Hawthorne Police Prostitution Sting Produces 45 Arrests : Crime: Shopkeeper complaints about illicit activities along Imperial Highway near the airport prompted the crackdown.

In the latest of a series of sting operations designed to curtail prostitution and related crime along a blighted stretch of Imperial Highway, Hawthorne police on Wednesday arrested 45 men on suspicion of soliciting women for sex.

The area, which borders Los Angeles International Airport and is less than a mile from the Great Western Forum and Hollywood Park, has been a haven of prostitution and drug deals for several years, police said.

Wednesday’s sting, which used four female police officers as decoys, was the third major undercover operation of its kind since January and resulted in a record number of arrests, police said.

“It’s definitely a 365-day-a-year problem,” Hawthorne Police Sgt. John Beerling said Thursday. “(The stings) won’t eliminate prostitution, but (they) might start sending out the message that Hawthorne is not the place to be.”

The men were lured into a hotel room off Hawthorne Boulevard between noon and 9:30 p.m. by four female officers posing as prostitutes. The four were wired with hidden microphones. Two of the officers were on loan from the El Segundo and Gardena police departments because Hawthorne has a shortage of female officers trained in undercover tactics, Beerling said.

As men drove up to the undercover officers to make an offer, a video camera hidden in a van across the street recorded each exchange. The camera followed the suspects to the hotel room where a group of officers waited to arrest them. In each case, the suspect approached the undercover officer first, Beerling said.

“These guys have plenty of opportunity to back out of the deal,” Beerling said. “We wait until they come to the hotel room and are sincere (about) following through with the act before we arrest them.”

The men ranged in age from 18 to 71, and about half of them live or work in Hawthorne.

About a dozen men listed neighboring companies, such as Hughes, TRW and Northrop as their places of employment, Beerling said. Many were on their lunch breaks when they were arrested, he said.

“Only one of the men even mentioned safe sex and none had condoms in their possession,” Beerling added. All but two are married.

Police expect the city attorney’s office to file charges against the men by Friday. Upon conviction, first-time offenders face a year of probation, a $500 fine and mandatory testing for the AIDS virus, he said.

Police said two other men were arrested on suspicion of robbery after they snatched a necklace off a man walking to work at a nearby restaurant. A woman also was arrested on suspicion of prostitution after she allegedly approached a male undercover police officer, who was attached to the sting operation.

Complaints from shopkeepers along Imperial Highway--especially since the Century Freeway has been under construction--prompted the department to focus time and money on ridding the area of prostitution, Hawthorne Police Chief Stephen Port said.

“We’ve done (prostitution stings) on and off over the years, but I’ve asked the officers to plan to impact prostitution in a variety of ways during each working month,” Port said.

Ralph Heredia, who has owned R & A Liquor on Imperial Highway for the past 18 years, said he has complained several times about the drug dealers and prostitutes who frequent the street corner nearby. But, Heredia said, he has only recently noticed a change for the better.

“It was terrible. You couldn’t even walk in the street. Everyone was afraid to even park their car in the lot,” Heredia, 57, said. “Not because of the prostitutes, but because of the people hanging around them. But since they picked up the prostitutes, it seems like everything went back to normal.”

Johnny Jo, 33, owner of Snappy Food Market a block away, blamed the small motels that cater to prostitutes for the area’s problems.

“I don’t think they (city officials) should issue little hotel and motel licenses anymore,” Jo said. “The hotels that do business only with prostitutes--that’s the problem.”