Erotica Publisher in Santa Clarita Operates Legally, Police Say

A vice officer with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday that a company that prints sexually explicit material in the Santa Clarita Valley is operating legally and cannot be shut down, despite protests from residents who want to drive the firm away.

“While they do print explicit material, they do not print materials that courts have held are obscene,” Lt. Dennis Slocumb said.

The vice unit inspected London Press, in the Valencia Industrial Center, in July shortly after the press moved to the Santa Clarita Valley from North Hollywood, where it had operated for 28 years. Law enforcement officers say London Press is one of the largest producers of sexually explicit material in California.

This month, three residents, who earlier this year helped gather more than 800 signatures on petitions opposing the printer, asked the Santa Clarita Valley sheriff’s station to investigate.

The request was referred to Slocumb’s vice unit, where it was received Tuesday. Slocumb said the department saw no reason to alter its earlier assessment of the printer’s operations.

Slocumb said London Press officials cooperated when a vice officer asked to inspect the plant in the summer. The officer did not have a warrant and could have been turned away, he said.

London Press officials did not return phone calls Tuesday. Slocumb said the company prints many types of publications, not just erotica, and carefully disposes of sexually explicit materials to ensure they are not found by youngsters rummaging through trash bins.

Slocumb said the company does not stage or photograph erotic scenes. He said the firm did not violate obscenity statutes, which prohibit certain types of hard-core sex scenes, while operating in North Hollywood.

The residents who led the petition drive said they still hoped to drive the company out of the conservative Santa Clarita Valley. “Community influence can do a lot,” Laurie Winkle said.

Winkle said she and other neighborhood activists started a successful petition drive five years ago that persuaded Liquor Barn, a large discount liquor retail chain, not to open a store in a Valencia shopping center because it was near five schools.

Marilyn Blanken said she and other Santa Clarita residents realize that London Press only prints the erotic material and that the community has no X-rated bookstores where it could be sold. But the residents are concerned about the printer’s impact on society as a whole. “We should be concerned about all citizens, not just our own community,” she said.

“I’m very much in favor of freedom of the press,” Blanken said. But pornography should be curtailed, she said, because it can produce criminal behavior that can harm others.