SEX WORKERS AND CLIENTS ARRESTED.Byline: Rachel Uranga Staff Writer PANORAMA CITY - Police on Saturday announced they had arrested several employees of an online-promoted prostitution ring run out of a mini-mall in Panorama City, as well as more than a dozen of its clients. ``There's a rash of massage parlors massage parlor n. An establishment that offers therapeutic massage. massage parlor Sexology An establishment that advertises nonsexual manipulation and massage services, which may be provided by 'sex workers' who, for and chiropractors cropping up in the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. that are used as fronts,'' said Sgt. Charles Dempsey of the Devonshire vice unit. Complaints from neighbors and customers alerted police to the 1500 block of Parthenia Street and the six-room office known as Mia's Therapy, which officers had also been tracking online. Officers raided the store Friday after one woman agreed to perform sexual acts on an undercover officer posing as a customer, police said. They swarmed in, arresting six other women and a man posing as a chiropractor chiropractor a practitioner in chiropractic. chiropractor A health professional trained in chiropractic; chiropractors do not perform surgery or prescribe drugs; of 50,000 licensed chiropractors in the US, many practice 'straight' chiropractic, ie on prostitution-related charges. Police recovered $440, a office chair stuffed with condoms and schedule books with the number of customers seen. They then re-opened the offices for several hours, using five female officers wearing lab coats to pose as workers. Thirteen men allegedly walked in and solicited sexual acts from the officers, official said. Each ``client'' room contained a lamp and a single wooden table wrapped in vinyl. In a back room were sparse living quarters, with a king-size mattress, storage bins filled with lingerie and a closed-circuit television closed-circuit television Noun a television system used within a limited area such as a building Noun 1. closed-circuit television . The location had been raided in December, yielding 10 arrests. One of those previously arrested was again arrested in Friday's raid. ``In these locations, they often rotate the girls; we've arrested one at Mia's (before) and then at Topanga Therapy,'' which was raided last year, Dempsey said. Officials suspect there are dozens of such operations throughout the Northwestern Valley. They began to boom a few years ago after police cracked down on street-walking prostitutes along a stretch of Sepulveda Boulevard between Ventura Boulevard Ventura Boulevard is one of the primary east-west thouroughfares in the San Fernando Valley; as it was originally a part of the El Camino Real (the trail between Spanish missions), Ventura Boulevard is the oldest route in the San Fernando Valley. It was also U.S. and San Fernando Road San Fernando Road is a major street in the city and county of Los Angeles. It starts off in Castaic as The Old Road, passing through Santa Clarita and the Newhall Pass, where upon its intersection with Sierra Highway near the junction of the Golden State (I-5) and the . Promoted on the Internet and through print advertisements, Mia's Therapy was one of nearly a dozen operations in the Northwest Valley shut down since December 2001, Dempsey said. Those raids have yielded 61 prostitution-related arrests. Many of those arrested have been immigrants from Eastern bloc During the Cold War, the term Eastern Bloc (or Soviet Bloc) was used to refer to the Soviet Union and its allies in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and—until the early 1960s—Albania). nations and Korea. |
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