CANOGA PARK : Adult Bookstore Ruling Postponed

Canoga Park residents will have to wait at least three more weeks to learn if the Los Angeles Zoning Department will restrict the operating hours of Le Sex Shoppe, the area’s only adult book and novelty store.

In a sparsely attended meeting Friday at the Sherman Oaks Women’s Club, Zoning Administrator John Parker postponed action on the request filed in May by Capt. Valentino Paniccia, commander of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division, to revoke the shop’s permit.

Councilwoman Laura Chick supports revoking the permit.

Parker told supporters of the store that he will hold the Le Sex Shoppe file open for a week to see if a compromise on a voluntary set of restrictions can be worked out between the shop and the police.

A follow-up hearing on the matter will be scheduled during the next three weeks. Le Sex Shoppe’s zoning problems go back to 1987.

“I thought we had this problem settled through hearings and a compromise four years ago,” said Pat Quinn, a homeowner and Neighborhood Watch member. “The city, the police and local residents have all spent money to get these problems solved, but nothing ever seems to change.”

Located on Sherman Way near Owensmouth Avenue, the 24-hour store sells sexually explicit books, magazines and video tapes, which can be rented or viewed in on-site, private screening rooms.

Paniccia said he made his request because of longstanding solicitation and lewd conduct problems in and around the store.

“We’ve been working on the Le Sex Shoppe situation for the four years I’ve been in charge here and maybe six years before that,” Paniccia said. “There’s a lot of anger and disgust expressed by people in this area with the ongoing cruising, solicitation and sex acts in the alleys behind the store.”

“Since the earthquake, the problems have gotten worse,” Paniccia said. “Le Sex Shoppe in North Hollywood closed down, so those customers are coming here. The increase in customers is also attracting more prostitutes and we’re arresting both men and women for solicitation.”

Sgt. Tony Vlaskamp, a West Valley vice officer who testified in support of revocation, said that from January, 1992, through April, 1994, the Police Department made 117 arrests at the store, mostly for solicitation and lewd conduct. But Robert DePiano, attorney for EWAP, the corporation that owns the Le Sex Shoppe chain, insisted that his client is taking steps to stop illegal activity around the store and is willing to do more.

Those efforts, he said, include hiring a 24-hour security guard, fencing in the back lot and closing it after 10 p.m., monitoring inside screening rooms and posting signs warning patrons not to engage in illegal or publicly lewd conduct.

“We want to work with the community and the police to be good neighbors,” he said. “But we’re strongly opposed to a limitation on our operating hours because we believe it violates a freedom of speech issue. We will be very aggressive in protecting those rights.”