More than fifty incendiary fires were set, thugs were moved in, green card panic was set loose, windows were smashed, and the boiler room was flooded in a terror campaign managed by a relocation specialist brought in from the Middle East. Local politicians and the neighborhood community development agency, which had a contract to market the developed units, fully supported the developers. To clean out the last seventeen holdouts, the developers hired as their attorney the Secretary of the Kings County Democratic Party, who succeeded for years in tying up efforts to restore even minimal housing standards. Although the shut-off of essential services was a crime, the criminal court judges felt they had more important problems to deal with and the average fine for a violation was less than ten dollars. Tenants could complain about harassment at the in-person criminal complaint part on Pennsylvania Avenue in East Brooklyn but few cases were processed beyond the mediation stage.
Harassment is hard to prove.
Only on Columbo does the wealthy businessman commit the crime himself. Hard to prove, but easy to do. The City office responsible for dealing with harassment, the Office of Rent Control, was unable to handle the flood of complaints. The Chief of the Enforcement Bureau, who had an Edward G. Robinson persona, would often deliver a tough speech to the owners and their attorneys before a case began its labyrinthine trail through the agency, which was preoccupied with processing rent increases and had little time or personnel to prosecute harassment. Denying that he had done anything wrong, he explained to me.