At a Cascade Charter Township DDA meeting, a Kent County Sheriff’s Office deputy reviewed crime and calls-for-service data for the township and for 16 local hotels along the 28th Street corridor. The deputy said hotel-related calls totaled about 1,600 over a recent two-year window and accounted for roughly 11% of the township’s call volume; when deputy-initiated traffic stops were excluded, the share fell to about 10%.

The deputy said the most common hotel-related call type was “general assistance” — for example, requests to remove nonpaying or disorderly guests — followed by contacts logged as traffic stops or suspicious situations. He cautioned that a sizable portion of calls at two high-volume properties (the Clarion and the Red Roof) reflected proactive enforcement and parking-lot contacts rather than demonstrated increases in violent crime.

“Most of the calls are general assistance — asking us to remove someone from a room or check a suspicious vehicle in the lot,” the deputy said, summarizing the types of incidents that drive counts.

Deputies also described a pair of commercial burglaries at a local liquor store attributed to suspects using a stolen vehicle; the presenter said the offenders were masked and wore hand protection, leaving few forensic traces. High-end liquor and vapes were identified as primary targets, and the sheriff’s office said the same vehicle had been used in burglaries elsewhere in the county.

Local business owners at the meeting thanked deputies for stepped-up directed patrols. One business owner said increased visibility around the Red Roof Inn had reduced on-site problems and fewer emergency calls for overdoses. Several owners reported they are upgrading lighting and storefront security after consultations with deputies.

Sheriff’s office staff pointed the DDA to Kent County’s online dashboards for detailed crime and traffic data and offered to produce customized analyses for businesses or for particular sites. They underscored that the modest year-over-year drop in hotel incidents (about a 3% decline in the presenter’s slides) could not be definitively attributed to the township’s ordinance because increased proactive patrols change how incidents are counted.

The deputy encouraged continued collaboration between businesses, township staff and law enforcement and said the office can provide data runs on request.