Broken Arrow police report big drop in hotel-related calls after Safe Hotels initiative

Chief Lance Arnold told the council the Safe Hotels initiative has reduced hotel-related police calls across the city. He said the city uses a benchmark of 0.6 applicable police calls per room (calls that are police-related, excluding alarms and non-police incidents) to assess hotels and that, in the reference year before the ordinance, eight of 14 hotels exceeded that threshold.

"We want less than one call per room," Chief Arnold said. "In the reference year, one hotel was at 4.1 calls per room; in the most recent year, that same property was at 0.7. Overall, there has been a decrease of 656 significant police calls for service during those two years." He credited cooperation from ownership and management at problem properties, targeted reinspections, and better interdepartmental communication for the decline.

A council member praised the outreach to hoteliers and said the reductions show the program is working while staff acknowledged remaining strains on fire and code enforcement for reinspections. City staff noted two hotels are planning a combined $1.2 million renovation and rebranding that staff expect will further reduce calls.

The chief and staff emphasized that the city calculates the ratio by removing non-police calls (medical, officer-initiated checks, alarms) and dividing the remaining applicable calls by room count to ensure fairness between small and large hotels. They said some smaller hotels remain slightly above the 0.6 benchmark and that staff will continue monitoring and working with management to improve outcomes.