San Francisco- At 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 5, three undercover vice squad officers walked into the nearly empty New Century lap-dancing theater and were, they say, all openly and unapologetically solicited for sex almost before their eyes had adjusted to the darkness. On May 18, the identical scenario unfolded at the Market Street Cinema. Nine dancers and three club managers were arrested during the two raids. The dancers were charged with prostitution, the managers with "keeping a house of ill repute."
It's not clear why, after years of turning a blind eye to long-standing sexual activity in the clubs, the vice squad decided to raid the theaters. The timing was especially odd given that Police Chief Heather Fong and Vice Squad Lt. Joe Dutto had recently met with District Attorney Kamala Harris and agreed to postpone police action at the clubs until issues related to "abuse of the dancers, police misconduct during [past] arrests, and selective enforcement" could be addressed, according to a press release from the DA¹s Office.
The Chronicle's Matier and Ross suggest the vice squad may have dumped the politically delicate prostitution issue into Harris¹ lap to get back at her for not seeking the death sentence for an alleged cop killer in a recent, widely publicized murder case. Vice inspector Rich McNaughton says police wanted to check the prosecutorial resolve of the Newsom-Harris administration around sex-work issues. "Not knowing what the new DA was going to do with these cases, we felt we had to test the waters," he says. Veteran sex-work activist Carol Leigh thinks the raids were prompted by an article, five months earlier, in the Bay Guardian that described sexual activity in the clubs, including allegations by some dancers that they were subject to "coercion and assault" in the clubs' private booths.
