BEDFORD, STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — Simone Gamble returned home from work this week to find her door damaged and her lock changed. It frightened her, not only because someone had entered her apartment without permission or because her roommate has a serious illness that requires daily medication that was now inaccessible to her, but because she suspected she knew who had done it – and why.

Gamble, 31, who runs the tenants association at 693 Madison St. and has spent months protesting against building conditions that include toxic fumes, cold apartments and a five-day stretch without hot water, believes she was targeted by her landlord. "It's a scare tactic and he tried to make it look like a burglary," she said.

Gamble and her roommate Jane Ledesma waited for hours outside their apartment door Monday as police — who first demanded proof of residency and to know if the women had paid their rent — called the landlord Isaac Hirsch repeatedly, she said. "The cop told him he needed to come let his tenants in, that he had a legal responsibility," said Gamble. "He kept repeating he was too far away, he wasn't coming."

After numerous phone calls from at least two police officers, Gamble and an Equality For Flatbush activist, Hirsch claimed he had called A-One Locksmith, but Gamble called to check and their offices was closed. Reached by Patch, Hirsch denied that the tenants had contacted him and said he responded by immediately sending a locksmith, but refused to disclose the name of the service he called. "I don't know who they contacted," said Hirsch. "The tenants made this up to make a story."



Meanwhile, residents and activists gathered outside Gamble's door and called out the landlord on social media.

"It's a disgrace, it's inhumane to lock people out in frigid cold temperatures," said Ledesma in a Facebook video.

"I have to take my medication every day at the same time," she said. "How can I get to my medication? I don't know what's going to happen." A man, who Gamble believes is related the landlord and Hirsch said was a professional locksmith, arrived at 10:30 p.m and let the two women back inside the apartment three hours after Gamble first returned home, she said.