This Motel Crackdown Just Doesn’t Check Out : Investigate Sources of Problem and Leave Others Alone

Back in October, we applauded the use of zoning rules and regulations as a new tool of community-oriented policing in the San Fernando Valley. Specifically, these rules were used to impose conditions on two inns in Van Nuys and North Hills, including orders to reduce prostitution, drug use and other incidents that had resulted in numerous calls for police service.

But those acts differed from a current crackdown on motel-based prostitution along Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys in one important respect. The two earlier cases involved a specific pattern of repeated incidents that clearly seemed to warrant the kind of labor-intensive investigation of the inns. In the current example, the crackdown along Sepulveda Boulevard has amounted to something of a fishing expedition with too few nibbles at the bait.

The Sepulveda Boulevard investigation was begun at the behest of the office of City Councilman Marvin Braude, who said his office had received numerous complaints about prostitution in the area.

The councilman has done admirable work in turning over unused funds from his office for use by the LAPD. Some $15,000 from Braude’s office was freed up last spring, for example, to help police step up arrests of prostitutes and their customers in the Van Nuys area. The funds were used for overtime pay for the officers involved in a special operations unit.

It was a letter from Braude’s office to city zoning officials that targeted 11 motels along Sepulveda with a request that they be investigated to see if the owners had permitted crimes and zoning violations on the premises. Braude never saw the list of motels. And his field deputy said that list was not based on frequency of crimes reported there. “There were specific complaints about some motels, but not all of them,” the deputy said. That’s the problem.

So far, the city has found enough violations to warrant possible action against six of the motels, according to city Zoning Administrator Jon Perica. Hearings on those six will be held in January. Performing such a broad sweep is unique because such steps are usually pursued only against one business at a time. That makes sense, given the fact that the zoning administration has held 125 zoning revocation hearings since 1989, and has seen fit to revoke licenses just seven times, or once out of every 18 cases.

Meanwhile, the Van Nuys police sergeant responsible for community-based policing in the area calls the prostitution problem exaggerated. “We agree that there’s a problem out there, but somehow or other, it’s gotten blown out of proportion. Sepulveda Boulevard is doing much, much better than it was a year ago. What the city is doing is not our idea,” said LAPD Sgt. Ed Brayton.

Van Nuys station Capt. James McMurray, while praising Braude’s efforts to clean up the community, said that the motels are not the problem and that most of the prostitution activity “seems to take place in cars in residential neighborhoods east and west of Sepulveda Boulevard.”

McMurray frankly can’t understand why some of the hotels were targeted, calling it “a waste of time” in some instances.

One of the lead zoning department investigators also questioned the way the hotels were selected, saying the probe targets motels that don’t have significant problems. “I think it’s probably unfair to do this blanket thing to every motel from block Y to block X,” the investigator told The Times’ Jeff Schnaufer on the condition of maintaining his anonymity. “This is probably not the most efficient use of city time.”

It clearly isn’t. In such difficult fiscal times, in fact, it’s important to ensure that as much of every public dollar as possible is used in the most cost-effective way. In this case, it means investigating the motels that are the sources of the problem, and leaving the others alone.