HOTEL DRUG SWEEP SURPRISES DRUG TREATMENT EXPERTS

Evelyn Boyd-Young, a registered nurse who heads a substance abuse program
in a Greenwich, Conn., hospital, is used to dealing with drug issues.
But she said she'd never been suspected of potentially dealing drugs -
until Friday night, when she said a loud knock on her hotel room door awoke
her.

It wasn't room service. It was two uniformed cops and a big dog.

Boyd-Young, who is staying in an Elk Grove Village hotel with some 60 of
her colleagues for a drug treatment training convention, found herself on
the wrong end of an increasingly common practice in suburban hotels:
unannounced police drug sweeps.

Boyd-Young and others at the conference say the practice is ugly and
intrusive.

The manager of the hotel, Best Western Midway Hotel at Elk Grove, said the
practice is necessary to keep the establishment safe, and guest complaints
are rare.

The Elk Grove police Saturday said little about the incident.

"It was a scary thing to wake up to," Boyd-Young recalled. "They asked if
they could come in, and I didn't know what to do. They had a big dog in
front of me."

She said the officers told her they routinely patrol the hallways of local
hotels, with the hotel's permission, and their drug-sniffing canine had
shown an interest when they passed by her room.

The cooperative practice is common in suburban hotels, which are sometimes
used for illicit youth parties or as venues for drug deals. Charges of
possession of controlled substance with intent to deliver resulting from
such sweeps are a frequent sight in the Rolling Meadows courthouse, which
serves Cook County's Northwest suburbs.

"He said, 'If we find just a joint, we're not going to freak out, and I
said, 'Well, if you find a joint, I would freak out,' " she said, noting
that no drugs were found. "But then I thought, 'What if people who had
stayed there before had left something in the room?' "

Hotel manager Javed Akram acknowledged that such a scenario could happen,
since hotel staff don't sweep a room for drugs between guests.

"It's possible," he said. "The best thing to do in a situation like that is
to let the police figure out if the person is guilty."

Defending the random drug sweeps, which occur on most weekends, Akram said
they have been going on at the hotel for several years and have been
effective at keeping the drug scene away.

"They usually don't find anything, but we just want to keep the place
safe," he said. "When somebody checks into a room here, they won't tell us
if they have drugs."

Akram suggested that a few things may have gone wrong Friday night.

Usually, he or another manager accompanies the police to assure the guest
that the cops have the hotel's permission.

"It can be embarrassing for the guests," he said, adding that he often
apologizes to guests for the inconvenience.

But he wasn't around Friday night, and the officers weren't accompanied by
anyone from the hotel.

He also said officers are supposed to tell guests they have a right to
refuse the search.

Boyd-Young said the officers never told her that, and she phoned a formal
complaint to Elk Grove police.

Elk Grove police Sgt. Tony Konetzky, whom Boy-Young said fielded the
complaint, would not confirm that a complaint was filed or that any drug
sweeps occurred Friday night.

Konetzky did say Elk Grove officers responded to the hotel around the same
time to settle a dispute between a guest and a staff member of the hotel.
He declined to elaborate, but several of the conference organizers said
they were angered by the incident and confronted the front desk clerk. The
situation never got violent.

The conference, called "Relapse Prevention 2002," is aimed at training
professionals to help recovering addicts avoid relapsing into drug abuse.
It is sponsored by the Homewood-based Center for Applied Sciences Corp.

Terry Gorsky, company president, said the incident was a "major civil
rights violation."

Boyd-Young said her brief encounter as a drug suspect caused her to lose
sleep and her focus on the conference, which started Thursday and ended
Saturday afternoon.

"I was pretty shaken up," she said. "I had a nightmare that they came back
and tore apart my room."

Drugs: Complaints rare, manager says.