The woman called the police because she found her 37-year-old mother naked in a bathroom at the Econo Lodge downtown. The 25-year-old man with her had his pants down. When she got angry, thinking the two had had sex, the man hit her, she told Battle Creek police.

That incident happened on March 11, 2018, but police calls like it aren't rare at the Econo Lodge on Capital Avenue Southwest.

They happen nearly every day, and they add up.

Between January 2018 and February 2019, police went to the hotel 475 times, more than any other hotel in the city. They went 14 times for assaults, 67 times for people causing trouble, 37 times for domestic disputes, 36 times for unwanted people on the property, 34 times for 911 hangup calls, five times for overdoses.

Police Chief Jim Blocker estimates that each call costs the city about $75, which means the city spent about $35,000 on calls to the Econo Lodge.

“That’s real money,” he said.

Battle Creek city officials want to do something about what they consider unsafe, crime-ridden hotels in the city with an ordinance that would allow the city to regulate hotels for code compliance and make hotel owners do their part to improve their properties.

The ordinance, though not yet written, could give city code compliance inspectors authority to go into hotels to look for code violations ranging from leaking pipes to peeling paint to fire hazards.

“We have a concern about this,” said Prakash Patel, owner of the Econo Lodge and part owner of the Rodeway Inn on Beckley Road and Hometown Inn on Division Street downtown. “It is unnecessary. We don’t know what kinds of codes they are imposing. Our rooms are up to par.”

But city officials believe that, if owners and the management teams put more effort into the appearance and upkeep of their hotels, they also will take steps to deter crime and address unsafe conditions.

Broken windows

That line of thinking is based on James Q. Wilson's and George Kelling’s broken windows theory, which holds that small problems like broken windows, trash-filled vacant lots or panhandling send a message: No one cares. And, in doing so, make crime more likely.

“I actually believe that if you have a proactive management team that is well trained and understands the ramification of allowing people in that aren’t monitored, I think they are going to find their business does better than those who simply let anybody stay and anyone rent a room,” Blocker said.

“I think once the reputation gets out there that this establishment, this management team will not allow funny business, suddenly all the folks that want to conduct these illegal activities are going to seek another place to take their activity.”

The idea is, if the police remove the “safe havens” for crime, it will lower crime.

After Ward 4 Commissioner Chris Simmons took office in November 2017, he went to city administrators with concerns about people staying at the hotels long term and the crime he saw happening in and around those hotels, especially near where he lives on the south side of the city near the Interstate 94 corridor.

“I think many times the owners kind of turn a blind eye,” Simmons said. “They know things that might be going on and they turn a blind eye because it’s revenue for them. I don’t begrudge anybody making money off of a business, but they also have to be responsible citizens and realize what impact their business might have on our community.”

Crime at hotels

During the time he was using heroin, Matt Jones often slept under bridges, but, in December 2015, he got enough money for a room at the Econo Lodge.

He would stay for a month. He says he saw prostitution there along with people using and selling drugs.

Now that he is three years sober, he never wants to go back.

“It’s a cesspool,” said Jones, who is now 33 and works as a homeless outreach coordinator at Haven of Rest Ministries.

“The worse the hotel looks, the better chance you have of scoring everything you need,” he said.

But police and city commissioners are also concerned about hotels along I-94 like the Rodeway Inn on Beckley Road, where police responded to 311 calls between January 2018 and February 2019.

By comparison, the Hampton Inn on Riverside Drive had nine calls in that time frame and the Best Western Executive Inn on Beckley Road only had 23.

The case of Mike Patel

Several city officials said a 2015 case convinced them that they needed to do more about problem hotels.

Mehul Chandubhai Patel, also known as Mike, was arrested that November at the Rodeway Inn he owned at 4786 Beckley Road. He was charged with operating a prostitution house at the hotel and for violating U.S. Department of Labor minimum wage laws.

Police said he was allowing prostitution to take place at the inn and taking money from sex workers.

The prostitution charges were dropped. For violating minimum wage laws, Patel was sentenced to two months in jail, fined $10,000 and ordered to pay $150,500 in restitution to between 15 and 20 former employees.

“That really just sort of opened our eyes to this concept that we really need to have a better understanding of the regulatory environment,” Blocker said.

