Pair of Brooklyn landlord brothers accused
of trying to force out tenants arrested


TRANSCRIPT


WABC, Channel 7
Eyewitness News
April 16, 2015
Renee Stoll


...Eyewitness News, ABC 7, 6 o'clock. I'm Bill Ritter. Liz is off tonight. Future profits - that's, what prosecutors say, was a primary motive for these landlords. The brothers, authorities say, wanted higher-paying tenants, This as rents skyrocketed in the hot neighborhoods of Brooklyn and so they allegedly damaged their own buildings. The damage in some cases so severe, folks simply could no longer live there. Eyewitness News reporter Renee Stoll in Bushwick with our lead story tonight: Renee!

Bill, this is one of those buildings. Now the DA's office tells us, this started as complaints from the tenants and then it turned into a civil lawsuit, that had been going on for years! But now DA Thompson said, he is sending a clear message to all landlords out there, with criminal charges against the brothers, that could land them in jail for up to 15 years. Imagine, this is, what your bathroom looks like: no plumbing and unusable! Your only option is to use a public bathroom or find a friendly neighbor.

Michelle Crespo: "Extremely hard. It was really hard, having to use public facilities and... it's a survival, you get into a survival mode."

This is video of Michelle Crespo's apartment, when we first talked to her over a year ago, its unthinkable condition, she and her two children went through for 18 months! Their landlords, Joel and Amrom Israel, claimed to be doing a 3-week renovation to her apartment. Not only was the bathroom destroyed, but the kitchen, too.

"You don't want to put your kids through this and I really wish, I did it, but we really didn't have any other choice. It was either this, or shelter."

Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson is going after the alleged bad landlords, who were accused of harassment and other tactics to push out rent-stabilized tenants, in order to get rents 3 and 4 times as much.

Ken Thompson: "Such conduct was not just simply wrong, but criminal."

But if you ask the attorney for the Israel brothers, their issues belong in Housing Court, not Criminal Court.

Kevin Keating: "This matter has been the subject of a legal dispute for the last 4 years."

The worst of the charges, the brothers are facing, is burglary, when they allegedly broke into this woman's home and destroyed her bathroom, while she was out. Even gave her keys to a supposed security manager.

Ken Thompson: "And he also had two pitbulls, that he had in the building. He blasted music at 3 o'clock in the morning and he walked around with a baseball bat and a sledge hammer, hauling profanity at them."

Some of the huge holes, allegedly created by the brothers, allowed outside animals in.

Michelle Crespo: "Street rats coming inside of the apartment, yes, yes. It was just disgusting."

I imagine, it would be. Now the attorney for the brothers says, that if you follow all the civil proceedings, they've been going through, will show, that the brothers did nothing wrong, but the DA disagrees. He thinks, that his search warrant, that was issued today at their offices, will show otherwise. Now as for tenants here and at 10 other buildings, well, a lot of them, a judge said, now only have to pay a dollar a month in rent, until this is all sorted out. For now we're reporting live in Bushwick. I'm Renee Stoll, Channel 7, Eyewitness News.