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Indian motels and the ‘Untouchables’ of Los Angeles

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A photo showing 26-year-old Jascent-Jamal Lee, known as “Shakespeare,” was provided by his friend Paul Goldstein. (169336)

Exactly 53 days ago, a 26-year-old  African American male was shot dead in Venice. According to authorities, the shooting was supposedly a result of the owner of the Cadillac Hotel, Sris Sinnathamby, 54, hiring an Hispanic gang member to kill Jascent-Jamal Lee Warren (aka Shakespeare), a homeless musician. Sinnathamby was arrested shortly afterwards for the shooting.

The LAPD-FBI Fugitive Task Force also arrested suspected shooter Francisco Cardenaz Guzman, 28, on Oct. 5 in Los Angeles, said Lt. John Radtke of the LAPD’s West Homicide Bureau.

Authorities also believe the reason for the shooting was to send a warning to other homeless individuals that this hotel (Cadillac) would not allow loitering or homeless camps in the immediate area. A second individual was wounded but survived. By law throughout Los Angeles, the homeless are allowed to sleep on the streets until 6 a.m.

According to blogger Clay Claiborne (Linux Beach), who interviewed the surviving homeless victim, Shakespeare had been trying to make peace between the hotel owner and the homeless on the day of the shooting.

According to locals, tension between the Venice business community and the local homeless community has been running high all year. So far this year, two homeless men have been fatally shot by police responding to disturbances at local businesses, and a homeless man was arrested for allegedly biting off the fingertip of the owner of the Cow’s End Cafe in Marina del Rey, who was trying to eject him from the eatery. The bite alledgedly exposed the bone.

According to Claiborne, who is also a support engineer at Linux and a resident of the area, “Venice is undergoing a major crisis of gentrification, especially since Google moved across the street from me and the area started calling itself ‘Silicon Beach.’ The only reason I remain one of the few housed Black men in Venice is that I had the skills to join the ‘Silicon Beach’ crowd. Needless to say, this gentrification has been accompanied by a vicious campaign to force the homeless out of Venice. One of the areas of the greatest controversy has been the neighborhood near the Cadillac Hotel,” said Claiborn who lives in an apartment across from the hotel.

Deputy District Attorney Kristin Trutanich informed the media that Sinnathamby “aided, abetted and directed” the shooting, even if he didn’t pull the trigger. Sinnathamby pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder, and L.A. County Superior Court Judge Keith Schwartz set bail at $5 million.

Four weeks ago Our Weekly received a phone call from a reader after the shooting, who had just attended a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Venice, and the main focus of the demonstration was to demand an investigation into the murder of Jascent-Jamal Lee Warren.

The request was made after the reader witnessed numerous individuals who were also demonstration participants complain about how local motels in South Los Angeles were being bought up by South Asian immigrants (primarily Indians and Sri Lankans) and how the new owners exploited Black neighborhoods and their residents by allowing their motels to become gathering points for drug addicts, prostitutes, and crime. She also informed OW that this was not new to her; she has witnessed irresponsible and reckless behavior at a motel near her house on 35th Street and Western Avenue, that belonged to individuals from Sri Lanka.

The owner of the Cadillac Hotel has a surname with origins from Sri Lanka. But the majority of hotels in Southern California can be linked to a powerful Indian family known as the Patels. According to a recent article in the Smithsonian magazine, they (Patels) all come from the same region in India known as Gujarat and they have a pattern of motel ownership in American inner cities. These families from Gujarat often start with a smaller, inexpensive motel in a minority neighborhood and when they are ready to upgrade to a larger facility, there is a family member in India waiting to take over the old one, according to the article. In the hotel community, the Indians call it “changing of the guard.”

In this case, the Cadillac Hotel was in a upscale neighborhood and served as a popular spot for visiting tourists, and the individuals it catered to where being driven off by the homeless who had set up a homeless encampment near the hotel. This apparently impeded revenue, according to a Cadillac Hotel employee who wished to remain anonymous.

During Our Weekly’s initial survey, we found that the homeless individuals targeted and allegedly despised in Venice by hotel owner Sinnathamby were originally a source of revenue for him and other newly migrated Southeast Asians hotel/motel owners. We found the homeless provided necessary revenue in South Los Angeles through room rental or paying to take a shower. Some also were able to buy drug paraphernalia at the motels.

In a phone interview, I informed Indian American businessman Balu Patel, who owns the Crenshaw Inn Motel in South Los Angeles, that many of these motel locations were known as crime centers by the Los Angeles Police Department.

He responded that Indian owners refer to them as mom-and-pop outfits in the boondocks and not crime centers.

“We do everything we can do to assist the LAPD in fighting crime,” he said. Patel claimed that the sale of drug paraphernalia and other illegal items, may be done by employees hired by the owners. He informed me he would see to it that the sales of contraband would be investigated, if I provided him addresses of suspected locations.

The motels described to Patel are in areas of the city where neighbors and activists believe motels facilitate prostitution, sex trafficking, as well as the sale of drug paraphernalia (steel wool, crack pipes), and prescription medication.

The OW reader who requested this investigation believes that “their actions (Indian motel owners) in South Los Angeles of selling items that assist in drug abuse and prostitution, show they undervalue Black people. This she believes is why “they had Shakespeare murdered.” She thinks he was impacting their cash flow because he and the other homeless individuals chased away tourists, and they did not care about taking his life.

