Loophole helps cheap hotels serve as safe havens for violent crime

ATLANTA — A Channel 2 Action News investigation has uncovered a legal loophole that lets cheap hotels become safe havens for prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers.

Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Aaron Diamant said Fulton County police try to root out crime at many of the budget hotels along Fulton Industrial Boulevard near Interstate 20, but he found two laws designed to help police, really aren't.

Fulton County police invited us on a rare ride-along as they went undercover to bust both prostitutes and johns.

It's an area full of low-budget hotels -- many, police say are crime magnets. But Maj. Wade Yates says operations like this are not enough.

"That's not what's going to clean up Fulton Industrial Boulevard. That helps [but] that's not what's going to make it leave the area," Yates told Diamant.

So far this calendar year, police have been called to a handful of Fulton Industrial hotels more than 100 times. The worst call-outs include rape, aggravated assault, armed robbery and theft.

But the most common reason: Police get calls that fugitives are staying at the hotels. That's happened 11 times since January.

Yates says the hotels give the criminal element a place to stay on boulevard.

"Police show up, everyone goes in their rooms, so the police go away. They come back out, kind of a cat and mouse game," Yates said.

Fulton County tried to shut down problem hotels with a 2013 ordinance denying health department permits to those with too many calls for police.

But a limited liability corporation called DILA, which at the time owned the Red Roof Inn, sued the county, claiming the health department didn't have the authority to do that.

County records show it settled the suit for $175,000. It hasn't used the ordinance since, which frustrates county board chairman John Eaves.

"We're not necessarily winning this effort right now," he said.

Eaves wants people to know who owns these hotels.

"These individuals need to be called out, they need to be outed and our society needs to know who they are," Eaves said.

Ali Jamal calls himself the CEO of a company named Stablegold Hospitality. The company website says it owns several area budget hotels, including the A2C Budget Hotel off Fulton Industrial.

Police records show they've been called out to the hotel five times since January to investigate fugitives at the hotel.  That's more than any other Fulton Industrial hotel this year.

We wanted to talk to Jamal. We called and emailed him. We visited his office and his home. But we couldn't find him.

Eventually, Jamal sent us an email saying he was out of the country and added, "I have no comment at this time."

Digging through old law books at Emory University, Channel 2 learned there is a state nuisance law that allows prosecutors to go after the hotel owners. It's been the law since the '90s, but police told us there's a very large loophole.

"What we've found is as soon as any pressure is put on them, the hotel is immediately sold to someone else in an LLC. Seemingly, the day-to-day operations don't change," Yates said.

That means police and prosecutors would have to re-start the same legal process against the new owner.

"If the violations were attached to the physical address of the property, rather than the owner of the property," Yates said, "That could be a real game-changer."

Diamant ran all this past state Sen. Vincent Fort, who sponsored the original nuisance bill nearly 20 years ago.

"I will commit that I'm going to look into it," Fort told Diamant. "I'm going to talk to law enforcement, talk to some prosecutors and see what the adjustment needs to be."

The Fulton County district attorney wouldn't talk to us for this story, so we asked DeKalb District Attorney Robert James his thoughts on changing the law.

"I think it is time to take a look at the statute and ask some hard questions about does it need to be enhanced,” James said.

But he added, a nuisance abatement law isn't a cure-all. When a hotel is shut down under a nuisance law, the county can't take over the property.

"It's not just a law enforcement issue. It becomes a property and an economic development issue. So it has to be dealt with at higher levels in the county,” James said. “The commission, the county attorney's office, the planning department."

James recently formed an organized crime task force in his office to deal with problems like this.

"We had to have a specialized unit that said, ‘OK, we’re going to look at crime from a bird's eye view. What causes crime in our community? What dries crime in our community?’" James added.

His task force includes lawyers familiar with forfeiture laws and nuisance abatement.

"The average police officer isn't aware of civil nuisance abatement. I will say that the average prosecutor isn't aware of civil nuisance abatement," James said.

In at least one other state, a nuisance abatement law is making a difference.

In the Northland area of Columbus, Ohio, the city has shut down some hotels, and forced other owners to clean up their act. The result: Calls for police service there has dropped 40 percent.

Why can Iowa do this when Georgia can't? Its law doesn't have the same loopholes. A quick change in ownership won't send city officials back to square one.

"We name the physical property itself as a defendant. We name the owners, be it a corporation, or an individual. We also name the operators," Columbus Attorney Bill Sperlazza explained. "We name everybody and we pursue everybody.”

Cox Media Group