VICE UNIT COMMANDER: 'DOPE DEALERS LOVE HOTELS'

Drug dealers like to do business in hotels and motels, so police say they
have little choice but to do stings there - despite the dangers to innocent
hotel guests.

"Truthfully and sadly for hotels, they are unfortunately recognized as the
place to do drug deals with a certain comfort level," Lt. Tom Trimble,
commander of the Des Moines police vice and narcotics unit, said Wednesday.
"Dope dealers love hotels."

Undercover agents did not warn hotel employees or guests booked in more
than 20 other rooms at the Heartland Inn Airport prior to Tuesday's drug
sting, which ended with gunfire in a hallway, stairwell and parking lot.

At least one bullet ended up in a room occupied by a guest unconnected with
the drug deal.

Police said Wednesday they will continue to use hotel and motel rooms in
the war against drugs.

"It's no different than setting up on the streets, or doing traffic stops
or raiding an apartment building," Des Moines Police Chief William McCarthy
said. "We come to these with an abundance of training. We try to maximize
safety, and if it's too risky, we will back away. But we cannot offer any
guarantees."

Officers worried Wednesday that hotel managers will be skittish about
booking rooms for police, but several people in the hotel industry said
they will continue to cooperate with authorities.

Linda Saron, manager at the hotel where Tuesday's shooting took place,
said, "Obviously we will do whatever we can to keep the community safe and
to keep our hotel safe."

The executive vice president of the Iowa Lodging Association, Craig Walter,
said he hopes hotel managers don't try to shut out police stings.

"Police need to be doing this if we're going to be curtailing the drug
activity we have going on," Walter said. "If the criminals know we're
working with police, they are more reluctant to use those properties."

Hotel manager Charlie Patel, who runs the Rodeway Inn on Douglas Avenue,
said he would not be upset with police if a drug sting ended in violence at
his hotel.

"It's a sad thing, but sometimes you have to deal with those things," Patel
said. "It's part of life and part of business.

"I feel sorry for the cops."

Police said criminals like the neutrality, anonymity and privacy of hotels.
They can pay cash, lie about their names, do surveillance from their room
before the deal, and disappear afterward with no snooping neighbors to
worry about.

"I don't have a number for you, but I can tell you we go to hotels and
motels throughout the city quite frequently," said Sgt. Larry Davey of the
Des Moines vice and narcotics unit.

There's usually no way to discreetly ask nearby hotel guests to leave or to
alert employees before a sting because the suspects could be tipped off,
said Trimble.

"The least information we share, the least amount of danger we're in," he said.

To keep gunfire from breaking out, officers try to overwhelm suspects with
manpower.

"We want to surround them with 10 police officers so they think, 'My chance
of getting away is zero.' We want them to immediately realize it's hopeless
and just give up," Trimble said.

Trimble said the officers' primary concern always is the safety of citizens
and fellow officers.

"But there's always an outside chance that if someone involved in this goes
crazy, like these two guys did, we have little control over what they do,"
he said.

Police will analyze Tuesday's incident "second by second and see if there's
anything we could've done differently," Trimble said. "There's nothing
glaring at this point."

From the 1980s until about two years ago, Des Moines police had a squad
dedicated to drug busts at hotels and motels. The squad still is intact,
but "in a greatly reduced fashion," Trimble said. He added that he has not
seen an increase in hotel drug activity since the squad was scaled back.

A police probe in Altoona in 2000 provided an example of what police find
in motels and hotels. During a three-day period at two hotels, nine people
were arrested on various charges, including drug, forgery and child
endangerment charges.

One of the most serious hotel crimes was in 1995 when an Urbandale police
officer was shot in the abdomen by a methamphetamine user in the lobby of a
hotel near Merle Hay Road.