Incident at Economy Inn hotel ends peacefully, but with a strange twist

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[A stand-off at the Economy Inn hotel on Poplar Street ended peacefully, but not without a strange twist.

The subjects in the hotel room, one male and one female were turned loose by a flabbergasted Harrisburg Police Department after being taken into custody.

"It was an ignorant attempt by another law enforcement agency," Chief Bob Smith said.

The HPD received a "detain" order on the teletype by order of a law enforcement agency in Yell County, Ark., Smith said. The subjects were wanted on suspicion of armed robbery of another person.

Officers learned the people were in the Economy Inn hotel and began setting up a perimeter about 1:45 p.m. Poplar Street was closed and people in nearby hotel rooms were evacuated as a safety precaution.

The State Police arrived on scene before 2 p.m. and provided manpower

and traffic assistance. Traffic was rerouted at Hardee's and at the ROC station on Poplar Street.

Police with assault weapons waited outside the hotel room. It began storming about 2:30 p.m. The people came out of the hotel room about 30 minutes later and surrendered, Smith said.

Meanwhile, Smith had been on the phone to Arkansas to track down the nature of the warrant and learned no warrants were issued. Once the suspect was in custody, Smith called again and found the Arkansas authorities did not want the two detained. The people were released at the scene, Smith said.

A red vehicle with Arkansas plates could be seen on the hotel parking lot during the operation.

Though the subjects ended up not going to jail, the operation was a success from a tactical standpoint, Smith said.

"Everything went perfectly according to plan, and there were no problems," Smith said.

"We conducted this operation with safety of our citizens at the top most priority, we are sorry if we inconvenienced motorist through Harrisburg by closing Poplar Street," Smith said. "The situation was resolved where no one was hurt."

Poplar Street was closed for about an hour.

Harrisburg Police officers planned to meet at Smith's office after the incident to discuss what happened, Smith said. An operation such as this is risky, and officers get extremely frustrated when they've taken risks for what amounts to no good reason.