The Silver Spring Penguin

Two South Silver Spring motels have agreed to mop up the drugs, guns and illicit sex that trash their $90-per-night operations, assistant state’s attorney Maura Lynch announced Wednesday night.

Management with the Days Inn and Travelodge motels (both at 8040 13th St) is on the move to hire more security guards, roll a closed-circuit camera feed into the third police district’s station house, and keep a closer eye on who’s coming and going, Lynch told a dozen South Silver Springers during a community meeting.

It was that, or have the motel properties seized — even demolished — under the state’s nuisance abatement law. That legal nugget allows community organizations (in this case, the South Silver Spring Neighborhood Association) or the state’s attorney’s office to sue landlords or their tenants if the drug dealing gets out of hand.

And DAMN! Did it get out of hand at the Days Inn and Travelodge!

According to a stuffed, three-ring binder that Lynch shared with residents, all kinds of crazy shit was shaking on 13th Street. A guesstimated 200 pages of evidence documented drug deals, overdoses and online pimping, all leading back to motel visitors.

In one section of the binder, vivid color photos showed a topless woman folded over her knees, her face pressed into the carpeted motel-room floor, her panty-clad ass in the air. She had died at one of the motels of a heroin overdose, documents stated. The photo montage included shots of syringes and used condoms scattered around her body.

In another chapter, notes from the state’s crime lab listed evidence gathered from the motels on different occassions — sandwich bags containing a green, plant-like substance, white rocks, a soft yellow powder. The lab notes later identified the stash as marihuana (their spelling), crack cocaine and heroin. Crystal meth was mentioned in one lab report, for a little variety.

Still another chapter contained printouts of Craigslist ads showing big butts in G strings. Accompanying text described female masseurs for hire as “100 percent fuckable” without directly demanding cash for sex. However, the advertiser’s location was listed as “inn call”, which translates to “hooker”, Lynch explained.

To top it off, the ladies of ill repute weren’t ladies — they were underaged girls, Lynch said. According to her, a pimp daddy in a purple Cadillac cruised 13th Street while girls watched porn in the back seat. Later, he would send the girls into the motels to re-enact those porn scenes with johns answering the Craigslist ad. The purple Caddie has since been impounded by police, and the child-prostitution ring quashed.

New measures hammered out between police and motel management could chase away more of the criminal element, Lynch went on. Motel guests must register their rides with the front desk and rock a parking permit, or else get towed off the porous front lot. The idea is to dissuade johns and junkies from pulling a quick drug-and-dash at the motel.

The motels were also ordered to submit logs of their weekend guests, a move that came close to stomping on the Fourth Amendment, Lynch said. The family of four from Ohio probably wouldn’t raise a red flag, but the single guy visiting from Briggs Chaney Road would. In fact, almost half the motels’ visitors live within a two-mile radius of South Silver Spring, third-district police officer Joy Patil said.

“If they came from Wheaton, that was far away,” Patil quipped.

While the motels are under no deadline to bleach the place up, Lynch said the state’s attorney’s office and the PD would review the motels’ new security measures in January.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Arturo Ponciarelli.