tough on seedy massage parlors

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tough on seedy massage parlors
"We're not looking at The Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Japanese and Chinese then developed their own shenzhen escort techniques as a medicinal remedy this as your proverbial vice action," Smith said, because making a few arrests won't address the conditions that allowed Mesa to become a hotbed of strip-mall parlors that police believe are thinly disguised fronts for prostitution. Instead, Mesa will strengthen its massage-parlor laws, which Smith said were "gutted" during a 2004 rewrite, and tell police to go after the seedy operations. Media reports this summer began to shine the spotlight on the industry's growth in Mesa, where the number of licensed parlors has soared from 73 to about 120 since April 2006. While many of the businesses offer traditional therapeutic services, others operate into the wee hours behind blacked-out windows in strip-mall storefronts marked only by generic red "massage" signs. "There are certain business operating procedures and standards that . . . separate the legitimate businesses from the illegitimate businesses," Smith said. "There's a few things that the good guys do and the bad guys don't do, or they do it differently." By addressing those issues, Smith said, "hopefully we don't have to get into the problems with enforcing vice. We can do it through how they present themselves and how they operate. And by doing that we hope to make life basically miserable for those people who are illegitimate."h8ib49 The issue is on the agenda for a Sept. 21 meeting of the City Council's public safety committee. Smith and City Manager Chris Brady dismissed the argument that the illegitimate parlors are "victimless" operations. Regardless of the morality of what goes on in their back rooms, Smith said, "The way they are operating destroys other people's businesses. That has nothing to do with the morality in play. As a city we have the responsibility to protect people's rights, and when businesses are being destroyed by the way someone else operates, we have a real problem." Brady said Mesa does not currently plan to work with federal agencies to investigate whether some parlors could be connected with international criminal activity such as human smuggling. But, he said, "If it comes to our attention that there may be something more widespread, whether it's human smuggling or whatever it might be, we have an ongoing partnership with all those federal agencies that might be brought in." Smith and Brady said the industry's growth in Mesa springs from a botched rewrite of the massage-parlor ordinance in late 2004. At that time the state was in the process of taking over massage-therapy licensing and setting up a board to regulate the industry. As Mesa rewrote its ordinance to mesh with state law, it removed numerous requirements that had been in the old one. Minutes from 2004 council meetings indicate the revised ordinance was passed with no one on the council publicly discussing those changes or why they were made. A Republic review of ordinances in major Valley cities found Mesa's to be by far the most lax. It contains no escort shenzhen standards for lighting, plumbing and sanitation, and no limits on hours of operation.