‘Get right.’ Bibb DA seeking order to fight crime in Macon motels after multiple incidents
Police crackdowns at more than half a dozen discount motels around the Interstate 475 interchange at Eisenhower Parkway have in recent months made very public the news that criminal activity is a problem in one of Macon’s most-traveled corridors.
The area is especially visible to people who wheel in off a freeway that links the main north-south artery through Georgia.
“The welcome mat needs to say ‘Welcome,’ not ‘Beware,’” Bibb County District Attorney David Cooke said Tuesday.
The DA’s remarks came at a news conference where he announced efforts to curtail incidents of alleged theft, robbery, drug dealing, gunfire and human trafficking that he described as “public nuisances” at three of the motels there.
Civil complaints filed by Cooke’s office on Monday seek to have a court order that the motels, as he put it in simplest terms, “get right or a judge can shut you down.”
Cooke said the motels in question — the America’s Best Value Inn & Suites across from Middle Georgia State University on Romeiser Road, the similarly named America’s Best Inn and Suites across the freeway on Harrison Road and the EconoLodge Inn & Suites on Chambers Road — “are well-known centers of frequent criminal activity.”
His office’s complaints contend that the motels’ operators have “allowed, participated in and condoned” their businesses being “an annoyance to the public” and that they are also “injurious” to “public health or safety.”
A woman was shot to death last month at the EconoLodge.
In January, sheriff’s officials announced a monthslong sting that netted some two dozen arrests at eight of the area’s motels, many of which involved drug trafficking.
One cop referred to some of the inns as “Walmarts for drugs.”
In all, more than $325,000 worth of drugs were seized.
Cooke cited a total of 46 incidents in which the police were called to the three motels in his civil complaints.
“We’re asking the judge to make them act better, whatever that takes,” he said. “And the judge has broad powers in a case like this to make a nuisance stop. I mean, he can basically shut them down, he can make them take whatever action is necessary to stop this behavior.”
Cooke said the trouble stirred up at the motels “got to the point where enough is enough, and we’re not gonna allow anyone to profit off criminal behavior. ... We’re gonna do whatever it takes to bring these owners in line. ... It’s more than a warning. It’s an accounting.”
He said that well before last month’s slaying of a woman at the EconoLodge that the authorities had been looking into curbing the area’s problems.
“This isn’t the kind of suit that we bring every day,” Cooke said, adding that he “saw this (as) a remedy that we could use.”
He also mentioned the motel district and its allure to travelers.
“Imagine if you’re driving from Florida on your way back to Atlanta, or if you’re coming to visit loved ones here in Macon, and you see a good deal on a hotel and you book it and then you find it’s just a haven for crime,” Cooke said. “People should not have to worry about getting a safe night’s sleep.”
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 2:41 PM.