A Baltimore-area contractor operating under the names "Squatter King Removal" and/or "Eviction King" has emerged as one of the premier, go-to property recovery services. This reflects a growing enforcement gap in Maryland, a one-party-ruled state controlled by the Democratic Party.
Years of expanding tenant protections and slow civil court procedures have weakened landlords' ability to regain possession quickly, creating an opening for organized squatter gangs who use fraudulent leases to occupy properties throughout the Baltimore metro area.
Fox Baltimore reporter Gary Collins interviewed Sanchez Deandre "Mikey" Lewis, who has built a business removing squatters.
Mikey, also known on the street as "Eviction King," charges landlords about $2,000 for his service, which includes removing doors and windows, towing vehicles, and restricting access in a full-blown pressure campaign against occupants.
SQUATTER 'STREET JUSTICE': I met up with Mikey at a Baltimore construction site his company, WolfPack, was clearing.
Since leaving prison six years ago, he told me he has added a new tiered squatter-removal service in MD and DC, earning him the title of “Squatter King.” pic.twitter.com/D65GnS52bb
Collins spoke with Mikey, who calls his team the "Wolf Pack" because its members swarm properties and wage an asymmetric pressure campaign designed to compel suspected squatters to leave - without assaulting or physically removing the occupants.
"Police said we can't remove somebody, so lawfully, the only thing we can do is what we could do," Mikey said.
Collins explained, "The tactics occupy a legally precarious space. Maryland generally requires property owners seeking to remove unauthorized occupants to use the courts, including wrongful-detainer proceedings. Self-help measures can carry legal risks, particularly when an occupant claims to be a legitimate tenant."
Because of Collins' previous reporting on squatting rings running amok across crime-ridden Baltimore over the last year, left-wing Gov. Wes Moore has been forced to acknowledge the chaos for landlords and introduce bills that target squatting rings.
Fox Baltimore explains just how bad squatting has gotten in the Baltimore area:
Spotlight on Maryland's investigation found that homeowners and neighbors often faced a legal maze after unauthorized occupants claimed tenancy rights, while those purportedly profiting from breaking in and selling fake leases benefited.
In one Baltimore incident, University of Maryland School of Medicine professor Ze Wang said he returned from winter break to find strangers unloading belongings into his home and showing police what he said was a fake lease.
Full Report Here:
The bigger issue here is that none of this should be happening. Yet it is unfolding in a state plagued by one-party Democratic rule that has steadily weakened protections for landlords and property owners. The squatting crisis is only one symptom.
Maryland's decline is ultimately a political failure. Baltimore risks losing its standing as a major American city and becoming little more than a diminished regional town. Unless the state's left-wing governing framework changes, Maryland faces a worsening fiscal crisis, continued population flight and further erosion of its tax base.
Total Population Collapse Under Left-Wing Regime
What is unfolding is the slow-motion economic implosion of a state as a left-wing political regime steers Maryland toward a fiscal and economic iceberg, raising the question of whether the destruction is the result of incompetence or deliberate policy.
The city's tax base has collapsed. Use this as a case study showing that the party of socialists destroys, not builds.
Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 20:25Update (1400ET): The machete-wielding Islamic extremist who drove into a crowd at Berlin’s Pride festival has been shot dead by police.
Abdul Ballout, 21, crashed into partygoers near the Christopher Street Day Parade on Saturday night, killing one person and wounding 29 others.
As The Telegraph reports, the German citizen, who had Lebanese roots and a previous conviction for terror offences, was the subject of a manhunt for more than 20 hours until officers tracked him down to a garden shed in Berlin-Spandau.
Special forces surrounded the plot and carried out an operation on Sunday evening.
Ballout was shot dead after advancing towards officers with a bladed weapon, Berlin police said.
Iris Spranger, Berlin’s interior senator, thanked police, saying:
“I am grateful to the security authorities for finding the attacker so quickly. That is a tremendous achievement.”
More than 2,000 police officers were involved in the manhunt, which was expanded on Sunday to include long-distance trains connecting Berlin to other major cities.
Welt newspaper reported that Ballout had convictions for grievous bodily harm and violent coercion, but more recently appeared to have been radicalised as an Islamist extremist.
He was arrested in Lebanon for trying to join Islamic State in Syria and planning a terror attack.
