STARKVILLE — Photos of four properties on Ruth Road drew winces and looks of disbelief Tuesday during a board of aldermen meeting at City Hall.

Three were abandoned houses in extreme disrepair. The other was a strip of apartments — clearly dilapidated with plastic covering several places where the roof had fallen in — where a renter is living. Tuesday’s hearing was the last step before the board could declare the properties a public menace, condemning them for demolition unless an acceptable plan came forward to repair them up to code.

Mayor Lynn Spruill, along with a few aldermen, expressed their disappointment in Dwight Prisock, owner of all four structures.

Prisock said a “hard year” had delayed necessary repairs. His wife had recently passed away and he’s recovering from his own health issues. But he also expressed his disappointment in the city “trespassing.”

A code enforcement officer spotted the state of Prisock’s properties from the road. Then she walked onto the properties without a warrant or Prisock’s consent to get closer photos of the exteriors, something Prisock said violates the state constitution.

“You’re breaking a bigger law than the one you’re trying to enforce,” he told the board.

A Court of Appeals decision rendered against Starkville in January 2022 may give some credence to Prisock’s claim. While city officials don’t entirely agree with Prisock’s position, Spruill confirmed Thursday the city will change the way it investigates property code violations.

The Okhuysen case

Something similar happened in 2019 at a property with a vacant house that Walter Okhuysen owns on Garrard Road.

In this case, however, an adjacent property owner had complained of a junked vehicle and trash being stored at the lot, as well as overgrowth that violated city code.

Court documents indicate the officer could not see those issues clearly from a public right-of-way, such as a road or sidewalk, and entered the property to find evidence of the violations.

Aldermen, using photographs taken during the search, declared the property a public menace and ordered Okhuysen to clean it up within 60 days.

Okhuysen, claiming the officer searching his property without a warrant or permission was unconstitutional, appealed the decision to Oktibbeha County Circuit Court, which sided with the city. The Mississippi Court of Appeals, however, ruled for Okhuysen in January 2022, ordering the city to reverse its decision that his property is a public menace because evidence gathered during an unconstitutional search could not be used against him.

The city instead should have only taken photos from public right-of-way or from the property of a neighbor who had given permission.

“I will admit that before the (appellate court) came out with the decision in the Starkville case, I was under the assumption our right to enter private property was synonymous with the U.S. Supreme Court’s verbiage,” Jeff Turnage, city attorney for Columbus, told The Dispatch. “… For example, if a mailman can go up on your porch to drop off your mail, then so can a police officer (enter your porch). … (This decision) says a citizen’s privacy rights are even greater in Mississippi than they are in the U.S. Constitution, which freaked me out a little bit.”

Still, Turnage said he’s always advised code enforcement not to enter private property without clear permission.

“A property owner has the right to not be invaded in the absence of some sort of court mechanism, such as a subpoena, warrant or judgment,” he said.

Starkville’s policy change

Starkville, up until now, has leaned on “plain view doctrine” for many of its code enforcement cases, City Attorney Berk Huskison said.

If an officer can see a potential violation in clear public view, city policy gives them latitude to walk onto the property and investigate, but not to enter buildings without permission. Before Tuesday, Spruill said, that policy didn’t change.

After Prisock’s complaint, and Spruill rereading the court ruling, it will.

“My interpretation, even after the court case, was that still if it was in view, you could go on property to further investigate,” Spruill said. “… Now, we’re going to get a warrant each and every time for any access whatsoever.”

Spruill said with the new procedures, code enforcement will continue to spot potential violations and take what photographs they can from the road or sidewalk. The city will notify the owner that it is seeking a civil warrant to enter their property, then use what evidence they have to establish probable cause to obtain one from the municipal judge.

The scope of those warrants could allow structure entry in some cases, but Spruill said exterior inspection would suffice in most cases.

“I think it will probably speed (the process) up because we’re not sitting around waiting on someone to agree to let us come on the property,” Spruill said of the new policy. “We either have probable cause or we don’t.”

She said officers will also continue to field complaints from neighbors and take photographs from adjacent properties if permitted.

Huskison agrees with the new policy “in the interest of caution,” though he is “confident” the city acted appropriately in Prisock’s case.

He said since he became city attorney in January, the board has rendered decisions on all other public menace cases based on photos clearly taken from the road.

An opportunity to remediate

Starkville deals with 10 to 12 public menace cases per year, Spruill said. Working with property owners and offering extensions is common, if property owners cooperate.

If the city remediates a property, it charges the work to the owner through a property tax lien.

“We want to give them the chance to remediate,” Spruill said. “Now, do I honestly believe that if they let it get that bad for that long — because we’re not going to something that just happened yesterday — that there will be an impetus to do something about it? I don’t think there will be until we’ve taken stronger actions.

“I have no interest in going on people’s property,” she added. “The goal is to keep the community safe and the property values up and not look like we’re a town of ne’er-do-wells.”

‘Follow the constitution’

Aldermen gave Prisock some grace Tuesday, ordering him to start construction on improvements to the apartment complex within four months and two of the vacant houses within six months. The board specified all projects must have all appropriate permits.

Prisock intended to demolish the remaining house anyway and agreed to allow Starkville Fire Department to burn it as a training exercise.

Though he believes the city’s evidence against him is “tainted” because of trespassing — even photos taken from right-of-way — he doesn’t intend to sue, at least not yet.

“As long as (I can) work with the city, there’s no reason to spend money on lawyers,” he told The Dispatch. “I’d rather spend my money on repairing stuff. … I just want the city to follow the Mississippi Constitution.”

Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.

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