Motel Called Magnet for Crime : North Hills: Neighbors consider the business a source of disturbances. Now they want it to pay for all police calls over a certain number.

Paul Giambalvo is a 50-year-old automobile restorer who for years has been trying to halt the downward slide of his crime-battered North Hills neighborhood.

He chases away the drug dealers, prostitutes and others who cluster near his house at a low wall behind a cheap Roscoe Boulevard motel.

To reduce the spillover of what he claims are lowlifes from the $22.95-a-night Allstar Inn, he repairs the barbed wire atop the wall when it gets knocked down, which he says is about every other month. And to screen his view of trash that accumulates next to the motel, Giambalvo spent $100 on materials for a redwood fence and had it installed on the motel’s property line.

“If I didn’t take care of all these things I’d have a mess on my hands,” said Giambalvo, who became streetwise growing up in New York City. “I’ve literally lived with my eyes and ears out of my front window . . . because I wanted to protect my property values and keep that area free of problems.”

After trying for several years on his own to make the motel’s owners aware of the problems, Giambalvo turned to the area’s neighborhood watch group. The group, with the help of Los Angeles Police Department statistics on crime associated with the motel, presented its complaints to the city’s zoning administrator’s office, which ruled that the motel is a public nuisance.

Residents say they are pleased with the proposal by Associate Zoning Administrator Andrew Sincosky to require the business to meet 24 conditions to continue operating.

But now they want more.

They say that problems generated by the motel--drug dealers who peddle their wares over the back wall, noise, fights and other disturbances--are sapping police resources.

As a result, they say, the motel should be made to pay for all police calls over a certain number.

Police patrol cars were called to the Allstar Inn 138 times in 1991, the highest of any motel in the area. “When you realize how much police resources this one location is sucking out of the community . . . it just blows you away,” said Dex Morris, an Aqueduct Avenue resident and a leader of the anti-motel campaign.

The motel is “freeloading on the Police Department, and . . . could care less about the criminal activities,” he said.

Police agree that the high number of incidents involving drugs, vandalism, robbery, prostitution and disturbances at the motel were a drain on police resources in the area in the past. Police also say, however, that so far this year patrol cars have been sent to the motel only 26 times, still a high number but far lower than in the past. At least part of the reason, they say, is that the motel has hired security guards and new managers.

And Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker, who oversees police operations in the Valley, said he even considers the reduction to be one of the successes in the department’s relatively new community-oriented approach, because it was Jon Girard, the senior lead officer for the area, who helped the community’s concerns reach the zoning administrator.

The city’s zoning ordinance required the motel to obtain a use permit when it was established and Sincosky found that the business had not lived up to some of the conditions of that permit, including the erection of a six-foot wall at the rear of the property. If the new set of conditions is imposed and the motel fails to live up to them, the city could shut the business down.

An appeal of Sincosky’s findings to the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals by the motel’s attorney, former City Atty. Burt Pines, is scheduled for Tuesday. In his written appeal, Pines argues that the proposed rules, which include hiring additional security guards, would cost so much that it would be impossible for the business to continue operating as a budget motel.

Moreover, he argued in a letter to Sincosky, “in large measure, the motel is as much a victim of the crime in the area as are the local residents.”

Giambalvo and other neighbors who have complained about the motel applaud Sincosky’s decision to require it to hire additional security guards, build a higher wall, block the view of nearby homes from the motel’s second-floor rooms and adopt a variety of practices aimed at discouraging short-term use of the rooms for prostitution and other crimes.

But by suggesting that the owners be charged for excessive police calls, they have turned their attention to the larger issue of how a shrinking pie of law-enforcement resources should be divided up.

That issue seems likely to gain momentum at a time when the department is facing a staffing crisis. Chief Willie L. Williams said last week that an ongoing hiring freeze and the city’s budget woes threaten the department’s ability to provide basic services such as preventing and solving crimes.

Officer Girard said the high number of police calls at the Allstar Inn showed “that there may have been either a lack of knowledge or a lack of consideration for the problems of the community.”

He said the motel was “almost expecting the community to subsidize” it by relying on the police to provide routine security. “That is certainly not fair to the rest of the community,” he added.

During a three-week period last October, for example, police were called to the motel 17 times. The calls included three burglaries, three reports of prowlers, five disturbances, two other disputes and four miscellaneous calls.

Girard said he also researched other Allstar Inns and found out that the Los Angeles and Ventura county sheriff’s departments and the Fresno Police Department consider the company’s locations to be magnets for crime that require an excessive amount of police attention.

Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents the area where the North Hills Allstar Inn is located, agreed with residents that billing commercial establishments for excessive use of police resources “was an interesting concept to raise.”

He said the City Council recently adopted an ordinance that bills residents if they host loud parties that require more than one police visit to restore quiet and that the same concept might be applied to businesses.

“I think this is an excellent idea” that should be explored further if other measures, such as those proposed by Sincosky, do not reduce problems at the site, Wachs said.

But F. Frank Buehler, vice president and general counsel of Santa Barbara-based Allstar Inns Inc., said he does not believe that the company’s motels create problems. He said the problems that neighbors associate with the location on Roscoe come from the area.

“We are reputable businessmen,” he said. “Our management people don’t want any undesirables in our motels.”

He said he had not thought about whether the business should be charged for excessive police calls, adding, however, “We pay our share of the going rate on taxes and it covers” things such as police services.

But that philosophy, in Girard’s view, is no longer adequate to deal with the crime plaguing Los Angeles.

“The Allstar Inn can’t say to police, ‘It’s your job to do this,’ and the community can’t say to the Allstar Inn or to police, ‘It’s your job,’ ” said Girard. “It has to be the community of the residents and the Police Department and the Allstar Inn saying, ‘We are going to stop this now, and we are going to make a consolidated effort.’ ”

For now, however, Giambalvo and his neighbors are not ready to join the team. They want the operating conditions to be imposed on the property as a guarantee that the motel will live up to its promises to repair the back fence and continue monitoring illicit activities on the property.

“If they would just follow those conditions, it would be an almost 90% improvement,” said Janet Young, who lives nearby on Haskell Avenue. “I’m sure if they were a family-oriented motel we wouldn’t have these problems. I know drugs are all over, but I’m sure that . . . if we could just get the motel to shape up, we would not have as much drugs and prostitution in our neighborhood.”