Massage technicians could be required to submit fingerprints
CITYWIDE A drastic increase in brothels fronting as legitimate massage operations in Santa Monica, engaging in everything from so-called happy endings to prostitution, could result in more stringent regulations as city officials consider beefing up laws to curb illicit activity.
The City Attorney is proposing several amendments to Santa Monica’s massage ordinance, changes that would tighten up regulations to require fingerprints for all massage technicians — a way to keep tabs on criminal backgrounds — and hold landlords accountable for leasing space to businesses that conduct illegal operations, such as prostitution and related sexual acts.
Such operations have become an increasingly growing nuisance in Santa Monica where since 2005, the Santa Monica Police Department has shut down 10 operations due to illicit activity. Three of those parlors are up and running again under new management and ownership, according to the department.
Santa Monica has seen 33 new parlors open up in just the past two years, ballooning the population in a city just 8.3 square miles in size, to 64 licensed parlors and accessory massage businesses — chiropractic offices or salons that offer massages as a secondary service.
“We’re a destination city similar to Anaheim and Newport Beach,” Cody Green, a detective with the SMPD, said on Friday. “Because we’re a destination city... we have more of the service establishments.”
While a majority of area massage businesses operate legally, approximately 25 percent are believed to operate as brothels.
The department has made arrests or issued sitations on 20 to 25 occasions this past year due to ordinance violations, infractions ranging from illegal sexual acts to operating without a permit. Investigators believe there are six locations where they have a high degree of certainty that there is illicit activity occurring.
It is the increasing number of illegal operations, coupled with the growing number of complaints from residents reporting suspicious activity in neighboring parlors, that is causing city officials to take another look at Santa Monica’s ordinance and how these businesses are regulated.
“The existing ordinance is antiquated and that is in comparison to cities like Culver City and Los Angeles,” Deputy City Attorney Ivan Campbell said on Wednesday. “We want to make sure there are only legitimate massage businesses operating in the city and not those that front for any other use.”
The biggest change in the ordinance would be a requirement that all massage technicians seeking a permit submit their fingerprints, bringing Santa Monica in line with other cities in Southern California which already have a fingerprinting mandate. The lack of this requirement is a prime reason why there could be such a high concentration of massage businesses in the city, according to the City Attorney’s Office.
The ordinance currently requires that massage technicians with less than 300 hours of training be fingerprinted. Only 12 percent of licensed massage technicians have their fingerprints on record, according to Revenue Manager Pamela McGarvey, whose division deals with business licensing.
New state law requires that municipalities have a way of determining whether permitted massage technicians are registered sex offenders. The only way to determine criminal background is through fingerprinting.
“It’s bringing us to conformity with the rest of the state and more importantly complying with the state’s new laws to require cities to determine whether a permit and massage therapist is registered sex offender,” McGarvey said. “We can’t do that without a criminal background check.”
The proposed ordinance also includes new terms like “responsible employee” and “responsible managing officer,” holding those individuals accountable and minimizing the possibility of the businesses continuing to operate if workers are arrested.
Heightened massage regulations are sure to receive mixed reactions from parlors that run legitimate operations, some welcoming regulations for an industry that has received a bad reputation, others questioning why the legal businesses will also have to jump through more hurdles.
Maryse Gessner, the associate director of the Massage School of Santa Monica, which operated for 40 years in the city before moving to Valley Glen last April, pointed out that Santa Monica’s required written test is considerably more difficult than in other cities. The test is required for technicians with less than 300 hours of training, Gessner said.
“It definitely will legitimize the practice,” Gessner said on Thursday. “The Santa Monica test is one of the harder tests and Santa Monica has always been good that way.”
Gessner said prostitution has long been a bane for the massage industry, but believes the perception has gotten better in the past decade as more people have expressed an interest in becoming technicians.
The massage school includes a course on ethics and integrity, Gessner said.
“A lot of people do love massage and want to pursue it and that is a part of the character trait of a good massage therapist who likes to work with people,” Gessner said. “It’s the integral part of that kind of work.”
The ordinance, which was scheduled to go before the City Council for a first reading last week and is now rescheduled for a future meeting, was endorsed by the Ocean Park Association, whose members live near Lincoln Boulevard where many of the parlors are concentrated.
OPA sent a letter to councilmembers last week urging it to move forward with the first reading of the ordinance. The neighborhood organization received complaints from residents living near Lincoln Boulevard about suspicious activity from parlors they believe are operating as brothels.
Zina Josephs, the president of the Friends of Sunset Park, said the neighborhood group east of Lincoln Boulevard has received complaints from residents about illicit activity along both Pico and Lincoln boulevards for years.
“One resident who lives near Lincoln would observe customers coming and going from the back of the building,” Josephs said on Friday. “Another went to get a massage at a business on Pico and realized when she got inside that some other business was involved.”
The Friends of Sunset Park board of directors has yet to take a position on the ordinance.
“It’s been an ongoing issue on membership forms where we’ve gotten comments of complaints of ongoing prostitution and drug dealing on Lincoln, especially at the massage parlors,” Josephs said.
The overall increase in massage businesses acting as a guise for prostitution and other illegal activities is often attributed to the smuggling of young women from Asia into California, many of whom come from Korea.
The fee for smuggling women from Korean into Southern California is estimated to be $15,000 and the women are often required to work off the fee once they arrive, according to the City Attorney’s Office.
Of the 10 businesses that have been closed in Santa Monica, five shut down voluntarily and five were forced to cease operations. Four of the businesses were brothels that were licensed for massage.
The Santa Monica Police Department receives complaints from residents and follow-up at the location. The department also checks out Web sites like Craigslist for leads.
The businesses that were shut down were spread throughout the city, some on Lincoln, others on Santa Monica Boulevard and one on Wilshire. The department and code compliance were able to prevent at least one business at 739 Hill St. from opening.
“We want to make sure the activity going is what they are licensed for doing,” Green said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 26, 2008. Read the original PDF.