Santee Official Charged With Soliciting

Councilman Gerry Solomon, who built a political career defending family values and led the campaign to ban adult entertainment in this East County community, was arrested last week and cited for soliciting a lewd act from an undercover police officer.

His ensnarement in one of the La Mesa Police Department’s periodic attacks on prostitution along El Cajon Boulevard has Santee in an uproar.

Close associates said Solomon, married and the father of two children, has told them the arrest resulted from a “misunderstanding.” His attorney, Ronald Frant, said neither he nor Solomon would comment on details of the incident.

“Gerry is a very aggressive, conscientious, hard-working individual who strongly believes in his political profession and the good he can do for his community,” Frant said. “He’s hell-bent and determined to continue doing the good job he always has done.”

Nonetheless, political opponents of the 31-year-old attorney were quick to brand him a hypocrite, though even Solomon’s harshest critics said the incident was an utter shock.

Community activists who have worked with Solomon, including several ministers, cautiously insist that he should be presumed innocent until the misdemeanor charge can wend its way through the courts.

Yet even some of Solomon’s supporters say the leap to judgment has begun in Santee, a city of about 50,000, and that the damage to Solomon’s political base and aspirations already has been done.

“You might be able to do this in downtown San Diego and get away with it,” said Roy Woodward, a former councilman who, like Solomon, was an unsuccessful candidate for mayor last year. “But I don’t think you can do it in a small town like La Mesa or El Cajon or Santee. Here, when you get a speeding ticket, you’re considered guilty by the people.”

According to La Mesa police, what Solomon did Friday afternoon at El Cajon Boulevard and Williamsburg Lane was walk up to a woman dressed in a sweat shirt and blue jeans and solicit a lewd act.

The woman was a police officer wearing a microphone that transmitted the conversation to a tape recorder in a police van nearby, Lt. Wayne Beatty said. Nine other men were arrested for soliciting prostitution or lewd acts during the 3 1/2-hour sweep, he said.

“We had no idea who he was,” Beatty said. “We didn’t know he was a city councilman.”

An East County newspaper quickly took note of the arrest, however, and the politically alert segments of Santee have been abuzz ever since.

“We can’t believe it,” said Steve Balkam, a spokesman for the Santee Mobilehome Owners Group, which has been allied with Solomon since his election to the City Council in 1982. “I’m completely perplexed myself. I can’t understand it.”

Robby Kelly, pastor of the Pure Heart Baptist Church and a manager of some of Solomon’s political campaigns, said he had talked with Solomon several times since the arrest. “All he’s doing now is trying to figure out where he is,” Kelly said. “This is something that’s, in the least, very damaging.”

Like others who have been in touch with Solomon, Kelly said the councilman had shared no details about his encounter with the La Mesa police. But Kelly said he would stand by Solomon as the facts emerged.

“If we’re going to abandon ship at the time of a person’s need, who’s the real hypocrite?” he asked.

Not everyone in Santee is showing such patience. “People are saying that where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” said Dorman Owens, pastor of the Bible Missionary Fellowship. “If indeed it is true, he’s the worst kind of hypocrite, because he’s promoting himself to be some kind of moral character.”

Solomon was among the council’s most outspoken critics of efforts by the operators of a Mission Valley topless bar to gain a permit to establish a similar establishment in Santee. He continued to favor a ban on such establishments after the council voted in April to establish an adult entertainment zone on the city’s industrial east side.

Even then, some residents were in disagreement with Solomon over tactics in the struggle to erect higher barriers to topless dancing and other adult entertainment. Santee resident Karin Packer said Solomon had jeopardized her petition drive for a vote on a prohibition of such activities by urging ministers to promote a petition of their own.

Packer takes her politics seriously, and she acknowledges taking some pleasure in Solomon’s predicament. “I have to admit it made my day when I saw it, because the man gave me a lot of headaches with other issues,” she said. “If it was my husband, he’d really have to come up with some good explanations to convince me.”

Frant said Solomon does not need to prove to anyone his commitment to the good of Santee. He has been active in establishing alcoholism and child abuse programs, the lawyer said.

Added Kelly, “He has been nothing but a very strong supporter for families and helping the downtrodden in any way he can.”

Larry Darby, pastor of Santee’s Church of the Nazarene, said Solomon’s arrest could advance the cause of propriety and clean living in the city. Many ministers, while urging congregants to give Solomon the benefit of the doubt, are likely “to use this as gasoline for the fire to ban adult entertainment,” he said.