It may make some grudging sense not to have given the more than 100 residents of the condemned Economy Inn advance notice of the motel's closure, since police apparently wanted to have the element of surprise on their side with some of those residents they believe engage in criminal activity.
After all, the primary reasoning for the inn's court-ordered "nuisance" shuttering was that "the motel is the site of a disproportionate amount of illegal activity."
What absolutely did not make sense, however, was giving the residents only one hour to pack their stuff and get out - with no- where to go and only a city-government proffered list of alternative hotels and support services in the area.
After all, any element of surprise for possible criminals is over within minutes of a police arrival. After that, it was cruel and unusual punishment to put a one-hour deadline on poor families with few resources.
One caller asked the newspaper Friday morning: "What could you pack in an hour with the police standing over you saying, 'get out'?"
What's wrong with four hours, eight hours or three days? The Economy Inn on Brainerd Road wasn't condemned because the roof was falling in. It was condemned because police had been called there 800 times in 14 months. Hamilton County District Attorney Neal Pinkston's petition states hundreds of those calls involved crimes of narcotics violations, assaults, gunfire, thefts, robberies and attempted rape.
Apparently in those 800 calls, however, the police didn't make enough arrests - nor Pinkston enough convictions - to make the motel a safer and more law-abiding place.
The bright spot in this sad tale is that a similar debacle in 2015 - the nuisance closure of Superior Creek Lodge in East Ridge - prompted officials that time to give the Health Department and Chattanooga Neighborhood Services a day or two heads up before the anticipated evictions.
One of those groups also had the presence of mind to alert the Hamilton County school district to help families with students in public schools get extra help to stay stable in their classes. Ken Sauer, pastor of East Ridge United Methodist Church - which had helped the Superior Creek Lodge families in 2015 - said he was contacted by school resource officers.
What a sad day it is that we as a community treat one of our neighborhoods like this.
Chattanooga City Councilman Russell Gilbert plans to ask both the District Attorney's office and the Chattanooga mayor's office about the steps in this process.
"We should have had more time to place people," Gilbert said.
He's absolutely right.