When Prakash Patel bought the Rodeway Inn about three years ago with a business partner, it was a disaster, he said. He bought the Hometown around the same time with a business partner, and it was also in rough shape.

“We have been trying to clean up the hotels,” he said, noting the new exit-only doors he’s having installed at Econo Lodge.

Patel, who says he isn't related to Mike Patel, doesn’t believe his hotels are really the problem. He blames their surroundings.

There are often panhandlers and homeless people walking near Econo Lodge. He’s told his management team to alert police when they are concerned about people on the property, and they do, a claim substantiated by the dispatch data provided by Battle Creek Police.

“We do have a concern about the crime,” Patel said. “We don’t want to entertain any crime in our hotels. The hotel is safe. The problem is the people around (the hotel) that don’t care about the property.”

“Basically if (the city) would clean up and if they would provide them accommodations...you would see a big difference,” he said.

His hotels are economy hotels with rates are as low as $45 a night. They aren’t going to appeal to higher-end clientele, Patel explained.

“If someone is booking a Marriott, why would they come to the Econo Lodge?” he said. “It’s all about the affordability.”

Linda Freybler, CEO of the Calhoun County Visitors’ Bureau, is a part of a new working group formed by the city to discuss hotels and how the standards of some of the properties could be improved.

She said most hotels in Battle Creek have great reviews online, and those with national brands often are required to keep up their standards.

“I don’t think for the majority of our hotels that there will be really any impact,” Freybler said of a possible ordinance to regulate the hotels. “It will help improve those that really need some help with improvement.”

Code compliance at hotels

Battle Creek police officers have gone into hotel rooms to find that the occupants are "destroying the rooms" and the rooms are being treated like an apartment, Sgt. Jeff Case said.

"In many rooms, there’s a path to walk through," he said. "I mean it’s disgusting."

They've found bags of garbage, clothing stacked up, pets living there and appliances hooked up in a way that could be a fire hazard.

Battle Creek's code compliance officers can't just go into hotel rooms to do inspections. The city’s property maintenance code only allows code compliance officers to inspect the exterior of commercial properties like hotels and motels.

But if police find what appear to be unsafe conditions in the course of an investigation, they can report them, which gives code compliance officers a chance to get inside.

“We go in and then we are just addressing what we see and what we have access to, which by all means isn’t the whole facility,” Battle Creek Community Services Director Marcie Gillette said.

The city does have an ordinance that requires the registration, inspection and permitting of rental properties, but hotels and motels don’t fall under that because they aren’t established for long-term rentals.

City officials say many hotels rent out rooms long term anyhow. They know people live at hotels that don’t meet state standards for long-term housing, Gillette said.

“The reality is we have individuals that are living in these rooms and they do not have the minimum code requirements of having a refrigerator and a stove and the amenities that you really need for day-to-day living that make it safe versus a hot burner or a griddle stove that’s sitting next to the bed,” Gillette said. “These are just fire hazards waiting to happen so we have huge concerns about families’ safety.”

City inspectors also can get inside hotels when someone files a complaint about a problem they saw there, anything from bed bugs to a safety concern, but that doesn’t happen all that often.

Gillette believes that’s because people passing through don’t want to take the time to do it and the people living in the hotels don’t want to jeopardize their living situation.

“If this truly is their last-resort housing option, are they are really going to call code compliance with the potential that it could be closed down when they have no place to go?” Gillette said.

'A call to action'

It’s difficult for city officials to know exactly how many individuals or families might be living in the hotels because they are transient and, even if the hotels kept that type of data, Gillette doesn’t see any reason why hotel owners would want to share it.

City officials know that to regulate the interiors of hotels, making sure they are up to certain standards, could displace people using hotels as a residence. They haven't yet made plans for addressing that.

“If there’s a situation where there are unsafe conditions, then it’s our responsibility to ensure that it is not occupied,” Gillette said.

Because those unsafe conditions don't just affect one person or family, but jeopardize the health and safety every occupant of the hotels in question, she said.

“We are just at a point in our community that we feel administratively we need to lift this up," Gillette said. "We need to have a level of call to action to ensure that our community is safe.”

Contact Kalea Hall at (269) 966-0697 or khall@battlecreekenquirer.com. Follow her on Twitter at @bykaleahall.