GROUP JOINS PROTEST IN RENTER DISPUTE

Nearly 20 people rallied outside the house of a Cape Girardeau couple Saturday morning, appealing for fairness in housing standards and for increased controls over area landlords.

The house, situated at 825 Hickory St., is rented by Marsha Brown and Anthony Northern. A Cape Girardeau police officer was called in to log a complaint against the landlord, Mark Werner of Jackson.

"We came home yesterday afternoon and found that the front door of the house had been taken off its hinges," Brown said. "The electric and the water were turned off, too."

Brown claims that she is behind on the rent, but has tried to contact Werner to arrange a payment schedule which would fit her budget.

"I feel so bad," Brown said. "It really hurt to come home and find my house open like that, with no water and no heat."

But a spokesman for Werner said that the couple has not paid their rent nor had they paid their utility bills for several months. Authorities had threatened to fine Werner if they could not gain access to the utility box to cut power and water to the home.

"They were going to fine (him) $200 to put a utility box outside that they could access," the spokesman said. "We can't afford that kind of liability, especially if we're not getting any rent."

Randy Werner, the landlord's brother, said that Mark Werner had been out of town on business since Thursday and could not have taken the door off the building.

The tenants said that they called the police Friday evening to file a trespassing charge against the landlord. Police gave the couple and their four-year-old daughter a voucher courtesy of the Salvation Army to stay at a local hotel overnight.

Then Brown called a friend who contacted Michael Sterling, president of the local NAACP chapter. It was Sterling who arranged Saturday's protest.

"I tried to contact Mr. Werner both last night and today," Sterling said. "There's no clear reason of why he's doing this."

But his brother said that Werner's apparent reasoning was clear.

"First of all, it was the city, not my brother, who shut the power and the water off," Werner said. "And the city wouldn't have done that if they were paying customers and good tenants."

Brown and Northern were able to turn the water on Friday night, but when they returned from the hotel Saturday, they found the water had been shut off a second time.

They blamed Werner, and Sterling's group summoned a police officer to lodge another complaint against the landlord.

Cape Girardeau Police Officer Ike Hammonds told the group that his superiors advised him that a second complaint could not be logged against the landlord.

"As far as the Cape Girardeau police are concerned, this is a civil matter now," Hammonds told the group. "The police will not make another report on the same situation."

"This is a blatant example of what happens when there are no minimum housing standards in an area," said Debra Willis, community action chairman for the NAACP. Later, Willis called police participation in the matter "completely unresponsive.

"We have no one to turn to, no one to contact when things like this happen," Willis said. "These people were turned out of their home on a terribly cold night, endangering the welfare of their child."

For now, Sterling said the NAACP will do what it can for Brown and Northern.

"We're going to put our heads together and try to find shelter for these people," he said. "Perhaps the Salvation Army will give them another voucher to put them up in a hotel.

"Because of what has happened here today, I hope that the community will get off their tails and help people in need," he continued. "The NAACP is outraged by this. The police have said that they can't help or maybe they just don't want to.

"This is not a civil matter as the police have led us to believe. It is a city matter a community matter that everyone should take very seriously," Sterling said.