Florian Nath, a Berlin police spokesman, said the suspect was “known to us as a member of Islamic circles here in Berlin”.
* * *
A manhunt is underway in Berlin for a 21-year-old Islamic State supporter accused of driving a vehicle into a pride celebration, killing one person and injuring at least 16 others. The German government called it a "heinous act" of violence. Given the suspect's jihadist ties, why not call it what it appears to be: terrorism?
"The chief suspect in a deadly attack near Berlin's pride parade on Saturday night is a supporter of the so-called Islamic State (IS) group and was previously convicted of related offenses, German media reported Sunday," AFP News reported on Sunday morning.
The outlet added, "The 21-year-old man named by police as Abdul B. last year traveled to the Middle East in a failed attempt to join IS, according the Bild and Spiegel newspapers. He was then convicted in Germany of "preparing a serious act of subversive violence," the papers report."
🇩🇪 The chief suspect in a deadly attack near Berlin's Pride parade on Saturday night is a supporter of the so-called Islamic State (IS) group and was previously convicted for related offences, German media reported Sunday.
The 21-year-old man named by police as Abdul B. last… pic.twitter.com/VhSvzBZWo4
The attack occurred late Saturday night when Abdul drove his van into a group of pedestrians at the pride festival in Tiergarten, shortly before 10 p.m.
🚨 ANOTHER DEADLY ISLAMIST ATTACK IN GERMANY.
German authorities say they are searching for a suspect identified as an Islamist following a deadly attack near a Pride event in Berlin.
Europe has been warned repeatedly about the security consequences of failing to tackle…
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, Germany's top federal security official, said they "will push with particular urgency for the resolution and punishment of this heinous act."
Yet their statement stopped short of describing the attack as terrorism...
British political activist commented on the attack:
There is currently a manhunt in Berlin for 'known' Islamist Abdul B for predominantly peacefully driving straight through a pride parade while advocating for the religion of peace.
When you allow 'known' Islamist scumbags into your country what do you think will happen?
There is currently a manhunt in Berlin for 'known' Islamist Abdul B for predominantly peacefully driving straight through a pride parade while advocating for the religion of peace.
When you allow 'known' Islamist scumbags into your country what do you think will happen? pic.twitter.com/QMwqmTpmfv
The attack will certainly intensify scrutiny of Europe's backfiring mass-migration policies and Germany's failure to adequately confront Islamist radicalization. Progressive policymakers in Berlin have increasingly focused on the AfD and right-wing extremism, but the latest violence is another reminder that jihadist networks remain among the country's most serious national security threats.
Interesting given that it seems that these events in Germany are often about how bad the @AfD is supposed to be. Most Muslims in Germany (like France and the UK) favor left-wing parties. https://t.co/KSXVhCOjW3
— Alberto Miguel Fernandez (@AlbertoMiguelF5) July 26, 2026The attack will likely bolster more support for Alternative for Germany, which has positioned itself as the common-sense opposition to the left-wing political establishment. Its growing momentum suggests German voters are increasingly frustrated with nutty lefty globalist policies that have pushed Europe closer and closer to the brink of failure.
Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 20:15On Saturday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced he'll soon sponsor "a bill to withhold federal money from municipalities and police departments" that deploy Flock-style cameras to surveil law-abiding citizens. He attached a Gadsden flag parody: a coiled rattlesnake wrapped around an automated license plate reader on a pole, over the words "don't flock me."
I’ll soon be sponsoring a bill to withhold federal money from municipalities and police departments that deploy Flock (and other style) cameras to surveil law abiding citizens. pic.twitter.com/FGzE69psxS
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) July 25, 2026Rather than regulating or litigating the cameras, Massie's bill would cut off federal funding to every city and police department that installs them. Flock's business model runs on local government contracts across roughly 6,000 communities, so a funding-withholding bill aims directly at its customer base.
Third Strike In A WeekMassie's bill is the third Republican move against Flock in a matter of days.
On July 21, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) filed H.R. 9800, the Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act, which would bar federal agencies from purchasing, funding, or accessing automated license plate readers - Flock is named explicitly - along with biometric tracking tech covering fingerprints, iris, voice, and gait. Any data a federal agency obtained would have to be deleted within 30 days and would be inadmissible in court. Burchett's pitch: "We gotta ban these dadgum things."
