Police Use Code Violations to Close Crime-Plagued Motel

For the past three years, skimpily clad prostitutes have strolled a rundown stretch of Garvey Avenue in Baldwin Park, offering sexual services at all hours for $20 and $25.

Oblivious to the roar of traffic on the San Bernardino Freeway just yards away, the women made their living in cramped, hot rooms of some 1930s bungalow-style motels that parallel the freeway.

One, the Lucky 7, became a notorious nuisance with loud quarrels, fights, drug dealing and, a week ago, a murder in the parking lot. The activity was virtually nonstop.

Baldwin Park police were practically helpless to stop it--until last weekend when, at 4 a.m. Saturday, 20 officers made their move. Armed with search warrants, bolstered by four months of investigative work and accompanied by county health officials and the city’s code enforcement officer, they shut down the motel and nailed boards over its doors and windows. The motel owner and 15 others were arrested for investigation of various charges, including prostitution and drug violations.

The shutdown exemplifies a form of enforcement increasingly used by police and sheriff’s deputies to attack chronic problem areas. Besides criminal arrests, citations are handed out for health, fire, zoning and safety code violations. The citations effectively remove the buildings as a center of operations for illegal activities, officials said.

Such an approach was used last year by sheriff’s deputies to stop drug dealing in an unincorporated area near Monrovia and in a La Puente neighborhood.

“A lot of hard work has to be done,” said Baldwin Park Police Lt. Jim Kuntz of the tactic in his city. “It’s not just a fly-by-night operation.”

The 14200 block of Garvey Avenue started to become a problem area more than three years ago, Kuntz said. A number of old motels squat along the hot, dusty street without sidewalks, many of the rooms rented by low-income residents. A large motel catering to diesel truck drivers sits at one end of the street and a beer bar at the other.

The street is zoned for commercial development. But the recession, coupled with difficulty in buying the land from 52 owners and relocating the residents, has stalled city redevelopment plans for more than three years, city officials said.

In the interim, the rundown neighborhood became a breeding ground for crime. Residents in nearby streets complained that they couldn’t even walk outside their homes without encountering prostitutes and their customers in parked cars on the street, Kuntz said.

Mothers who pick up their children at a school bus stop on the nearby corner of Big Dalton and Garvey avenues said prostitutes--clad in tube tops, shorts and high heels--were on the streets as early as 8 a.m.

“My children would ask, ‘Why are the ladies wearing those clothes?’ ” said Esperanza Gonzales, the mother of two girls in elementary school. “I’d say they were working, but I wouldn’t say what kind of work.”

Residents who lived behind the Lucky 7 motel were too scared to confront the drug dealers and prostitutes, said Patrick Koehler, 48, a bricklayer who lives in a small bungalow behind the motel.

“There was nothing but a zoo out there,” Koehler said, adding that prostitutes were “out there day and night. They’d be out there in the rain!”

Police turned to building inspectors and county officials after they found their own efforts at enforcement thwarted, Kuntz said. Police would arrest prostitutes only to see them return to the street within hours. Customers kept flocking to the area, despite the arrest of 32 suspected customers during two separate sting operations. Drug dealers and prostitutes would scatter when they spotted cruising patrol cars, but would return minutes after the police had gone.

Saturday’s raid has ended the activity at the Lucky 7, at least for now.

Baldwin Park City Manager Donald Penman said numerous citations were issued for plumbing and electrical violations. The bungalows lacked working smoke detectors and had many holes in the walls. Before the owner can resume operations, the problems must be corrected, Penman said.

“We were just attacking the symptoms in the past,” he said. “But the important thing now is, this type of thing is not going to be acceptable any longer.”

Although residents think the problems will return, either in the same or other nearby locales, city officials and police say they are determined to keep the crime away.

“What we’re looking for now . . . is to follow it up with good, proactive, high officer visibility,” Kuntz said.