WESTSIDE / Cover Story : Police, Neighbors Organize to Crack Down on Prostitution in Gritty Neighborhood, but Official Urges Legaization Instead.

About 10 on a recent weeknight, a husky young man wearing a black miniskirt, high heels and heavy makeup was waiting to cross Santa Monica Boulevard at Formosa Avenue in West Hollywood.

The man wheeled around and caught a glimpse of Deputy Dennis Salazar, who had emerged from a Sheriff’s Department patrol car in a nearby restaurant parking lot. Salazar motioned him over. The man bowed his head and slowly approached.

“Just want to ask you a few questions,” Salazar said. The man nodded. He gave his name as Jessica, said he was 19 years old and that he had recently moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco.

Salazar asked him if he was working as a prostitute.

“No, uh-uh,” he replied. After catching Salazar’s skeptical look, he shifted his weight from heel to heel and corrected himself. “Well, I have in the past. But not tonight.”

It was a typical encounter between police and a transvestite on the east end of West Hollywood, where angry residents say prostitution has spun out of control. Almost every night, up to two or three dozen young men dressed in fishnet stockings and stiletto pumps gather in the neighborhood around Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, where their nightly promenade often snarls traffic.

Up and down a stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard between Fairfax and La Brea avenues, self-described drag queens such as Jessica share turf with shirtless young men who hustle on corners and at bus stops. Meanwhile, four blocks to the north, female prostitutes walking Sunset Boulevard do a bustling trade with motorists who stop alongside streets.

The area has been a haven for prostitution for years, according to police. In 1991, the city designated the area a prostitution abatement zone, providing deputies with additional authority to arrest repeat offenders.

But homeowners and tenants are growing increasingly weary of the problem. They complain of finding used condoms and syringes in their driveways and discovering prostitutes and johns having sex in bushes and alleys. Citing fears about the impact on families and businesses, as well as the possible spread of AIDS, east side residents have spurred West Hollywood officials to attack this aspect of the sex industry more aggressively than ever.

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A citizens’ group recently led a march to “take back the streets” from prostitutes and drug dealers. The Sheriff’s Department is conducting sting operations aimed at cracking down on repeat offenders. This month, the city is convening a multi-agency task force to examine the issue and deliver practical recommendations.

“There’s a quality of life issue here. A lot of residents are uncomfortable bringing (guests) to their homes,” said Nancy Greenstein, West Hollywood public safety coordinator. “In terms of the business community, prostitution discourages the mainstream customer. People just don’t feel safe, even though they may in fact be safe.”

But the war on prostitution has become controversial in West Hollywood, a historically liberal enclave and the spiritual center of the Los Angeles area’s gay community.

Critics of the city’s anti-vice efforts say that any measures designed to curb prostitution are doomed.

And at least one government official has suggested, over the outraged objections of homeowners, that the east side be turned into an adult entertainment zone in which prostitution would be licensed and regulated.

The only consensus so far is that finding a solution will not be easy.

Experts say that prostitutes congregate on the east side of West Hollywood because of the city’s reputation as a gay mecca and the neighborhood’s relatively depressed economic status.

“The east side of the city has been a standard place for prostitution for both men and women for years,” said Jim Gordon, a West Hollywood psychotherapist who has studied the prostitution problem. “The visibility now is more because of the transvestite parades. It’s hard to get that image changed.”

“Even though West Hollywood has been at the forefront of a lot of social issues, this isn’t one the city is prepared to tackle,” said Ruth Williams, a community activist who has lived in the area since 1950. “It’s just gotten so out of hand.”

In recent years, Williams says, she has frequently found used condoms on the streets and sidewalks outside her home. She has complained to the police about prostitutes and johns committing drug crimes and thefts in the neighborhood. But the final straw for her came last year, when a neighbor had two cars stolen and a garage set on fire, presumably by street hustlers.

“My son said, ‘I think it’s time to move.’ But I said, ‘No, it’s time to fight,’ ” Williams said. “Where can you go in this city where you don’t have some problem?”

Williams founded the Alliance of Citizens for the East Side, a grass-roots group dedicated to cleaning up the neighborhood. Earlier this month, several dozen members and neighbors, escorted by sheriff’s deputies, marched down Santa Monica Boulevard to protest prostitution and other vice.

“I’m a homeowner on the east side. You wouldn’t want this kind of (prostitution and drug dealing) going on outside your house, would you?” said group member Bill Senigram, explaining his decision to march.

Williams said: “I want (the rest of West Hollywood) never to refer to us as ‘the blighted east end’ again.”

But experts agree that merely arresting prostitutes will hardly address the tangle of social issues underlying the problem, including poverty, drug abuse and broken families.

