Prostitution Fight Divides City Officials : Crime: Councilman’s effort targets 11 Sepulveda Boulevard motels. Police and others call the problem exaggerated.

The city is calling it L. A.’s biggest effort to close businesses that fail to clean up prostitution, with nearly a dozen motels along notorious Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys targeted for investigation by city zoning officials.

But the Van Nuys police sergeant responsible for community-based policing in the area says the prostitution problem has been exaggerated. And a city zoning official involved with the inquiry has said it targets motels that don’t have significant problems.

“We agree that there’s a problem out there, but somehow or other, it’s gotten blown out of proportion,” Sgt. Ed Brayton said. “Sepulveda Boulevard is doing much, much better than it was a year ago. What the city is doing is not our idea.”

The investigation was started last month at the behest of Councilman Marvin Braude, who said his office had received numerous complaints about prostitution in the area. In a letter to city zoning officials, Braude named the 11 motels and requested that they be investigated to see if the owners had permitted crimes and zoning violations to take place on the premises.

So far, the city has found enough violations to warrant possible action against only six of the motels, city zoning administrator Jon Perica said.

Hearings on those six will be held in January, and any motels found to be a nuisance or whose owners regularly break the law risk being closed down. Short of closure, offending motels could find their operations restricted.

The other five motels have a “bare” crime record that does not substantiate their participation in a revocation hearing at this point, Perica said. Further investigation of these motels is under way.

City officials say the 11-motel investigation is unique because zoning administrators generally use the revocation process against just one business at a time. Since 1989, the zoning administration has held 125 such hearings citywide and revoked business licenses only seven times, Perica said.

“This is the first time that we are trying to target an entire area,” Perica said. “This is the first time we have formally gone after a big group like these motels.”

But Van Nuys Station Capt. James McMurray, who praised the councilman’s efforts to clean up the community, said the motels are not the problem.

“There apparently is a perception in this community that these motels are involved in this prostitution activity,” McMurray said. But “the majority of prostitution activity seems to take place in cars in residential neighborhoods east and west of Sepulveda Boulevard. The motels are simply where some of the prostitutes live.

“I don’t know per se that that is a violation of the law.”

Sgt. Larry Mauldin, who heads vice operations at the Van Nuys Division, agreed.

“Going after the motels is not going to solve the problems,” he said. “You have to have (owners) knowingly renting to prostitutes and that’s not always the case.”

One of the targeted motels, the Carriage Inn on Sepulveda Boulevard, is part of a nationwide chain and has not been the scene of repeated crimes, McMurray said.

“I can’t understand why the Carriage Inn is on the list,” said McMurray. “It doesn’t seem like there was a great deal of coordination between police and the council office.”

Mauldin called the investigation of the motel “a waste of time.”

Harold Peskin, general manager of the Carriage Inn, said he had not been notified that his hotel was on the list before it was submitted.

“I’m very surprised that we’re on the list,” Peskin said. “Seven nights a week we have private security on the property.”

Indeed, one of the lead zoning department investigators questioned the way the hotels were selected.

“I think it’s probably unfair to do this blanket thing to every motel from block Y to block X,” said the official, who declined to be identified. “This is probably not the most efficient use of city time.”

In an interview this week, Braude said he never saw the list of motels to be probed, even though his office submitted the list to the city. Braude’s Valley field deputy, Rosalind Wayman, said she initiated the list on behalf of constituent complaints and after consulting with police in Van Nuys. Wayman said the list of motels was not based on the frequency of crimes reported at the motels. “There were specific complaints about some motels, but not all of them,” she said. “We didn’t pick and choose. We wanted to look at all the motels in the councilman’s district.”

Wayman said the intention was not to make law-abiding motels worry about having their business licenses possibly revoked.

“We’re not interested in putting people out of business,” said Wayman. “We’re interested in making sure that they are good neighbors.”

McMurray, whose station has received $35,000 from Braude’s office this year to fight crime on the boulevard, said the revocation process could help in some ways.

“We arrest people who live at the Bali Hi all the time,” McMurray said of the Bali Hi Motel, one of the 11 on the list. “I think that if the Bali Hi were somehow to become a senior citizen home, crime would be reduced significantly around the area.”

Bali Hi owner Irene Goldhammer said she is not aware of prostitution at the motel. She said she has instructed managers to refuse to book potential clients who appear to be involved in illicit activities.

Residents who have complained to Braude also applauded the investigation.

“I just see that as being the only step that is left,” said Romana Catton of Van Nuys, who leads the 350-household Chisholm Estates Neighborhood Watch. “A lot of times (the motel owners) won’t do something unless they absolutely have to.”

Tom Henry, planning deputy for City Councilman Joel Wachs, said the revocation hearing process can be an effective last resort.

For example, he said, city zoning administrators used the revocation hearing process to restrict business and require security at the Allstar Inn in North Hills in 1992 and the Redwood Inn on Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys in September.

Jim Abrams, executive vice president of the California Hotel and Motels Assn., blamed the inquiry on politics.

“When somebody strikes out like that, I always wonder if it’s being done for political reasons or public relations or good law enforcement,” Abrams said.

“I think the City Council is reacting to the community that votes,” said Flip Smith, president of the Sepulveda Boulevard Business Watch. “The homeowners are screaming that they want the problem solved.”

Braude, who heads the City Council’s Safety Commission, defended his actions.

“This is in response to the citizens’ concerns about prostitution and the complaints in my office,” Braude said. “We’re not targeting anybody, we’re just investigating if (the motels) are complying with the law in an area where prostitution is rampant. If they are, they have nothing to fear.”