‘Holy crap’: Numbers of police calls to hotels west of Fort Worth suggest big problems

On the floor in Charlotte Smith’s hotel room are terracotta pots of cactus near the door. More plants fill the top of the dresser by the TV.

When her Fort Worth apartment evicted her last year, these were the only plants from her vast collection she could bring to her new home, the Red Roof Inn in White Settlement. She cried while dumping the others in the trash.

These days, though, it’s not her plants that keep her up at night. Smith worries most about being robbed, shot or worse by criminals who menace the hotel property.

White Settlement has a problem with crime clustered around several aging hotels and motels — crime that often spills out into surrounding neighborhoods and west Fort Worth. Data shows that eight lodging properties near Interstate 30 and West Loop 820 South have had nearly 3,000 calls to police since January 2021.

The assaults, rapes, burglaries, drug deals, stabbings, overdoses and shootings not only make it dangerous for visitors staying at the hotels. They make it dangerous for the increasing number of families who live at these low-budget hotels, because it’s the only option they have other than the streets.

Police in White Settlement are trying to do something about it. The department began a crackdown on hotels, motels and extended stays this spring, even as some of the properties’ managers don’t entirely agree that the problem is as bad as police say. The crackdown includes a task force that will target everything from police patrols to code enforcement.

Police Chief Christopher Cook describes one incident about his officers trying to bust drug deals at a Motel 6. The confrontation led to a 100-mph chase down the interstate and a blast through a red light.

A perfect example, Cook says, of why the city needs to clean up these properties.

Smith hopes the crackdown will work.

She watches ambulances come and go. She’ll often see police cars sitting in the Red Roof Inn parking lot. Her daughter’s boyfriend will walk into their room sometimes and say he thinks he saw a drug deal as he was coming in.

When you’re in a situation like Smith’s, you try your best to make the current roof over your head a home.

But she stops before she gets to the finishing touches.

She can’t lay out her welcome mat outside for fear it might be stolen. She can’t hang plants on the balcony for the same reason. She hears fights in the rooms next door.

Ask her how often she feels unsafe.

“All the time,” she says.

Hotels with the most calls to police

The police chief knew some of these hotels were crime hot spots. But he didn’t know the extent of the problem until he pulled the numbers.

“I was like, ‘Holy crap,’” Cook said.

Three of those hotels pose the biggest problem, he said, and they’re all down Cherry Lane: the Studio Six extended stay, the Motel 6 and the Red Roof Inn.

But the Red Roof is by far the worst, Cook said. Here is where White Settlement police have picked up dozens of stolen cars, responded to overdoses, including one fentanyl death, Cook said.

These hotels are places where people on work trips usually stay. Cook will also tell you they’re places where people come to commit crimes.

He guesses the draw could be the low price. Some on Cook’s team have said they have made arrests on people renting rooms by the hour, a violation of city codes.

Those that rent by the hour are often the ones prostituting, committing credit card crimes or selling guns, stolen property and drugs, Cook said.

Mike Gerard, a hotel security expert with Pennsylvania-based Robson Forensics, says that tracks.

Gerard spent 26 years in law enforcement. During that time, he worked with a unit in Chicago similar to the one in White Settlement.

What Gerard sees most often through his work now is people taking advantage of motels’ price and ability to be anonymous. Hotels and motels often cater to a transient population, and when you check in, sometimes they might not require you to pay with a credit card or encourage cash payments.

Then comes the problem of hotel and motel owners not reporting crime.

“Those are all things that make it more attractive to people,” Gerard said.

The problem can only be solved with proper oversight and a willingness to address the issue on the hotel’s end. Gerard said lodging management will often make calls to police only when people won’t pay for their rooms or if they steal or break something.

What are hotels doing about crime?

When you tell Sam Patel his Studio 6 extended stay ranks among the highest in calls to police, he says he wants to see the numbers.

Do the police mean calls directly to the hotel? Do they mean traffic stops that happen to be near the hotel?

Patel doesn’t see a problem like police do, he told the Star-Telegram. He said police have not shown him the numbers or met with hotel owners, though he knows staff at the Studio 6 and neighboring Motel 6 have met to discuss security.