Local social service workers say that prostitutes typically are in their teens or early 20s. The drag queens are often Latino, according to police. Some of them suffer from a classic borderline identity disorder, Gordon said. The hustlers typically come from out of state, drawn to Southern California by the mild climate and the promise of Hollywood glamour.

Jason Wittman, a youth director for Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services, which dispenses condoms and offers counseling several nights a week from a truck near Santa Monica and La Brea, said young people end up on the street for a variety of reasons.

“One common pathway is that parents find out they’re gay, and for religious or other reasons the kid got kicked out of the house,” Wittman said. “Other kids are running wild because their parents are running wild. A number of kids actually live at home. These kids go (to) the dance clubs (along Santa Monica) and for them the street is just an extension of that social environment.

“Once (prostitutes) get on the street, it’s kind of a ‘carny’ mentality,” he added. “They build up this myth that ‘everyone else is the sucker and we’re putting one over on them. It’s us out here having a wonderful time versus people dumb enough to give us money.’ ”

But this fatalism may lead to carelessness about sex, which experts say could foster the spread of AIDS. Police and social workers say that a number of hustlers and female prostitutes--but fewer drag queens--are intravenous drug abusers.

“High risk, high risk, high risk,” said Veronica Matos, assistant director for health services at the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Hollywood, summing up the sex practices of most prostitutes. “Unfortunately, these folks might have information they need (for safe sex), but in putting it into practice, there’s a huge void. They’re not practicing safe sex.”

Matos said her clinic, one of the largest sites in the state offering anonymous HIV testing, keeps no statistics on the occupations of those tested. But about 8% of the 1,000 clients the clinic serves each month test positive for the virus that causes AIDS. Matos said this is the highest rate of HIV infection of any clinic in Los Angeles County.

Wittman reported that 3 of his 30 clients on the street, or 10%, are HIV-positive.

Prostitutes are at increased risk for other sexually transmitted diseases as well. A 1991 RAND Corp. study of 638 prostitutes in Los Angeles County, including the Sunset Strip area, found that although only 2.5% tested positive for HIV, 33% tested positive for the hepatitis B antibody and 34% tested positive for past or current syphilis infection. Experts say that some sexually transmitted diseases may compromise the immune system and help the spread of HIV.

James, a tired-looking 27-year-old man with tousled blond hair who was sitting on a stoop near Santa Monica Boulevard and Genesee Avenue, admitted he had hustled off and on for the past 13 years. He said he began turning tricks because “I was out on the street and I needed to survive.”

When asked the results of his HIV test, he responded: “I’m not sure. I’ve never had a test.”

Michelle, a 22-year-old woman walking in a tight blue mini-dress near Sunset Boulevard and Havenhurst Drive, said she began working the streets several months ago after quitting a low-paying job as a switchboard operator. She said she now averages about $800 a night from six or seven customers; the money is being saved for her college education. She said she gets tested regularly for HIV, so far with negative results.

“When I first started having sex (with customers), I sometimes did it without” protection, she said with a rueful smile. “Sometimes we think we’re invincible.”

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Given the number of threats posed to street prostitutes, the possibility of jail time--often for a few months or less--seems a relatively small risk. Williams, the West Hollywood community activist, advocates tougher laws and more vigilant enforcement. She also suggested aggressive measures aimed at prostitutes’ customers, including printing suspected johns’ names on billboards in the community.

But some argue that such a hard-nosed approach is guaranteed to fail. Michaeljohn Horne, head of the West Hollywood Human Services Commission, which advises the city on grants to various social service organizations, said that “the problem is not going to go away” no matter how many arrests are made.

“I believe the city should lobby the state to legalize prostitution,” he said. “My intention has been to create an adult entertainment zone akin to what’s done (with similar districts) in Amsterdam. Prostitutes would be tested and regulated. The city would make some money off licenses and we could make sure (prostitutes) are healthy.”

Horne’s proposal, occasionally circulated at City Council meetings and elsewhere, has raised the anger of east side residents. “What he basically wants is a red-light district,” Williams said. “But what happens to the families here? Personally, I think his idea is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

But considering the amount of activity on the streets at night, one could argue that West Hollywood already has a virtual red-light district.

“If they are in violation (of the law), we’ll take them to jail,” Salazar said during one of his night patrols along Santa Monica. “But it’s like a garden. You keep cutting the weeds, and they keep growing back.”

Yolanda, a 19-year-old prostitute who was wearing white shorts with see-through panels and a military-style jacket, reported that she had been “beaten up (and) had knives pulled on me--but the money makes up for the occupational hazards,” she said with a conspiratorial smile.

When asked if she was afraid of her life on the streets, she shook her head and glanced around Sunset Boulevard as midnight traffic whizzed by.

“No,” she said. “No. There’s too many of us out here.”