A Hotshot Lawyer Got Mad About Illegal EvictionsAnd Did Something About It [Video]

Here was Mark Melton, one of Dallas’s most decorated lawyers, stepping out of his milky white Cadillac Escalade as two dozen code-compliance officers swarmed one of the most crime-plagued spots in the city. Melton, who’s in his mid-forties, didn’t look the part of someone who steers billions of dollars’ worth of private equity deals each year. A sweat-stained purple Patagonia cap shaded his scruffy salt-and-pepper beard; an untucked T-shirt dangled loosely over his jeans. Melton has the throaty rasp of a chain smoker, and as he surveyed the spectacle, he deadpanned, “This is pretty normal.”

The Rosemont at Meadow Lane apartments, just a few miles southeast of downtown, could easily pass for typical middle-class dwellings. Many of the roughly two hundred units are two-story townhomes, their facades accented with tasteful if weathered desert-hued stone. As the promotional materials would have it, the place exemplifies “luxury affordable living.” 

In reality, city officials have identified the …