Motel Owners Protest Nuisance Label

One after another, they climbed to their feet and told stories in halting English that sounded like tales from some jackbooted dictatorship.

A small man in tennis shoes said he was arrested 32 times in a few months, once because the registration tags on a tenant’s car had expired.

Tsy Hou Chang said he was forced to close two motels.

“I was a million-dollar man,” Chang told more than 30 Asian American business owners who met to protest government harassment. “Now I’m in bankruptcy.”

Complaints such as Chang’s--many stemming from police crackdowns on motels along Sepulveda Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley and Figueroa Street on the city’s south side--are the latest development in a decades-old battle to control prostitution and drug dealing in poor neighborhoods.

Where once police dealt with the problem by arresting the criminals, authorities in Los Angeles have been targeting businesses that cater to the wrongdoers--labeling them nuisances and threatening to close them down if they don’t clean up.

Of 225 businesses reviewed in the past decade, more than 80% have been sanctioned, records show. The orders can require that the businesses hire security guards, construct fences to keep drug dealers off their property, and remove public phones used by prostitutes.

Now, the tide may be turning, in part because of complaints such as those expressed by the Asian American motel owners. At the recent meeting in Bellflower, virtually every merchant--drawn from across Southern California--believed they have been targeted because of their ethnicity.

Responding to allegations that crime reports used to back up enforcement actions contain false information, the Los Angeles Police Commission has launched an investigation into the whole nuisance-abatement program.

Already procedures have been revised with the merchants in mind. Chief Zoning Administrator Robert Janovici has promised to give advance warning to the Asian American motel owners being targeted for cleanup. He was responding to complaints that the first time many business owners learn they could lose their businesses is when they receive an enforcement notice in the mail.

In an interview, Janovici said that as a result of the growing complaints, his department has become “probably a little more thoughtful” and is “giving greater scrutiny to the quality and quantity of materials we are given.”

The nuisance-abatement process grew from the frustrations of Los Angeles City Council members over the inability of police to solve drug and prostitution problems. About seven years ago, Janovici said, the council passed an ordinance that gave new power to the Planning Department to impose conditions on businesses in blighted areas--and close them down if they don’t comply.

Complaints trigger hearings, which are held by a zoning administrator within the Los Angeles Planning Department. That decision can be appealed to the City Council.

To neighborhoods long plagued by crime, the crackdown on the motels along Figueroa Street on the south side and Sepulveda Boulevard in the Valley is long overdue.

“If you talk to citizens that live or work in the area you would find, while it’s not a perfect system, things are better as a result of our having gotten involved,” Janovici said.

The hearings, presided over by a single zoning administrator with a court reporter, can be highly charged affairs. Angry neighbors and resentful motel owners packed a recent hearing involving two motels on Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood.

“There is really something wrong with the system when you cannot go home safely,” said Mary Garcia, a neighbor who attributed decades of crime problems to the Western Village Hotel and the Magnolia Motor Lodge Motel.

The police admitted they were helpless.

“I wish I could say we can solve this problem,” said Nancy Reeves, a North Hollywood officer. “But we’ve been trying for 20 years and haven’t been able to do anything.”

When Eugene Lin, owner of the Western Village, a weathered motel with 169 rooms, got to his feet, he could feel the anger swelling around him at the Sherman Oaks Women’s Club.

“If you had a chance to nail me to a cross I believe you would do it,” he told the crowd.

The anguish of the motel owners echoes a familiar story. Immigrants have often found that the best way to gain a handhold on the American dream is to fill economic niches on the fringes of commerce. Motels in poor neighborhoods are cheaper to buy and run than other businesses, say those involved.

Cmdr. Tim McBride, a spokesman for the LAPD, doesn’t have much sympathy for the motel owners.

“They are dealing with prostitutes and drug dealers,” McBride said. “They are trying to make money and they don’t care how they make it. Figueroa is out of control. It’s a huge crime problem. We expect to continue to apply pressure until they see the light and change.”

Det. Mary Holguin, who has been involved in half a dozen motel cases on Figueroa Street, denies any immigrant-bashing is going on.

“I’m Asian,” she said. “I looked at what were the problem areas [before taking action against the motels]. Later on, I found out [the majority] were Asian-owned.”

In fact, of the 38 motels along the Figueroa Street corridor, only six were owned by Asian Americans, according to an attorney for one of the motels. Yet five of the first six motels targeted by police were owned by Asian Americans.

At the heart of the complaints by motel owners are what are known as PACMIS reports, which stands for Police Arrest Crime Management Information System. These are a summary of police calls to a specific address, along with a shorthand list of the crimes involved.

John Da Corsi, an attorney who also represents Wang and other Asian American motel owners, said the reports “have been quite influential” on the zoning administrators who decide cases.

The problem, he said, is that the reports are riddled with inaccuracies. In some cases, said lawyer Harriet Bilford, who was among the first to raise concerns over the PACMIS system, the reports assign crimes that occur on the street or in a parking lot to a particular business.

Even worse, according to the business owners, being a good citizen can come back to haunt them. If they call the police to report criminal activity, the call may wind up in a report and be used against them in city nuisance hearings.

“What has to change is the Police Department looking at you motel owners as criminals,” Da Corsi said at the Bellflower meeting.

“You didn’t create the crime. Crime is a societal problem. You are the victim.”

McBride said the reports were never supposed to be taken as the gospel. “They are an indicator,” he said.

But also expressing concern about the PACMIS reports is City Councilman Hal Bernson, who recently asked the Police Commission to review the reports.

“He has a concern that the information in these reports is not adequate to give us the information we need to make sure we know where the offense is taking place,” said Francine Oschin, a spokeswoman for Bernson.

Back at the hearing on the Western Village and Magnolia Motor Lodge, Officer Reeves gives her PACMIS report. She says the LAPD has received 80 radio calls for help in the area since 1994.

“There have been several arrests, including gang members that live there,” she said.

Da Corsi protests that arrests are irrelevant. “Many people are arrested and not prosecuted.”

He said he has declarations from two prostitutes who said police threatened to arrest them unless they said they worked out of the motels.

As the tension in the room peaks, a representative of Councilman John Ferraro comments that she has “never seen a land-use case turn into what this one has.”

By the time Kim Su, the night manager at the Magnolia motel, takes the floor the atmosphere in the room is thick with hostility.

“It’s true,” he said, “there’s a lot of crime, a lot of prostitution.”

He said he never allows criminals on his property. But if they congregate outside, what can he do?

To the neighbors, he says, “both sides are victims, even me.”

“I’ll be glad to see the solution. My boss has been losing money. Occupancy rates are never over 50%. He’s hurting. Me too. I don’t get a raise.”

Chuckles spread through the room.

“Let’s not fight,” he says. “Let’s find a solution.”

The crowd bursts into spontaneous applause. It is a rare moment of harmony for the business owners and the community.

And it doesn’t last.

To some, the forces at work on the streets are far broader than the reach of any ordinance, or the good intentions of any business owner.

“America used to be the land of opportunity,” Lin said. “Now it’s changed to the land of disaster.”