San Diego police sends cases against illegal party organizers to prosecutors
Michael Sumber shook his head in disbelief as car after car slowly rolled past his College Area home on a chilly night in late February.
“If they’re stopping in front of the house, they’re thinking there’s a party there,” Sumber told NBC 7. “There’s a lot of people.”
Sumber’s mother passed away last August. The home sat empty and was just two weeks away from its projected closing date. Sumber said nobody was supposed to be there that night, including himself.
“I got notified by my real estate agent that the property — my property — is advertised as a party house,” Sumber said.
That kind of warning has become a lot more common in recent months as a surprising criminal enterprise grows in popularity – illegal parties held at homes listed for sale or rent. Police say party organizers case out homes like a burglar, advertise parties in secret social media group chats, then collect a cover charge at the door.
Dozens of party-goers, sometimes more than a hundred, descend on neighborhoods within minutes. At minimum, a mess is left behind. Some homes are vandalized to the tune of thousands of dollars in damage.
It’s a problem an NBC 7 investigation reported on earlier this year. Since then, our team tracked social media accounts, staked out neighborhoods and witnessed police responding to break up more illegal parties.
NBC 7 Investigates confirmed more than a dozen since Christmas. But that count could be low because we weren’t able to identify the addresses of several parties we saw social media ads for.
“It’s definitely something that we’re going to try to track a little bit more diligently,” San Diego Police Lt. Cesar Jimenez said. “It’s affecting real people. So it’s important for us to say, ‘Hey, we hold people accountable for these kinds of things.’ ”
The warning call Sumber got came hours before the party was even supposed to start. His Realtor had received a call from another Realtor, whose listing was badly damaged from a party in January. Since then, the real estate community has also been taking action to identify parties before they start.
Several San Diego police officers were able to respond pre-emptively that night, and their presence was enough to inspire would-be party-goers to pull U-turns. Sumber also posted warning signs.
“So it says, ‘No party here, police on their way,’ ” Sumber said. “Very simple, very easy.”
A growing problem
In recent months, organizers have planned parties at real estate listings all over San Diego County. That includes Otay Mesa, Skyline, Oak Park, Spring Valley, La Mesa and several in neighborhoods near San Diego State University.
Chris Anderson, the longtime president of the San Diego Association of Realtors, thinks our count of illegal parties isn’t accurate, because she believes homeowners may not be reporting break-ins.
“I think it’s probably higher,” Anderson told NBC 7. “So they’re just like, ‘I don’t really want to have the light shed that, you know, this was used as a rave house, or that it was broken into or…. I don’t want to have my insurance go up.’ ”
The most recent slew of illegal parties NBC 7 was able to confirm happened in the College Area neighborhood. In fact, one property was the scene of illegal parties two weekends in a row, including a bash on Valentine’s Day.
Few arrests and prosecutions
NBC 7 Investigates was in the neighborhood that night, staking out a different address, when we saw San Diego police swoop past us to bust that other party up the street. So we were there when angry neighbors confronted officers when the party-goers walked away without being arrested or cited.
“When we got here, there was like 30 to 40 people,” the officer told the neighbor. “And we can’t pin it to some people. Like, say there’s some vandalism inside. We can’t pinpoint it to somebody. So all we can do is break it down and tell people to leave.”
A two-block stretch of addresses on that street hosted four illegal parties within just eight days. Police say they only made one arrest, a juvenile carrying an open alcohol container, who also resisted arrest. But no charges for trespassing, vandalism, or burglary.
Legal experts like former San Diego County District Attorney Paul Pfingst say police need to be doing more.
“This won’t stop until handcuffs come out, this won’t stop until a jail door slams,” Pfingst said. “Eventually, what’s gonna happen is there’s gonna be shooting, stabbing or some other fight that leads to someone seriously injured or dead.”
That actually did happen in 2024 at a vacant listing. Five people were shot in National City, including a 12-year-old boy who didn’t survive.