The majority of motels in the South Los Angeles were more than likely registered as Limited Liability Corporations, which means it’s hard to easily determine the owners. OW conducted drive-by surveillance of the establishments, and it appeared that every South Los Angeles motel had on grounds a South Asian of either Indian or Sri Lankan heritage as a person of authority in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods within a 10-mile radius.

In the beginning of this investigation, several individuals were interviewed at Tams Burgers located on the corner of Central Avenue and 51st Street, in an attempt to connect with patrons of the Bronco Motel, which is located next door.

Tams appears to be a day time hang-out area where many of the locals who frequent the Bronco motel to drink coffee, eat burgers and do business transactions of all kinds. There are cars parked along the northern wall with individuals inside selling single cigarettes, bootlegged DVDs, and numerous other staples.

Alonzo Jones, a long-time patron of Tams and community observer, believes the Indians purchased the motel years ago in hopes of running a successful business though not necessarily a honest business.

“I thought they were African Americans, when I first got a glimpse of them from a distance. Their skin tone allowed them to blend in with us and not stick out like a Korean. It wasn’t until one morning one of the apparent owners came outside with his hat, that he discovered differently,” Jones said reference to a hat is actually a turban.)

Once Jones realized they were immigrants, he believed initially that the Indians purchased the motels based on the prostitution industry on Central and Western avenues. “If you think about it, these places are a gold mine, when the street walkers are busy. One attractive hooker may turn 10 tricks in a day. That’s 10 rentals hourly or at the daily rate; regardless it’s decent money. “

Jones believes the motels started to cater to crack addicts when the LAPD vice squad started arresting all the hookers.

He described how back in the day you could go there and if they were familiar with you, buy crack pipes, steel wool for your pipe, condoms, lighters, sexual enhancements; if they really knew you good, you could get the real thing (actual drugs).

Jones added, “Hookers seemed to have some type of agreement where they have reserved rooms.

“I remember a hooker known as ‘Puddin’ stabbing a Hispanic man there. I believe she was working with the owner’s son. I believe the stabbing was deemed self defense. There was also an older gentleman with a large gray Afro who worked in the front office years for the owners and would sell Oxycodone and other prescription medication.”

The owners of the Bronco Motel refused OW’s request for an interview.

The Bronco Motel on Central Avenue isn’t unique in selling drug paraphernalia; another establishment on South Main Street, just north of Manchester Avenue, was creative in enabling access to paraphernalia when needed and was able to quickly remove the items in case the LAPD stopped by to check the desk register, according to a former employee at one of the local motels.

A visit revealed that when the outdoor registration door was open, a bulletin board hung inside and pinned to it were crack pipes, steel wool, and lighters.

However, such precautions may no longer be necessary due to a recent Supreme Court ruling where justices struck down a Los Angeles ordinance last July that allowed police to inspect hotel/motel guest records on demand. The justices voted 5-4 to reject the city’s argument that the measure was needed to help fight prostitution, drug trafficking and illegal gambling at budget hotels and motels.

The Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA), a organization consisting of mostly Indian and Sri Lankan hotel/motel owners, was reportedly overjoyed by the Supreme Court ruling in a case that was the result of a lawsuite—the City of Los Angeles v. Patel.

Prior to the ruling, the city of Los Angeles required hotels and motels to record basic information about guests and their vehicles. Guests without reservations, those who pay in cash and those who rent a room for less than 12 hours must also present photo identification at check-in.

A brief filed by several California state law enforcement associations argued that frequent inspection of motel registries by law enforcement impedes human trafficking and prostitution and the sale of items deemed drug paraphernalia.

Ownership of local motels in South Los Angeles  South Asian immigrants is not new. In fact, research determined that the majority of these motels in South Los Angeles and owned by immigrants may have had direct sponsorship by the federal government, according to Amir Durrani Gabbi, Ph.D., of the Department of Consumer and Family Science at California State University Long Beach.

Gabbi explained that Indian and Sri Lankan immigrants are offered the opportunity by the United States government to get green cards in return for putting up as little as $40,000 to start and run a business that would theoretically generate jobs in depressed communities.

Gabbi believes South Los Angeles fits the criteria as an ideal geographical location for sponsorship because it was supposed to generate commerce to that area by helping immigrants start a business. However, the challenge with sponsored motel businesses in low-income areas are they bring more negative activity to the community than positive, Gabbi said. He noted that most of the motel staff are family members of the owners, who work and live on the premises. Consequently, there are few job slots for community residents.

Gabbi also believes motels in high-crime areas are problem magnets in general.

The U.S. visa program Gabbi is referring to is officially known as EB-5, and according to a recent report from the Brookings Institute, the investor immigrant visa (EB-5) was created by Congress in 1990 but has expanded rapidly in the last few years. More than 6,600 visas were issued under this program in 2012.

Gabbi said the immigrants that take advantage of the EB-5 are often college-educated Hindus who left Southeast Asia in search of better opportunities. He blieves their religion, Hinduism, makes the motel industry ideal in part because it allows them to employ family members. Owning restauants, another choice many immigrants utilize, wasn’t popular for these individuals, because they were uncomfortable handling meat due to their religious beliefs.

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