In the increasing hullaballoo over McGinn vs. Mallahan, it might be easy to forget that Greg Nickels is, for the time being anyway, still the guy making and enforcing city policy, and also the guy who has to respond to residents’ gripes. For instance, despite a preponderance of criminal activity around the five hotels owned by Dean and Jill Inman, why did the city wait so long to crack down on the owners of those problem hotels up Fremont way? During his monthly sit-down on the Seattle Channel Wednesday, Nickels answered thusly: “Well I don’t think it’s a matter of waiting to crack down on them. Due process, which is part of our legal system, requires us to go through a significant amount of work to make the case.” Reasonable people can disagree over whether the city’s action constitutes a “crackdown,” and also why a guy who is supposedly a bully would pull that punch. Meanwhile, the Inmans are still facing 152 criminal charges for various tax violations as the city works to pull their business license.