Police Tactics Fail to Check Harbor Blvd. Prostitution

Six weeks after police launched a novel campaign to fight vice along Harbor Boulevard, Santa Ana officials say traffic congestion has been reduced but prostitution continues to flourish.

So police have mapped out a new tactic: Two-officer squads will shadow groups of suspected of being prostitutes, check for any outstanding arrest orders and generally try to persuade them to take their business elsewhere.

“If we can persuade them that they can’t make as much money here as they could in Los Angeles or somewhere else, they may leave Santa Ana,” Sgt. Bill Scheer said Wednesday.

The plan, dubbed a “tag-along” program, involves uniformed officers on foot and in squad cars. Police want to begin the program within 2 months and hope that both streetwalkers and their potential customers will be discouraged from frequenting the area.

In the current campaign, motorists are banned from stopping cars in the heart of the area affected.

The no-stopping ordinance was passed by the City Council in March, prohibiting motorists from stopping on Harbor Boulevard from Warner Avenue to 17th Street between 4 p.m. and 9 a.m. Violators are subject to a $30 fine plus a court-assessed penalty that could exceed $33.

“Those no-stopping zones are just a tool for patrol officers to ticket the girls and potential johns (customers). It’s just part of an overall program,” said Sgt. Ken Ice of the vice division. “It has not made a difference on the number of prostitutes. It doesn’t prevent johns from pulling into parking lots and talking to the girls.”

In addition to the traffic citations, officers also give a verbal warning to the prostitutes who flag down motorists. If they are stopped a second time, they are arrested.

Scheer said about 30 citations have been given and only five to 10 such arrests have been made. He said the number of citations is about what was expected but he had hoped more arrests would be made.

The ordinance has not noticeably decreased prostitution, Scheer said, adding that the program was never considered a solution.

“It was to give the patrolmen a tool to respond to calls complaining about prostitutes,” Scheer said. “Before the officer couldn’t do anything because they (the prostitutes) were not breaking the law and they were not going to solicit him.”

The idea for a no-stopping zone came from the city of San Jose, where a similar program started 7 years ago called Operation Starvation, along with stiffer court penalties, all but solved the city’s prostitution problem.

“Back then we had this 1-square-block area where there were 30 to 40 prostitutes all the time,” Vince Rogers of the San Jose Police Department said. “Now you can only find two or three a night.”

In Santa Ana, the main weapon against prostitution remains undercover investigations, according to Ice. In a push last week, police made a total 66 arrests of both prostitutes and their customers.

The only time prostitution activity was significantly reduced, according to Ice, was when the city issued notices to more than 100 known prostitutes informing them of a lawsuit that sought to have them declared a public nuisance, and banning them from Harbor Boulevard. Violators would have been subject to jailing for contempt of court and a civil fine of up to $5,000.

The lawsuit was was rejected in February by a judge who ruled that the city failed to conclusively establish that those cited by police had done anything wrong.

Despite the ultimate setback, Ice said the initial notices scared off many of the prostitutes but only for a short time.

“We’re back to ground zero now,” Ice said. “But we’re not giving up.”