Tough Laws, Enforcement : Stanton Moves Against ‘Aggressive’ Prostitutes

A bold, big-city breed of prostitute has invaded the streets of this small Orange County community, which is fighting back with emergency ordinances and beefed-up police patrols.

Even a gas station, tired of hookers turning 15-minute tricks in the restrooms, has joined in the battle by locking its toilet.

“These women are very aggressive,” Police Chief Bob Eason said. “They go after customers in the street, they get into cars uninvited and they take off part of their clothes.”

Police believe the recent crackdowns on hookers in Los Angeles and neighboring cities of Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove have driven the new group of hookers to Stanton.

The most recent step to combat the problem was taken Sept. 24, when the City Council unanimously voted to adopt an ordinance prohibiting motels from renting a room to the same person more than once in a 24-hour period.

First-of-Kind Law

The ordinance, effective immediately, is the first of its kind among major Orange County cities. Neither Santa Ana nor Anaheim have such a law, police in both cities said.

Eason said the city has had a problem with prostitutes strolling Beach Boulevard since 1980, but a new, bolder streetwalker wearing garish clothes and aggressively soliciting customers has come to the city in the last six months.

Residents of the most active area on Beach Boulevard near Orangewood have complained to police and city officials that streetwalkers wearing hot pants and bikini tops, blatantly advertising sex, should not be allowed to operate near schools and churches.

More than 60 people packed the council chambers when the ordinance was passed, and dozens have picketed an adult bookstore on Beach Boulevard they believe has contributed to the problem.

“The prostitutes are highly visible,” Mayor Jean Siriani complained.

“One lady went to the Alpha Beta and a man approached her--I guess he thought she was a prostitute--and asked her if she wanted to have some fun,” Siriani said.

“She was aghast,” the mayor said. “She was just humiliated.”

In response to the growing problem, the Police Department, which has only a dozen or so officers to patrol the city of 27,000, has beefed up its vice detail.

The department is proud of its progress: 141 prostitutes and their customers were arrested in the past month, Easons said.

Eason said as many as 50 streetwalkers will dot the boulevard at one time, and about 660 are known to frequent the west county area.

Eason said the new ordinance prohibiting repeated rentals of motel rooms--a law he suggested--should force prostitutes to do more of their soliciting on the streets, where they are easier to catch.

Half Work in Cars

About half of the prostitutes perform their sex acts with customers in cars, and the remaining half work out of motel rooms or in their own rooms, police believe.

A least a few performed sex in the restrooms of the Insta-Tune service station on the corner of Beach and Orangewood, but Manager Lance Freidman said he put a stop to that.

“I just put an out-of-order sign on the restroom doors and they don’t come in and ask for the key,” he said. Friedman estimated that prostitutes used the bathrooms about four times a day.

The mayor is optimistic that the new ordinance and renewed police efforts will eventually drive the prostitutes out of Stanton.

“We think that once the word gets around that we got a special task force and the officers are arresting the prostitutes and their customers, they’re move on to another city,” Siriani said.

“I don’t know why they picked us,” she said. “Maybe they thought a little city like Stanton wouldn’t do anything.”