High-crime motels are costing Raleigh taxpayers. The city’s response? Not much.
A heroin addict, Nadia Brichikov would sometimes hole up at the Knights Inn on New Bern Avenue, a low-cost Raleigh motel where she could feed her habit.
One Saturday night, she reunited with her estranged husband and fellow addict Mark Brichikov, who beat her so badly he broke almost every bone in her face, leaving her to die bleeding on the floor of room 241. As he fled at 4 a.m., he left their door wide open with the lights turned on.
Strangers passed the room, witnessing the woman’s final breaths, but nobody called police.
Brichikov’s murder highlights a persistent problem with violence, drugs and prostitution at Raleigh’s low-budget motels, most of them clustered around New Bern Avenue and Capital Boulevard, where rooms cost as little as $57 a night.
Cities nationwide struggle to keep cheap motels from turning into crime centers. But while others have fought back with lawsuits and other tools to make owners accountable, Raleigh has not.
In a two-month investigation, The News & Observer found eight motels that have averaged more than one 911 call a day since 2015.
The Knights Inn, now known as Budgetel, has logged 4,806 calls in that time, including near-daily reports of assault, drug deals and prostitution, according to reports from Raleigh police.
In the last half of 2019, the motel had five reported overdoses.
On Jan. 14, police responded to a “code blue” on the first floor, which turned out to be fatal. Residents there said it, too, was an overdose.
| Motel | Address (Raleigh, N.C.) | 911 calls since 2015 | Arrests since 2015 |
| Budgetel Inn & Suites | 3804 New Bern Ave. | 4,806 | 420 |
| Wake Inn | 3120 New Bern Ave. | 3,567 | 468 |
| Motel 6 | 2641 Appliance Court | 2,885 | 196 |
| Super 8 | 3801 Capital Boulevard | 2,811 | 253 |
| Microtel | 1209 Plainview Drive | 2,445 | 245 |
| Raleigh Inn | 3520 Maitland Drive | 2,310 | 155 |
| City Studios Inn & Suites | 2910 Capital Boulevard | 2,235 | 233 (drop in arrests midway through 2017) |
| Days Inn | 3901 S. Wilmington St. | 2,196 | 185 |
These motel names and addresses turn up frequently in crime reports and murder trials.
▪ Earlier in January, Raleigh police charged a 20-year-old woman with keeping a teenage girl for prostitution at the Days Inn on South Wilmington Street. It was her second arrest for human trafficking.
▪ Also in January 2019, a man died of stab wounds he got outside the Wake Inn on New Bern Avenue after staggering into the lobby, smearing blood on the window and begging for an ambulance.
▪ In October 2019, a member of a Raleigh Bloods gang testified that he kept a room at the Raleigh Inn on Maitland Drive, where he sold drugs and ran prostitutes.
Every 911 call costs $7.39
The torrent of motel crime takes a financial and social toll on Raleigh.
The Raleigh-Wake Emergency Communications Center estimates it costs $7.39 just to answer and dispatch a 911 call. That would put the price tag on simply responding to crime at these eight motels at more than $170,000 for the last five years.
Add to that the cost of each police officer, whose starting pay in Raleigh is $42,300, or roughly $20 an hour. If one officer spends one hour on each of these 911 calls, that’s $465,000.
The hotels contribute considerable dollars in property taxes. The Budgetel, for example, has paid more than $40,000 to Raleigh and Wake County in the last two years, according to tax records. Hotels also generate sales, a portion of which come back to the county and occupancy taxes.
But so far, the city has taken no action against these motels.
Raleigh has the power to declare a business a “nuisance property” if the weeds grow too high or the parking lot fills up with junked cars. Such businesses can be shut down for violating fire or building codes, or posing a safety hazard. But punishing a motel for crime committed behind its doors requires filing a lawsuit under a state statute 19-1, the section titled “offenses against public morals.”
Raleigh has not filed such a lawsuit since 2010, when it helped close the New Bern Avenue night club known as Black Tie — the scene of two shootings and five stabbings in 2009 and 2010.
By contrast, Jacksonville, N.C., officials sued the Red Carpet Inn over crimes committed there, according to The Daily News. In September, a Superior Court judge ordered it to halt all criminal activity on the property, saying it had “consistently drained law enforcement resources, negatively impacted the community, and fostered criminal behavior by creating a refuge for nefarious activity.”
The hotel closed in November after a fire broke out during required repairs.
“It’s a lot of drugs”
Crystal Bagwell moved into the Budgetel four months ago, along her husband and three children, the youngest of whom is 4. They share a two-bed room on the first floor, packed inside for $65 a night.
