Clean Up Drugs and Prostitution, 2 Hotels Warned

San Diego City officials served notice Friday that they will go to court to shut the downtown Coast and Las Flores hotels unless drug dealing and prostitution in and around the buildings stop.

Police officers served the notices to management and tenants in the two hotels after the city attorney’s office obtained a temporary injunction against drug dealing Friday afternoon from Superior Court Judge James R. Milliken.

The injunction was obtained under a rarely used “drug abatement” section of the municipal health and safety code that allows city officials to sue a building owner or manager for maintaining a “public nuisance” by permitting drug dealing or use on their premises.

Unless the owner or manager takes steps to make sure the drug trafficking stops, fines of up to $25,000 can be levied and the property can be shut for up to a year, said Joseph M. Schilling, head deputy city attorney for code enforcement.

Managers Deny Crime

Managers at both hotels deny that their establishments are centers for crime.

Schilling, however, said the city decided to seek the civil remedy against the Coast and Las Flores hotels because police efforts to flush out crime in the single-room-occupancy hotels have been limited.

“The gist of the whole case is that these two hotels act as a magnet for prostitutes and drug dealers,” said Schilling. “When the police have gone in and swept one of the hotels, they (drug dealers and prostitutes) move to the other one.”

Police have long maintained that the 55-room Coast, at 501 7th Ave., and the 52-room Las Flores, at 725 4th Ave., are their biggest crime problems in a downtown that is feeling its oats because of redevelopment. A room at the Coast costs $70 a week; a room at Las Flores is $15.12 a night, plus a $7 key charge and $7.56 for a second guest.

The prostitution and drug activity became so notorious that police officers in February were ordered to stop their cars at least once an hour and walk around each hotel, said James D. Filley, the police community services officer for the Gaslamp area. With 10 to 12 officers patrolling the area, that meant an officer was walking around the Coast or Las Flores 10 to 12 times an hour, he said.

The special attention put a dent in the crime, but mounting demands in the busy downtown district forced police to give up the hourly foot tours by the beginning of summer. “This stuff (crime) came forward again, even stronger,” said Filley.

Paramedics Wanted Escort

The crime was so bad that even paramedics refused to enter the hotels without a police escort, said Filley. “They’re tired of stepping on hypodermic needles,” he said. “They’re tired of trying to help an overdose victim and then getting beat up by her boyfriend.”

Between March and August, there were 500 police contacts, 52 narcotics arrests and 350 misdemeanor citations in and around the Coast, according to city statistics.

During the same six-month period, there were 42 arrests at Las Flores, 13 for narcotics and two for prostitution, said Filley. He said the crime is so bad that businessmen can find no one to lease nearby storefronts, just a stone’s throw from the successful Horton Plaza.

City officials maintain that the managements of the hotels are well aware of the flourishing prostitution and drug dealing. The temporary injunction Friday requires the hotels’ managements to take steps to cut crime, including:

- Providing uniformed security guards on Friday and Saturday nights from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.

- Requiring all tenants and visitors to sign a register every time they enter and leave the building.

- Providing a list of tenants and residents to the Police Department upon request.

- Allowing police to enter the hotels to inspect the register.

The order also requires the posting and distribution of special notices to hotel tenants, informing them that the buildings are “under court order not to be used in any fashion for the sale and use of illegal drugs.” Any subsequent documented drug violation can allow the city to go back to court and ask that the hotels be shut, said Schilling.

Late Friday afternoon, police officers walked through the hotels, stapling the orders on the walls and handing them to tenants.

Coast manager Ysidira Pimentel said Friday that the notices came as a “surprise” to her.

“We don’t have any prostitution at this hotel,” said Pimentel, who assumed management two years ago. “We don’t have any drug dealing. There was before, but not when we took the hotel over.”

One of her tenants, 20-year-old Sandy Jones, walked around the hotel’s ground floor barefoot and holding her 6-month-old son as police officers walked up and down the hallways to distribute copies of the notices. Jones said she moved into the hotel two weeks ago and will be leaving in a few more days to live in an apartment.

‘It’s Gross’

“Look at it--it’s scum,” she said about the hotel. “I’ve never been in a place like this before. It’s gross.”

Jones said drug dealing in the area is blatant. She said she and her husband are often approached by people selling narcotics. “They don’t even try to hide it,” she said.

Willie Bennet, resident manager of the San Diego Self Storage, situated kitty-corner from the hotel, was walking his dogs around the block when he saw police descend on the Coast and post the notices, sometimes reaching through broken windows to place the order in sight of passing pedestrians.

“I’m just tickled to death to see this place, that something’s being done to it,” said Bennett. “It’s a disgrace to the human race of people.”

At Las Flores, manager Karl Richards said the city’s order was unnecessary. “This is the cleanest the hotel has been in two years,” he said. “What we’re accused of is what happens out in the streets in the city.”

Richards conceded, however, that illegal activity might be going on in the rooms as well.

“What people do behind closed doors, I can’t control. We don’t have high-intensity drug dealing going on,” he said.

Richards said that, even before the order, Las Flores began keeping a guest register and hired security guards to keep people from loitering in front of the building. A hearing before Milliken has been set for Oct. 12 to determine whether a preliminary injunction against the hotels should be issued.