“To my mind, I’m the victim of the crime of breaking and entering and an illegal search,” Kali Blount said. “Pretty sure they wouldn’t have expected to find me in a drawer.”

Leaving a TV or radio on when not home is a simple way to deter thieves. It can give the impression of someone being inside when that's not the case.

But to the Gainesville Police Department, it could be a sign of something wrong — and a reason to enter a home.

In Richard “Kali” Blount's case, nothing was wrong the day officers entered his home. He wasn’t missing, he wasn’t dead. He was at work.

What started as a routine code inspection of two unregistered vehicles, Blount says, turned into a “total ransacking” of his home, which is in the 400 block of Southeast 6th Street.

“To my mind, I’m the victim of the crime of breaking and entering and an illegal search,” said Blount, a fixture at city and county government meetings. “Pretty sure they wouldn’t have expected to find me in a drawer.”

According to GPD’s investigative report, code enforcement visited Blount’s house Nov. 10 after discovering two unregistered vehicles parked in the driveway. Code enforcement Officer Steve Baker detected noise inside, but no one answered. A violation notice was left on his door.

Baker returned Nov. 22, he found his notice untouched and mail piled up since Nov. 1. In the days between visits, the report said, calls to Blount’s phone were not returned, a neighbor said he hadn’t been seen in three to four weeks and Blount was not found at his business on Northwest 6th Street.

Baker called it in. GPD gained approval for a wellness check into Blount’s home with the help of Gainesville Fire Rescue and “breached” the screen door and front door, which was padlocked. No one was inside, the report said, but two radios were on. Blount says he leaves them on to deter potential burglars.

Blount, 43, maintains GPD and GFR broke several items inside his home that day and said they opened a box and dumped it out on the floor. GPD's report disputes that, saying the home was cluttered, inside and out.

Blount also maintains he wasn't at his home for a couple weeks and never saw the letter until after the wellness check. He said he returned home after receiving a text from a friend about him being reported missing and that his home was broken into. With busted locks and thinking GPD had caught the burglars, he stayed elsewhere for the night.

“I never saw the letter of the notice until the night I found it broken into,” Blount said. “I found the letter in the rubble on the porch.”

Still, Blount is puzzled no one could find him for two weeks, especially since he's a regular at county and city meetings.

“I’ve been doing all the things I routinely do,” he said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

He aired his complaints at a recent city commission meeting where he also explained that his vehicles aren’t abandoned, as the violation notice said.

“Whose business is it what I have?” he asked. “They aren’t supposed to be searching my house.”

Mayor Lauren Poe called the incident "very concerning."

“This is the first incident like this that I’ve been made aware of,” he said. “The threshold to enter someone’s house without a warrant is very high.”

The city manager is working with GPD Chief Tony Jones to ensure proper protocol was followed, Poe said.

The director of code enforcement, Chris Cooper, said he advised Blount to go through risk management to seek compensation for damages. Cooper said code enforcement acted diligently in trying to find Blount and he was glad to hear he was safe, after all.

As for the vehicles, Blount said he is working to get them registered. One wasn't running so he took it to an auto shop.

Cooper said in such matters, time is of the essence. He recalled an incident several years back where a man was found dead in his car by city enforcement staff. He said when officers are conducting routine follow-up visits, they are mindful of potential dangers.

But the department still has limitations, he said.

“We’re not like law enforcement where we can go around snooping properties,” Cooper said.

Contact reporter Andrew Caplan at andrew.caplan@gvillesun.com or on Twitter @AACaplan.