Low-budget motels present a last-ditch option for families like hers, she said, because it is easier to pay the nightly bill than save up a month’s rent, a security deposit and utility fees for a house. In their former house in Raleigh’s Carolina Pines neighborhood, the rent was $1,300 a month.
Bagwell used to service cellular towers until she fell from 32 feet and permanently hurt her back, she said. She opted out of workers compensation, she said, and chose disability checks instead. When those temporarily stopped — she cited bureaucracy as the reason — she said she lost the rental house and now waits for her name to move up on a waiting list for assistance through Oak City Cares, a Raleigh nonprofit.
She figures the Budgetel will be home for another two months.
“It’s hard,” she said. “You can’t cook. You can’t let your kids out. It’s a lot of drugs.”
For the most part, the motels are nondescript from the outside. Workers sweep the parking lots, picking up litter before it has the chance to attract notice.
In the December murder trial for Nadia Brichikov’s killer, Raleigh police described the Budgetel staff as cooperative on their daily visits to the property.
“All the officers have my number,” said Raviraj Viradiya, who owns the Budgetel. He said he leases the Microtel across the street and lives down New Bern Avenue at the Wake Inn.
A single-bed room at the Budgetel cost $57 when The News & Observer rented a room in January to gather information for this article. Many past customers rant about conditions in their one-star Google reviews.
The tiny bathroom had hand prints on the door and a small hole in the wall, and the tub had what appeared to be paint or foam sealant staining its surface. The bedroom walls showed scrapes, but the linens and floors were clean. No bedbugs could be seen during the day.
Cars pulled up in the parking lot outside, rolled their windows down a crack for a quick conversation, then drove off. Mothers carried strollers and baby carriers up the stairs, and preschool-age kids played on the same balconies where women sat drinking beer out of clear plastic cups.
A preteen boy emerged from one of the second-floor rooms to ask, “You know what’s this Friday? World War III. Donald Trump killed Iran’s president. So you better be ready.”
Downstairs, Baggett said her 12-year-old daughter stays with her sister rather than live at the motel. “She won’t stay here,” she said. “She gets depressed. You can’t keep a 12-year-old locked up in her room.”
In the lobby, the clerk and the guests checking in can see scenes from 64 security cameras positioned around the property — proof, Viradiya says, that he’s trying to curb the crime. One of those cameras filmed Brichikov’s death and became evidence in her husband’s trial.
The motel also added a tall chain-link fence at the rear of the Budgetel, helping to separate guests from the streets that surround them. Viradiya said he keeps a list of roughly 400 people he has “trespassed” from the property.
“If my staff sees something that is going wrong, we call the police,” he said. “We can issue them a trespass so they cannot come back. But they keep coming back.”
On the short residential street behind the Budgetel and Microtel, Oswaldo Lopez appreciates the fence, at least. From his porch on a weekday afternoon, he can see the scene change from mothers with strollers to young men with guns, and the small barrier keeps the violence at bay.
“You can hear gunshots,” said Lopez, a heating and air-conditioner technician. He shrugged. “But it’s every day.”
Viradiya said he has considered placing security on the property, but he said off-duty Raleigh police officers cost $40 an hour and the city recommends employing two at a time. (On its website, Raleigh police say the rate is $35.)
Either way, Viradiya said he can’t afford such measures.
“That’s more than $1,600 a day if you count two security officers for 24 hours,” he said. “I don’t make that much.”
At the City Studios on Capital Boulevard, the nightly rate was $49 until owner Pranay Parekh got a loan to renovate and temporarily closed the motel. Parekh, who also owns the Raleigh Inn on Maitland Drive, said his biggest problem came from tenants splitting the bill and packing people into two double beds and a bathroom built for one.
“Even if it was cheap,” he said. “They would try to split the room.”
So City Studios outlawed guests, he said, hiring private security at $16 an hour and having them police the people coming and going.
Now, Parekh says he plans a different strategy when he reopens:
Charge more money and attract a better clientele.
Asking politicians for help
On New Bern Avenue, Bailey Wilkerson runs a business within sight of the Budgetel, Microtel and Raleigh Inn. For his safety, he asked that its name not be identified.
When he trims his bushes, he finds needles inside. He often sees women get into customers’ vehicles at a nearby car wash, ride along for the cleaning and then exit at the end. When The N&O visited in January, a woman knocked on the window of a reporter’s car and fled when questioned.
“We pray for rain and we pray for cold weather,” Wilkerson said. “That’s the only way the streets are more calm.”
Just before Christmas, Wilkerson found a pair of suitcases on his property. One of them contained lingerie and condoms, and the other was filled with drug overdose kit bags.
So he wrote James West, a Wake County commissioner.
“Look up the recent deaths at this hotel – 3 in the last week, another today!” Wilkerson wrote. “Do you know how many needles are found in the area business parking lots daily? It’s obscene! When are politicians really gonna care about their neighborhoods they represent?”
