, daughter and 
3-year-old grandson, have been split up and 
forced to rely on charity. Frazer also described 
how she had been exploring every legal avenue to 
refinance her debt, but the lenders had no 
intention of doing anything but evict her, presumably to sell the home.

“It has been really unsettling,” Frazer said. 
“When something like this happens, it breaks up 
the family. Me and my mom are staying one place. 
My grandson is someplace. My daughter is staying 
someplace else. It just feels really strange. I 
have lived in that home for 18 years. That is 
where I am used to waking up every morning. It’s 
just
 I am grateful that I am not under a bridge, but I miss home.”

Frazer said that she did not expect the sudden 
eviction, because she had been challenging the 
foreclosure in federal court and her attorney had 
been negotiating with the lenders.

“No, I didn’t, because I currently have a case in 
federal court for a wrongful foreclosure,” she 
said. “And also the opposing or foreclosing 
attorney was in a negotiation process with my 
attorney. As a matter of fact, that Monday, I 
talked with them and they had talked about 
possibly reinstating the loan. But, of course, I 
was concerned about the principle [amount]. And 
they previously said they were looking for the 
eviction. It happened the next morning at 3am.”

Frazer’s descent in home loan hell had been going 
on for months, she said, but nothing in that 
arduous effort prepared her for being awakened and evicted at gunpoint.

“They came to my home like I was a drug dealer,” 
she said. “At 3am in the morning, they knocked on 
my door. The Dekalb Sheriff’s Department knocked 
on my door. They opened my door. I knew my rights 
that I didn’t have to open the door. They came 
with a locksmith, drilled off the locks, came 
into my house, with a flashlight in one hand and 
pistol in the other, [shouting] ‘Who’s in the house? Who’s in the house?’”

Frazer said the sheriff’s department knew exactly 
who was there—three generations of women in one family and a toddler grandson.

“Who do you think was in the house?” she asked. 
“My picture and my story have been in the local 
DeKalb paper. They knew exactly who. Yes, they 
knew Occupy was there. But Occupy is a nonviolent 
movement. Nonviolent. These people came at me 
like I’m a drug dealer and I am doing something wrong. I am just a homeowner.”

Frazer said she was ordered by sheriffs to dress and then vacate the building.

“They told me to pack up as if I just had a fire 
at my home and take my immediate possessions. And 
I had to leave immediately. I said, ‘Can I take a 
shower?’ ‘No, just throw on some clothes.’ It 
took them seven hours to get that stuff out of my 
house. They were going to be there anyway. Why couldn’t I take a shower?”

Frazer said the sheriff brought men to empty the house of its possessions.

“They hired some off-the-wall great big jerks to 
come into my home,” she said. “My daughter had a 
little piggy bank. She was saving those gold 
dollar coins. They broke it on the floor and took 
that. I have no idea where some of my jewelry 
is—stuff I bought when I was 30 years old. I am 
63. They just threw everything everywhere, 
helter-skelter on the front lawn in the dark. I 
have to tell you, I worked hard all my life. At 
one point, I had a moving company. I know it is 
against the law in Georgia to move anyone at night.”

The sheriffs closed off the street and had at 
least a dozen police cars present. There was one 
Occupy Atlanta member in a tent on the property 
at the time, said Tim Franzen, an Occupy member active in housing issues.

“Chris does have a place to stay,” Franzen said, 
when asked where she and her family are now. “We 
have moved all of her stuff, 18 years worth of 
stuff, into storage. And Chris still has plenty 
of fight in her and we are going to fight alongside of her.”

Invisible, Unaccountable Moneymen

Frazer’s foreclosure woes are hardly unique. It 
is typical for single women to earn less money 
than men. It is very difficult for women over age 
60 to find gainful employment. Meanwhile, her 
mortgage has been sold and resold in a financial 
industry game of pass the hot potato, where 
buyers and sellers pay a fraction of its face 
value but either cash out by finding a new buyer 
or evicting the borrower and selling the house.

“My loans were securitized, there is no doubt in 
my mind about that,” Frazer said, explaining that 
every time she sought to identify who was the 
actual holder of her mortgage she ran into brick 
walls and opaque companies where it was all but 
impossible to even speak to someone with authority to negotiate on the phone.

