“There’s always violence that can occur at the shake of a hat,” said Streck, who also serves as acting police chief for Butler Twp.
The law enforcement effort is complicated by websites that make it easy for customers on the hunt for drugs or sex to make appointments at hotels and motels instead of frequenting street corners to find hookers or beckoning dealers with fistfuls of cash.
“They tell you to come to this motel, room 19 and knock twice, or whatever… and they move around,” said Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly.
Sites like Backpage.com have become an electronic marketplace for sex, Kelly said, and the hookups happen where people think nobody is looking.
Officials are using a variety of tactics: saturation patrols and stings, partnerships with hotels and motels to crack down on illicit activity and anti-nuisance laws. Columbus thinks it’s made a dent by bringing lawsuits and requiring hotels to be licensed.
“It allows for the city to object to a permit and perhaps remove the permit, if evidence is shown of a pattern of criminal activity occurring at the hotel or of fire code violations,” Columbus Assistant City Attorney Bill Sperlazza said.
The city is in the midst of a crackdown on about a dozen properties along Interstate 71 on its north side, where prostitution activity has led to drug sales and gun violence. Bullet holes could be seen recently in the windows of one shuttered motel.
“We have focused on hotels where ownership and management are acquiescing to the criminal element,” Sperlazza said.
Problem hotels
Two much-complained-about hotels in Harrison Twp. were successfully shut down after Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias H. Heck Jr. filed nuisance complaints, said Greg Flannagan, spokesman for Heck.
The township has spent years cracking down on massage parlors, strip joints and prostitution in the North Dixie Drive areas.
The former North Plaza Inn, 3636 N. Dixie Drive, had nearly 2,000 sheriff’s dispatch calls between April 2007 to October 2009. The former Parkway Inn, 2221 Wagner Ford Road, had 247 calls in a year, Flannagan said.
At the time, Heck issued a warning to problem hotels: “Either clean it up or we will padlock it or close it down,” Flannagan said.
Under the nuisance laws, a nuisance property can be shuttered for 12 months — an eternity for a business, said Harrison Twp. Administrator Kris McClintick. The North Plaza Inn building now sits vacant and the Parkway Inn was torn down.
Harrison Twp. now has just one problem hotel, according to Streck: the low-priced Liberty Motel at 4101 Keats Drive, where there were 133 police calls for service in 2015 and 67 so far this year.
“We are there constantly,” he said.
The manager of the hotel declined comment.
Two hotels in Miami Twp. were identified as problems by township Police Captain of Operations John Magill. Intown Suites Extended Stay Living, 8981 Kingsridge Drive, had 368 dispatch calls in the last 12 months, and Studio 6, 8101 N. Springboro Pike, had 244 calls, according to Magell.
By comparison, other hotels in the same area have had 39 to 86 calls during the same period, Magell said.
Requests for comment from the Inntown and Studio 6 operators went unanswered.
“I know I’ve identified a problem but I don’t think I’ve identified all the best answers yet,” Magill said.
Motels and hotels offering weekly, biweekly and monthly rates tend to be the ones attracting the illicit trade, Magill said, but some of the establishments work hard to keep dealers and prostitutes away.
“A lot of it has to do with their internal rules and how they conduct business,” he said. “A business can choose to allow whoever they wish.”
Magill said he talks to the hotel operators about the behavior they tolerate, hours that people come and go and the amount and type of internal security they use. Hotels are given information about drug abuse and drug treatment to make available to patrons.
Drugs have long been tied to prostitution, but heroin is much more prevalent now.
Cheryl Oliver, executive director of Oasis House, a faith-based organization that tries to help women get out of prostitution, said there has been a marked transition from crack cocaine.
“Ninety-eight percent of the women we see on a regular basis here at Oasis House have or have had a heroin problem,” she said.
Saturation patrols
Miami Twp. has had success cracking down on prostitution with saturation patrols using law enforcement from other cities and townships, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s office and the RANGE narcotics and gun enforcement task force.
“We take large numbers of officers and put them into very confined areas,” Magill said.
Butler Twp. earlier this year ran a sting targeting prostitution using R-STORM (Regional Sex Trade Organized Response Movement) in the Miller Lane area.
“The goal is to make sure that people know we are working them and if you set up a date on Backpage.com or some other social media site there is a good chance there will be police waiting for you when you get there,” Streck said.
Miller Lane — a booming area of retail, restaurants and hotels right off the highway — is the sort of target sought by drug dealers, prostitutes and their customers and other criminals, Streck said. But officials and the hotels have been successful in keeping major problems from developing, he said.
“We have two full-time task forces that work the area very hard,” said Streck, referring to the Miami Valley Bulk Smuggling Task Force and RANGE.
Cooperation from the hotels too has been key.
“One thing that has occurred on Miller Lane — and it is very rare — is a pact with the hotels/motels that Vandalia Municipal Court supports,” said Streck.
If a person is “trespassed” from one property for violations of rules or laws, his or her name is added to a list circulated to all the hotels, and the person is banned from those properties as well, he said.
‘We want to work with you’
In Clark County, Sheriff Kelly has documented more than 100 calls for service so far this year concerning the Drake Motel, 3200 E. National Road in Springfield Twp.
The first week of May proved particularly busy, including calls for drug overdoses, thefts and even a pit bull attack.
“We have had deaths here. We have had robberies. We have had prostitution. We have had fugitives staying at this motel,” Kelly said.
Linda Lauchard works at an auction house across from the Drake on East National Road.
“Definitely it’s not safe for the people out here,” she said.
Kelly’s gone on the offensive, increasing patrols at the motel that sits just across the street from his East District office. Deputies drive by in their marked cars at all hours of the day and night and yet the criminal conduct persists.
He also sat down this week with the owner Harshad “Mike” Patel, who lives in Mansfield.
Patel said he doesn’t condone drug abuse and has removed people from his property when they don’t follow the rules. But he also lamented the struggle he faces keeping unwanted people out while still running a business and complying with anti-discrimination laws.
Such laws don’t allow motel operators to turn down customers in advance solely on the suspicion that they may rent a room for illegal activity, according to Patel, who said he is a former economics instructor at Ohio State University.
“How can you accuse the innkeeper?” he said. “If he is involved or connected, then bring a lawsuit and sue him. If you cannot do that then you have no business to blame the innkeeper because the innkeeper is not aware because of a law of privacy.”
Still, Patel expressed a wish to work together with the township and sheriff’s office.
“We told (the sheriff) very emphatically, ‘We want to work with you,’” he said.
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