Vice Officers Get a Victory in Hollywood : Prostitution: Prosecutors hope to persuade Van Nuys jurist to also extend hours of controversial program in Valley.

In a victory for law enforcement authorities, a Hollywood judge Wednesday agreed to broaden a controversial program designed to crack down on streetwalking by criminalizing otherwise legal behavior. Authorities hope to expand the program in the San Fernando Valley as well.

Currently, those convicted of prostitution in Hollywood, South-Central Los Angeles and parts of the Valley are--as a condition of probation--given maps marked with areas where they can be arrested between 5 p.m. and 6 a.m. for simply walking down a street, talking to a motorist or sitting in a car with a motorist.

Hollywood Municipal Supervising Judge Michael S. Mink extended the program to 24 hours a day in Hollywood after law enforcement authorities convinced him that prostitutes had changed their hours to circumvent the map’s dusk-till-dawn conditions.

“I’m certainly happy,” said Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. Bill Sterling, who worked with police to help get the hours extended. “We’re trying to attack street crime and this will help.”

Sterling said vice officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollywood Division submitted declarations to Mink stating that prostitution problems persisted in Hollywood. They also submitted videotapes in which prostitutes confessed, during interviews, that they had switched to working days to avoid being arrested under the mapping program.

City prosecutors are now working to persuade a Van Nuys judge to also extend the hours of the mapping program in the Valley.

“We’re in the process right now of getting the same kind of documentation that was used in Hollywood,” Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. Richard Schmidt said. His office may make the request to the supervising judge at Van Nuys Municipal Court during the next two weeks.

The geographical Valley areas where the restrictions apply are corridors of prostitution activity along Sepulveda Boulevard, Sherman Way, Lankershim Boulevard, Ventura Boulevard and Reseda Boulevard in parts of Canoga Park, North Hills, North Hollywood, Northridge, Panorama City, Reseda, Sherman Oaks, Studio City and Van Nuys.

Civil libertarians have questioned whether the program is too broad, and legal scholars have criticized the program as well, saying it eliminates crime by eliminating individual freedoms.

But the program has been applauded by police and prosecutors as an added weapon in their war against crime. Proponents of such strategies are also awaiting the outcome of an even broader bill introduced by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), which would make it a crime to loiter on public property with the intent to sell drugs or commit prostitution.

And unlike the mapping program, which only applies to defendants who have been convicted and sentenced to probation, the Katz measures would apply to anyone that police suspect of being a prostitute based simply on an officer’s observations. Sterling said that out on the streets there is little confusion over who the prostitutes are.

“After you watch a prostitute for 15 or 20 minutes, all doubt is removed as to what they’re doing,” Sterling said. “They stay in one spot, walk back and forth, have a conversation with a motorist, get in a car and then come back in 30 minutes and do it all over again.”

“It’s an eyesore, it’s a blight and police are helpless to do anything about it,” he added.

In a related matter, last month a state Court of Appeal ruled that the city of San Jose lacks the power to control gangs by prohibiting behavior that is otherwise legal. The ruling could wipe out controversial portions of several Superior Court orders aimed at gang members in the Valley, Norwalk and Burbank, but does not apply to the Municipal Court orders targeted at Los Angeles-area prostitutes.