A tenant at a building we own in Solvay stopped paying his National Grid electric bill. National Grid shut off his power. He went into the shared basement, opened the electrical panel, and jumped a breaker from his unit to the neighboring unit to steal power. The wiring failed. Electricity went out building-wide. Forty-eight hours later, the Solvay Police Department asked us to come in and discuss a complaint. We went without an attorney. They arrested us for unlawful eviction.
We had not evicted anyone. We had not touched the electrical system. We did not know the shutoff had happened until after it did. None of that mattered at the station.
The Charge
Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law Section 768 makes it a Class A misdemeanor to engage in unlawful eviction. The statute covers removing a tenant’s belongings, changing locks, using threats or force, and — the clause that caught us — interrupting or discontinuing essential services, including heat, water, electricity, and gas. The charge carries up to one year in jail and fines up to $1,000 for a first offense, up to $10,000 for subsequent ones. Tenants can also sue civilly for triple damages.
The law does not require that the landlord intentionally caused the interruption. If a tenant has no power and you own the building, you can be charged. The police had a complaint, a tenant without electricity, and a statute. They arrested us.
The officers were apologetic about it. They seemed to understand the situation. That did not change the booking process.
How It Resolved
We hired an attorney the same day. He pulled written confirmation from National Grid that the shutoff was their action, initiated by the tenant’s delinquent account. We documented the electrical tampering in the basement with photos. We had the electrician’s invoice and a timeline of our repair efforts from the moment we were notified. Charges were eventually resolved in our favor.
That does not undo the arrest. It does not undo the mugshots, the legal fees, the months of a criminal charge hanging over the company while the tenant — who had sabotaged the building’s electrical system — continued to occupy his unit.
Why the Law Works This Way
RPAPL 768 was written for a specific scenario: January in Syracuse, the boiler goes out, the landlord decides not to fix it because he wants the tenants gone. That happens. It should be illegal.
The statute is written broadly enough to capture landlords who are actively trying to fix a problem the tenant caused. Police responding to a complaint cannot assess in real time whether a building’s power failure was landlord-caused or tenant-caused. They see an interruption of essential services and a complaint on file. The law gives them one path.
The practical consequence: a tenant who knows this can use it. A complaint is a weapon that costs nothing to file and can result in a landlord’s arrest within 48 hours, regardless of who actually caused the problem. In our case, the tenant who wired into a neighbor’s electrical service filed the complaint against us.
What the Documentation Did
The National Grid confirmation letter was the thing that resolved it. That one document — a utility company’s written confirmation that the shutoff was initiated for nonpayment, not by the landlord — undercut the entire complaint. Without it, the case would have been our word against a tenant’s.
Everything else supported the timeline: the tampered panel in the basement, the electrician dispatch records, the repair invoices. Each one narrowed the space for the charge to hold. Our attorney built the file. We provided the documentation. The charge did not stick.
We had never thought to keep written confirmation from National Grid of service actions at our buildings. We keep that documentation now. We also never go to a police station without an attorney present, regardless of how informal the invitation sounds. The officers who asked us to “come in and discuss a complaint” were not being deceptive. They had a job to do and they did it. But “come in and talk” is not what it sounds like when the complaint is already filed.
The tenant who tampered with the electrical panel was eventually evicted for the underlying lease violations. The building’s electrical system required a licensed electrician to fully assess and repair. The cost of that repair, the legal fees, and the months spent on a criminal charge while running a property management company in the middle of it — none of that was recoverable.
Looking for Property Management in Central New York?
RenPro manages residential properties across the Syracuse metro area and beyond.