Former prosecutor Tom Umberg, who is a California state senator representing Orange County, agreed with Pfingst that police should be holding organizers and party-goers criminally accountable.
“If someone enters a home illegally, for whatever purpose, whether it’s to burglarize the home, whether it’s to open the home for purposes of a party, that’s illegal and can be prosecuted,“ Umberg told NBC 7. “If there’s no consequence, there’s no accountability, and there’s no transparency, then what you’re going to do is you’re going to see a proliferation of these so-called parties well beyond San Diego.”
Jimenez revealed that the San Diego Police Department was making strides against party organizers.
“We’ve had several detectives that have written up cases,” Jimenez said. “They require writing search warrants and things like that. And we have one that’s being evaluated by the district attorney’s office and another one by the city attorney’s office.”
Holding party-goers accountable is a different story, however. Police need to prove that party-goers knew they were breaking the law.
“We can stop people as they come out of the party, Jimenez said. “And what they’ve told us is, ‘I didn’t know that this was, you know, a home up for sale. I thought the guy who put it up on Instagram, I thought this was his house.’ ”
SeUmberg suggested that police hand out as many citations as they can when they break up these parties, even if it doesn’t result in charges that stick.
“And you would send a message, and most certainly their parents would know that they’re attending illegal functions,” Umberg said. “And at that point in time, my expectation would be the parents would also intervene to stop this.”
Jimenez said that’s not something SDPD does. Capt. Ruben Medina of the San Diego Sheriff’s Office agreed.
“We don’t just hand citations for the sake of handing citations,” Medina said.
Medina runs the Rancho San Diego Division of the sheriff’s office, where three illegal parties have happened since New Year’s Eve. Though he said it’s not a major trend in his jurisdiction, he said deputies are ready to respond.
“We’re not going to tolerate it,” Medina said. “We’re certainly not going to sit on our hands and tolerate these things from happening.”
Medina also said there’s another reason why neighbors aren’t seeing arrests at party scenes: “We don’t necessarily have a victim unless the reporting party is willing to be a complainant and place an individual under citizen’s arrest.”
A matter of police resources
Another factor: There may not be enough officers available to respond to parties and then spend time at the scene investigating.
“Right now, we have a San Diego Police Department, for example, that’s short on personnel,” Pfingst said. “And it is not in the business of throwing out all sorts of response for misdemeanors, juvenile misdemeanors.”
“They’re not wrong — some of those issues, the issues that we will come across is our staffing issues,” Jimenez acknowledged. “And those are things that we’re trying to work through by being more efficient with the resources that we have.”
An SDPD staffing report from March 2 shows the department is budgeted for 2,031 sworn officer positions. However, only 1,822 positions are filled.
“Staffing plays a role in everything that we do, staffing and priorities,” Jimenez said. “So, normally, when these calls come out, we have Priority Zero calls, which means that somebody’s being hurt at this moment, or there’s a crash and somebody might lose their life. Those are the calls that we prioritize.”
If there aren’t enough officers to safely handle a large group of party-goers, Jimenez said, officers focus on dispersing the crowd away from the home.
“We’re sending two or three officers, and we’ve got a hundred people coming out of a party,” Jimenez said. “It’s more important for the officers to maintain the peace.”
SDPD told us they handed out several citations at a party we watched them bust up earlier this year, but those were for open containers, not for trespassing.
Letters of agency
Something that could help police and deputies is for property owners to get a letter of agency, which allows police to investigate and arrest trespassers without the homeowner being present.
“They have the ability to go into the home and check it, and detain or arrest anybody who’s not supposed to be there,” Medina said.
To get a letter of agency for your property, you need to submit paperwork to the law enforcement agency that has jurisdiction. You should also post large “no trespassing” signs in windows that are visible from the street.
Several local municipalities have pages online where you can submit an application:
Police say the best way to stop the illegal parties is for homeowners to protect their properties. That not only means installing cameras or security systems, but also asking your neighbors to keep watch on vacant properties.