Patel has been manager at Studio 6 on Cherry Lane since December, and in that time he’s seen few incidents he thinks would warrant the extended stay being high on the list of police calls.

The Studio 6 attracts people who work at Lockheed Martin, and some who work at nearby restaurants. Utilities come with the room, so he understands why some would choose to live there instead of finding a permanent apartment.

There have been a few stolen cars recovered here, he said. Occasionally there is some drug use. But when that happens, the person doing it doesn’t stay much longer.

Hotel staff do spot checks to make sure whoever rented out the room is the only one inside. If Patel or another staff member sees something awry on one of their 36 security cameras, they put that customer on a “DNR list” — they won’t be able to extend their stay.

But he sees a greater need for teamwork among police and hotel owners. Patel wishes the police would have met with him personally.

Danny Patel, the manager at Motel 6, said his staff were working to alleviate the factors bringing law enforcement to the hotel. He said he does not know who’s making the high numbers of calls to police. Law enforcement will make stops at the hotel about once a week, he says.

Gida Patel, who helps run the Executive Inn, says the property has few problems mostly because it’s a non-smoking property. And when they do have issues, the police are always quick to respond.

Bhumi Jariwala has run Red Roof, the hotel with the most calls, for four to five months. She thinks their numbers are so high is because they will call for help when people won’t check out.

The hotel does not rent rooms to anyone on foot anymore. Jariwala said they often see someone experiencing homelessness renting a room and letting friends stop by to shower. She would watch as people came in by foot rolling suitcases.

The Red Roof is a family operation, Jariwala said. She said her father and brother met with White Settlement police and looked through the calls for service to the hotel.

When people say they feel unsafe at the Red Roof, Jariwala said, staff accommodates. They might offer to move that person’s room closer to the front of the building.

She feels bad about Red Roof having the most calls — she doesn’t want to overburden the White Settlement police. But Jariwala also doesn’t know how else to address the issue when problems come, and the hotel’s budget doesn’t have room to hire security.

She finds herself calling the police less.

More people living in Tarrant hotels

White Settlement is among the oldest cities in Tarrant County, and it’s a military contractor town where people come and go.

By the Red Roof, developers have tried to remove blight. A Kentucky Fried Chicken went up, as well as a McDonald’s prototype with a conveyor belt drive-thru.

Those who are staying at the Red Roof for the long haul are placed in the back of the building. Those who are there for short periods tend to stay toward the front.

On the side where long-term residents stay, grills sit outside doors. One late morning, fruit flies danced against the curtains and windows in one room.

Between Smith’s daughter’s job and her Social Security check, the pair make just enough to pay the bill to stay: $1,400 a month.

That’s about $130 more than the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Tarrant County, according to the National Low Income Housing Association.

It makes it impossible to save. The family’s past eviction history fastens the padlock.

When you make just enough to live in a hotel but not enough to get out on your own, the system deems you not poor enough. Smith receives around $23 in food stamps each month and $1,400 for Social Security.

She considers her situation homelessness, though the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development disagrees.

If someone lives in a hotel or motel and can pay for it themselves, HUD won’t consider them homeless, said Donald Whitehead, the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, D.C.

“It is a fabric of homelessness in America,” Whitehead said.

Whitehead said people will flock to hotels because housing has gotten too expensive. He said they’ll also head there because they know staying in a shelter might split up the family.

The only agency that tracks who lives in hotels is the schools, which consider students with that type of living situation homeless. White Settlement schools did not provide the Star-Telegram with a number of students who lived in hotels in their district, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

When the Star-Telegram asked the same question in 2022, a representative with White Settlement schools said there were 72 students living in hotels.

Whitehead worked with homeless families during the COVID-19 pandemic to place them in hotels to alleviate stress on shelters. He found that families there were crime targets since they were more isolated from law enforcement.

Getting out

Name a form of housing assistance and Smith has probably applied for it. But she has no mailbox, and even if she got an answer about assistance, she wouldn’t know where to look for it.

If there were a permanent home, it would be in Weatherford. Smith craves the land and space. She craves her flowers.

The only things standing in the way are being able to save enough cash for a deposit and her eviction record.

And maybe someday she’ll get out. Home to her, after all, is digging your hands in the soil.

It is planting roots deep in somewhere that’s hers. It is watching her flowers grow.