Earlier this month, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) tried to attach an amendment restricting the readers in committee. It failed, and Perry responded that the fight wasn't over: "STOP THE FLOCK."
In April, Massie teamed with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) on the Surveillance Accountability Act, which would require a probable-cause warrant before federal or local agencies surveil Americans, ban warrantless facial recognition in public spaces, block the government from buying its way around the Fourth Amendment via third-party data brokers, and make individual federal employees personally suable for violations. Boebert's framing: the government is building a "digital footprint of your entire life" without a warrant or probable cause.
The Company That Swears It Isn't Tracking YouFlock Safety is the Atlanta company, founded in 2017, whose cameras photograph every passing vehicle and log not just the plate but the "vehicle fingerprint" - make, model, color, dents, roof racks, bumper stickers - into a searchable national network queried by thousands of law enforcement agencies. The install base has now crossed 100,000 cameras, a rollout ZeroHedge has chronicled as the economics of the surveillance state: one quiet law enforcement contract at a time until the country was blanketed.
Last September we noted the coming collision between the license-plate-reader gold rush and the public. Fast forward to June of this year, security researcher Benn Jordan found dozens of Flock cameras streaming publicly, documented AI features that zoom in on and follow individual people, and showed that plotting the stored data amounts to putting a month-long GPS tracker on a car. Flock's response has been that the system captures discrete points in time rather than "tracking" anyone, though those points can be plotted on a map to reconstruct movements.
Audit logs reviewed by journalists and officials showed local police running searches on behalf of federal agencies, with reasons entered as "ICE" or "immigration" - roughly 4,000 immigration-related lookups through a system whose vendor publishes a blog titled "Does Flock Share Data With ICE? No." The ACLU's assessment of that post: the company knew ICE had indirect access the whole time. A Texas police department used the network to search across state lines - including Washington state - for a woman who had an abortion. A San Francisco class action alleges out-of-state and federal agencies - ICE, CBP, FBI, ATF - queried that one city's cameras more than 1.6 million times in seven months. A Dayton audit turned up 7,000 immigration searches by outside agencies; an Illinois audit stripped access from 47 agencies; small towns discovered the ATF, the Air Force, and the GSA Inspector General rummaging through their feeds.
The system also misfires. As we noted last week, automotive journalist Joel Feder and his wife were boxed in by Minnesota officers with hands on their weapons and patted down in a parking lot after Flock's system flagged a press vehicle's manufacturer plate off a flawed partial match. Flock's response was that the cameras performed as designed.
The Exodus - And The CounterattackCities are canceling. Estimates run from 30 to more than 50 depending on the count: Santa Cruz, Mountain View, South Pasadena, Evanston, Oak Park. Denver removed all 110 of its cameras when its contract expired in March. Oshkosh rescinded its contract one day after approving it, after the police chief found Flock had misrepresented its heat-map tracking capabilities to the city council. This month the LAPD let its contract lapse. Meanwhile the crowdsourced DeFlock project has mapped more than 76,000 camera locations, and a parallel campaign of unsanctioned camera removals that ZeroHedge has covered extensively keeps making local news.
Flock has defended itself - insisting that its network helps solve roughly 700,000 crimes a year, and points to genuine wins - including helping track the Brown University shooting suspect in December. Flock also says new contracts outpace cancellations, with nearly 800 fresh city deals in 2026 and a network bigger than ever. In January it added a "Federal Sharing" kill switch to its admin settings, which critics call an admission that the default had been leaking all along.
Why This One Might BiteEvery federal attempt against Flock so far has failed - Perry's amendment died in committee, and neither the Burchett nor the Massie-Boebert bill has advanced. The opposing coalition is unusual: the left objects to ICE access to local cameras, the right objects to warrantless dragnet tracking of every driver, and the AP notes it is one of the few issues on which a divided country has found common ground. As the Rutherford Institute's John and Natasha Whitehead wrote earlier this month, the danger isn't the camera but the AI layer that turns a photograph of a car into the building blocks of a suspect society - an "electronic concentration camp" assembled one pole at a time.
Regarding Massie's bill - we want to know: which federal grant streams get cut, how "surveilling law-abiding citizens" is defined - any Flock deployment, or only warrantless dragnet use - and whether House leadership gives it floor time. Text is expected in the coming weeks.
Tyler Durden Sun, 07/26/2026 - 19:15