Sheriff’s Dept. Officer Linked to Prostitution : Crime: A 23-year veteran of the force is put on administrative duties while the D.A. probes his ties to a massage parlor.

A San Diego County sheriff’s sergeant with 23 years on the force has been relieved of duty after being accused Thursday of operating a La Mesa massage parlor involved in prostitution.

Sgt. Dennis Arthur Hartman, hired in 1969, was placed on administrative duties while the county District Attorney’s office concludes a criminal investigation into allegations that Hartman has ties to Yung Accupressure, a licensed massage parlor in the 7400 block of University Avenue.

The Sheriff’s Department is conducting its own internal affairs investigation into the activities of Hartman, 55, a member of the special investigations division who has also worked in homicide and out of the Alpine sheriff’s station. Before joining the department, Hartman was a law enforcement official for several years in Chicago.

Sheriff Jim Roache said Hartman was assigned to “probably one of the most sensitive and trusted positions in our law enforcement agency” as head of criminal intelligence for the Sheriff’s Department.

After a two-month undercover investigation, La Mesa police determined that prostitutes worked out of the massage parlor and that Hartman had ties to the business. They brought the case to prosecutors and served search warrants Thursday on the massage parlor, Hartman’s home, his office and on others associated with the business.

Late Thursday, Hartman had not been placed under arrest but was being questioned by authorities. At the same time, members of the District Attorney’s Office were poring over records at the massage parlor.

Two women were arrested Thursday night. Yuk Rye Godfrey, 33, of La Mesa, was charged with two counts of prostitution. Yank Kang Godfrey, 50, also of La Mesa, was charged with two counts of pimping. Two other women were questioned by police and released.

It wasn’t immediately known if the two Godfrey women are related.

La Mesa police decided to announce some of the details of their investigation involving Hartman before an arrest was made so they would not be accused of holding back on a criminal probe into a neighboring police agency, law enforcement sources said.

Sheriff’s Department officials were notified of the investigation just after it began and watched Hartman closely as the months passed. Roache said Hartman’s normal duties in criminal intelligence would not have brought him in contact with the massage parlor.

Few details about the investigation, prompted by a tip, were made public Thursday night, such as how detectives came to find out how Hartman was involved or the extent of his association with the business.

For Roache, the announcement of another officer in trouble was disturbingly familiar. Half a dozen deputies have been accused or convicted of criminal behavior since Roache became sheriff a little more than a year ago.

In the worst of those cases last year, a deputy from Encinitas was shot and killed by a colleague while robbing a home and beating its owner.

As he has said before, Roache stressed that any department employee involved in criminal misconduct is responsible for his or her own actions, and that such actions should not condemn the department as a whole.

“This is a very large organization with over 2,400 employees,” the sheriff said. “While you would hope that nobody here would be involved in a situation that is inappropriate or illegal, it happens. You can also take any group of 2,400 people in society and find the same amount doing ill-advised or illegal things.”

Still, he conceded, law enforcement officials have to be held to an even higher standard of conduct, which “is dealt with severely in our department,” Roache said.

The latest news, however, comes particularly hard, Roache said, because Hartman’s “professional reputation is very satisfactory and he’s known as a highly competent investigator.”