TACTICS ANGER RESIDENTS

GREENSBORO -- Six times this summer police officers knocked on Janet
Washington's door. Each time, they asked to search her room for drugs. Each
time, she agreed and officers went away with nothing.

Officers returned twice in the past two weeks with the same request. Both
times her answer was different.

"I said no," Washington said. "I've decided not to let them do it anymore.
I get upset when they come and harass me like that."

What Washington calls harassment police call standard procedure.

The tactic that agitates Washington and other residents of the Southgate
Motor Inn on Randleman Road is commonly called a "knock-and-talk." Officers
who are suspicious that illegal activity is happening in an apartment or
house often ask the residents for permission to search the home rather than
getting a written search warrant from a judge.

"Knock-and-talks" are a quick way for officers to handle complaints of drug
activity without the red tape, said Capt. Richard Hunt, who heads the
patrol district that includes the Southgate Motor Inn.

Last month Hunt headed an investigation into officer conduct at the
Southgate Motor Inn, prompted by complaints filed by 17 residents at the
hotel who said officers were violating their 4th Amendment rights by
illegally searching their rooms.

"They keep going to the same room, same room, same room, and they don't
find nothing," said Southgate Motor Inn manager Jay Kumar, who helped write
the letter of complaint. "We lose a lot of customers like that. Some people
who have been here for 10 years have left because they don't like to be
bothered."

Officers interviewed 14 of the residents who complained -- three had moved
out and couldn't be located -- and eight others they sought out looking for
any sign of police misconduct. They found none, Hunt said.

Rumors and speculation, along with misunderstanding of laws, contributed to
many of the complaints, Hunt wrote in a report to Chief David Wray that
cleared officers of any misconduct. He also found no one who "personally
felt harassed or unfairly treated," according to the report. The Southgate
Motor Inn, which rents rooms by the week, typically for $115 to $135, was a
focal point of an extensive police crackdown on open-air drugs and
prostitution in the Randleman Road area. The initiative, labeled Project
2400, netted about 200 criminal arrests from April through June, during the
height of police efforts.

Wray said the department was clear at the onset of Project 2400 that police
would step up efforts and use many tactics to arrest drug dealers and
prostitutes in the area targeted by the project. They also made it clear
that the Southgate Motor Inn was an area of particular interest because of
rampant prostitution and drug dealing, he said.

"To me, police knocking on the door asking what's going on is a fairly
slight intrusion on your life," Wray said.

It's also legal. According to federal law, officers can knock on someone's
door and ask to search the room. If the resident says no, the officer can't
come in unless he has a search warrant. And the officer does not have to
tell residents that they have the right to refuse a request.

Hunt said officers often do not tell residents they have the right to
refuse a search.

"The law doesn't mandate that we do, so we don't," Hunt said.

Joel Oakley, president of the Greensboro Criminal Defense Lawyers
Association, said "knock-and-talks" are an unfair intrusion on people's lives.

"Some people say it's a necessary means to fit the ends," Oakley said. "But
I have a real problem with that. We wouldn't stand for it if it was in our
neighborhoods. If law enforcement goes to Fisher Park saying 'We want to
search your houses,' the brouhaha would never end."

Alfonza Johnson agrees. Johnson said he let officers search his room at the
Southgate Motor Inn twice in recent months.

"I didn't have anything to hide," Johnson said. "To me it was (harassing).
I wasn't doing anything."

Court records show that some of the Southgate Motor Inn residents who
signed the complaint did have something to hide in the past.

Willie Joseph, who brought the idea of writing the letter to Kumar, was
convicted on misdemeanor drug charges twice this year. And Washington was
released from jail last November after serving about three years for
selling and distributing crack. Washington was charged with soliciting an
officer for prostitution in April, but that charge was dismissed.

Wray said officers only request searches when they suspect illegal activity
is going on. That suspicion can come from an informant's tip, complaints
from neighbors or something an officer sees himself.

"In each of those times, you have a responsibility to see what's up," Wray
said.

Wray said people can abuse this system, pointing to times when people have
called police on people they simply don't like, and that the department is
always working to strike a balance between protecting people's right to
privacy and fighting crime.

"We knock on a lot of doors, and none of that is fishing," Wray said.
"We're acting on some information we have. We have to use our judgment
based on that information. And we realize that people like to use us, too."

Resident Kimberly Bostick signed the letter of complaint, although officers
have not requested a search of her room. Though Bostick acknowledges police
have "cleaned (the inn) up a lot," she said she is fed up with officers
questioning friends who stop by for visits.

"I know they need to be here," said Bostick, who lives in a single room
with her children, ages 21/2 and 8 months. "But when the people they stop
and question are not the people doing something wrong, it makes me mad."