Frazer said one firm she contacted, claiming to 
be in the business of helping distressed 
borrowers, came back with an offer—pay $20,000 in 
cash and then the loan would be reinstated. That 
option, of course, was impossible, because if she 
had that kind of cash, she said she would have 
been making her mortgage payments. Frazer also 
had hopes that President Obama’s program to help 
distressed borrowers would offer a way to keep 
the home. But that also fell through because only 
borrowers who are caught up with all their 
payments are eligible for restructuring their loans.

“You are not a distressed homeowner if you are 
current on your mortgage,” she said.

Frazer said she has tried to negotiate a new 
loan—starting with her balance, not including 
nearly $30,000 in penalty and legal fees tacked onto the principle.

“I sat down one day as I was going through this, 
and looked at what we have paid,” she said. “I 
have already have paid over $240,000 for the 
house
 The banks have gotten the money. The banks 
got a [government] bailout. That document that 
the bank sent me that said my house is now worth 
$40,000. That is called depreciation. That is a 
tax write-off for them. Their bread got buttered 
on both sides. But me and my family; what kind of justice is that?”

Dekalb Sheriff Brown told the talk radio 
listeners there was nothing unusual about 
Frazer’s foreclosure and eviction—apart from 
bringing in 10 times the number of law 
enforcement officers typically involved because 
of the presence of Occupy Atlanta.

“Mrs. Frazer lost her home evidently because she 
could not make payments,” he said. “As I 
understand it, she tried to get a loan 
modification, but she did not qualify for a loan 
modification because she did not have a source of income.”

“Mrs. Frazier and her attorneys exhausted every 
legal means to save her home,” Brown said. “They 
took it all the way to the DeKalb Superior Court
 
The judge sitting on the bench ruled that she 
could still not keep her home and issued an order 
to the sheriff to execute the warrant
.”

Frazer’s attorney, Joshua Davis, said the 
sheriff’s descriptions and knowledge of the case 
was not accurate. Davis said Frazer was scheduled 
to go before a county court to seek a temporary 
restraining order preventing the foreclosure 
while the case was in litigation. However, 
lawyers for the lender took the case to federal 
court, because of the loan amounts involved, 
where the TRO proceeding became voided and the 
case had to commence again. That was a tactic, 
Davis said to strip away the legal obstacles and 
proceed with a foreclosure eviction, which under 
Georgia law is a 30-day process.

“We were about to have a hearing on the temporary 
restraining order,” Davis said. “Right before we 
were about to have a hearing but the opposing 
counsel moved it to federal court. What that does 
is it basically nullifies the hearing that we 
hope to take place in [county] Superior Court. 
And then everything is supposed to be sent to 
federal court and then the judges from there will 
move on it. But everything in federal court moves a lot slower.”

There is one legal scenario under which Frazer 
might regain her home and get a modified mortgage she could afford.

Davis said the lender that pursued the eviction, 
Investors One Corp., was not the holder of her 
latest mortgage in the DeKalb County assessor’s 
office. Apparently, an Indiana bank that sold the 
loan to Investors One is still listed as the last 
lender of record on the property. That 
discrepancy in property records might prove to be 
enough legal grounds to reverse the foreclosure 
and entitle Frazer to punitive damages—because 
Investors One executed the eviction without legal 
standing as the recorded loan holder. If a 
federal judge accepts that argument or allows a 
trial to proceed based on it, then a settlement 
might be possible in which Frazer could obtain a 
new affordable 30-year mortgage.

When asked if that was what she was seeking, she 
replied, “Exactly. Work with me.”

In the meantime, DeKalb Sheriff Brown is 
unrepentant about Occupy Atlanta, saying he does 
not trust their claims of being nonviolent.

“What I didn’t want to do was to put a whole lot 
of people in my jail who wanted to be in my jail, 
at $53.50 a day, which is a burden to the 
taxpayers,” he said, “because somebody wants to 
make a statement that in their minds that 
corporate America controls 90 percent of the 
wealth in these United States of America. Whether 
that is true or not, I don’t know and I don’t 
care. I have a constitutional responsibility to uphold the peace.” 
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