14 - Report about creation of a safe zone at local hotels

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Item No. 14 memorandum TO: City Council Gene Anderson, Interim City Manager FROM: Bob Hundley, Chief of Police SUBJECT: MOTEL ORDINANCE REQUEST DATE: February 4, 2020 BACKGROUND: In 2019, a citizen presented the council with a petition requesting adoption of an ordinance that would help control criminal activities at local hotels and rental properties in the city. An ordinance from the city of Grand Prairie was also presented as an example of what that city and others had put into place for crime control. Council discussed this issue in two meetings in the fall of last year. A supplemental report was delivered to Council in January of 2020. STATUS OF ISSUE: At that time, the city council directed me to report back to Council in February regarding the on-going issue. In the attachments to this memo, I have included a summary of the calls for service to all motels in the city along with individual reports regarding calls for service to each motel. Please be assured that if a motel is turning a blind eye to issues of selling drugs, harboring criminal activity or providing a base of operations, more attention from the police will be forth coming. I also would be remiss if I did not point out that lower call volume is not unexpected during the winter months. It is my opinion that an ordinance crafted on one such as the Grand Prairie model would not be of benefit to reducing these calls for service in this case. This ordinance relies on inspections by building officials regarding the physical plant of the motel along with different tiers of response based on calls for service. It is my opinion that an ordinance regarding inspections on motels would be placing an undue burden on motels which have a very low incidence of police calls which would be most of the motels in Paris. Should we decide to craft an ordinance requiring action for locations with heavier than `normal' police calls for service, we would have to be very cautious as to what calls for service would be counted. For example, should a person become ill, depending on how the call is received, a fire call, an EMS call and a police call would be created for one incident. A traffic accident on the parking lot should not be counted. A family checking on the welfare of someone in the motel should not be counted. The report of calls for service can become subjective quickly if these type calls are not identified initially in the ordinance.