Reached in January, West said he had not seen the email and could not find it, but he promised to contact the owner. Wake County sheriff’s deputies do not patrol within Raleigh city limits, but the county does provide a variety of public health, family and job skill services.
Raleigh City Councilman Corey Branch said he knows the hotels well. Five of the eight fall within District C, which he represents, and residents have contacted him about the crime there.
He said he and a police captain have worked to develop a plan, but Branch said the drugs and prostitution represent more of a health issue, which needs to involve Wake County’s government.
“We’re aware of trying to work with those [motel] owners,” he said. “One of the issues is they were taking cash.”
Cash, he said, and the lack of background checks make the hotels appealing spots for criminals seeking discretion. But state law makes it hard to apply the nuisance label when a problem is localized around a few streets.
“They make laws for the whole state not just us,” Branch said. “They could, but I don’t know if we have that kind of General Assembly right now.”
Raleigh police provided the number of 911 responses but Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown did not respond to interview requests sent by email. Police spokeswoman Donna-Marie Harris offered this statement:
“The Raleigh Police Department is working with hotels throughout the city, as we do with any business, to offer guidance and information on crime prevention techniques and strategies.”
Holding motels accountable
The weapon Raleigh has to hold motels accountable for crime on the property is to file a lawsuit using North Carolina statute 19-1, which it has done only four times since 1995. The last time: in 2010 against the East Raleigh nightclub known as both Black Tie and Club Envy, the N&O has reported.
The club had racked up numerous stabbings, gunfire and weapons violations, along with a fatal shooting in the parking lot in 2007. The City Council moved to pursue the lawsuit, and its owner, who had hired a 65-person security staff, agreed to close it through a settlement.
But in Chapter 19 lawsuits, the courts tend to focus on one incident rather than the raw number of police calls, said city spokeswoman Julia Milstead.
“If an incident is one that could happen anywhere and in spite of measures to prevent it, the court has expressed reluctance about attributing that incident to the operator,” Milstead said.
Also, she said, they want evidence the owner is culpable for his customers’ misdeeds. Another factor, Milstead said, is how much the owners cooperate with police by building fences, adding lights and cameras or taking other steps to fight crime.
But in other cities, the response is not so tentative.
The City Council in South Portland, Maine, threatened to shut down two low-budget motels in 2018 after repeated problems with prostitution and drug overdoses, The Bangor Daily News reported.
The method: declining to renew their business licenses. The South Portland City Council did ultimately grant the licenses with certain conditions to be met. City Council Members say they have not had any problems since.
Raleigh no longer requires business licenses or charges taxes for them, a practice banned by the General Assembly in 2015.
“In this instance,” South Portland Councilman Claude Morgan said in an email, “the police chief could not in good conscience sign off on the renewal because of the number of emergency calls, arrests, and first-hand observations by undercover police. We agreed on physical security measures, expanding their video coverage, quick access to records, and I believe we required the owners and staff to attend a Continuing Ed course on the duties and responsibilities of hoteliers. I’m pleased to report that these measures were successful.”
Likewise, in suburban Atlanta, the Gwinnett County solicitor’s office gave five hotel owners 30 days to fix their crime problems or risk shutdown, according to WSB-TV. Those hotels together had racked up 300 crime incidents in a year and were not cooperative, keeping broken cameras on the premises, said Curtis Clemons, lead investigator from the solicitor’s office.
One motel, the Red Roof Inn in Suwanee, met standards in two weeks, Clemons said. The others followed soon after.
“Crime has been a hotbed issue, so the media picked up on it and put the spotlight on hotel executives,” Clemons said. “They had more incentive to be cooperative.”
Could it happen here?
“I think we could, but I don’t know that we’re at that point yet,” Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin said. “I would like to see and hear from (the Raleigh Police Department) on whether the hotel owners are cooperating and learn from them what steps. At this point I’ve been mayor maybe 54, 55 days so this is something that we’ll look at and address this is a new issue as far as I’m concerned.”
Be careful out here, OK?
In December, Mark Brichikov was convicted of second-degree murder for beating his wife to death.
Jurors in that trial saw footage of Nadia Brichikov’s last moments in the open doorway of room 241. She twitched on the floor, then stopped moving, her face bloody and misshapen.
Nearly two years later, Crystal Bagwell watches her three youngest children play only a few doors down from that crime scene. And on Jan. 14, she said, she watched police cars and an ambulance arrive for another death — this one a drug overdose.
“It happens all the time here,” she said, shaking her head. “But usually on the fourth floor. My kids are asking questions. You all be careful out here, OK?”
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 11:33 AM with the headline "High-crime motels are costing Raleigh taxpayers. The city’s response? Not much.."