KTLA News: "Police task force arrests sex workers in Hollywood" (1980)

More than 100 prostitutes have been arrested in Hollywood in the last 24 hours, and the word spreads fast. Normally, both Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards between Highland and Fairfax have dozens of suspected hookers soliciting. But when police beef up their Vice units, the prostitutes go underground. Vice officers wait to be solicited, then they arrest the solicitor. But police say that prostitutes have no trouble making bail and are out on the streets soon after they're arrested. The task force is called in when complaints from businesses and citizens in the area escalate. And although the cleanups don't alleviate the prostitution problem, police say the crime rate for some offenses does drop. >> We notice certain types of crimes that uh seem to go down. Uh rapes go down somewhat. Um, assaults go down, robberies, street robberies, uh, go down a little bit occasionally. Fineberg wouldn't call this cleanup a sweep. He says the task force is the normal force of 10 vice officers beefed up with another 10 from other divisions. The task force will stay on the street here through the weekend as long as they continue to be solicited. Then it's back to business as usual. That is until the complaints start coming in again. Dixie Watley reporting for News at 10. Hollywood Prostitute Sweep Task Force. Damn it. Please keep Katherine, can you tell me what the police department has been doing in regard to the homosexual activity in the area? >> We haven't been doing anything in particular in regards to the homosexual activity in the area. We've been u making quite a few arrests of uh prostitutes, both male and female. There hasn't been any special emphasis on either one, though. >> What's the procedure that you've been going through? Well, our procedure hasn't uh hasn't changed for 20 years that I know of as far as the way we arrest prostitutes. We have a vice unit undercover officers that go out and uh obtain solicitations and if the solicitation meets the requirements of the law, then the individual is placed under arrest. >> How often do you do sweeps like the kind you've been conducting the last couple days? Well, the activity of the last couple of days really isn't what we call a sweep. We have some extra officers in the area uh but only because the number of uh prostitutes on the street seems to have uh sharply increased. And so to um be effective, we bring in some more officers to assist our regular uh vice unit. >> So this results in more arrest than normal. Well, yeah, certainly it would because we have more officers on the street. And when the problem subsides, then of course the officers go back to their regular duty assignments. Our vice officers will stay in the area and continue to work on the problem. If it grows, uh, we again bring in some more officers to get help us out. >> How long term do you think the effect of this will be? [laughter] >> That's that's impossible to say. I don't know. Uh, prostitution activity is really elusive as far as I'm concerned. Uh I don't know why on one particular night there's 50 prostitutes working the streets and the next night there's only uh maybe 10 or you can't find any. It's just hard to it's hard to say. >> It seems like you know you go through these cycles where you go and arrest everybody and no one's on the street for two days and all of a sudden they're back. Is anything being done to kind of get more at the crux of it than or can is that just what you're going to have to do? Keep going through the cycles of arresting them and waiting till they come back and arresting them again? Well, I think we're just going to have to keep going the way we are if uh going through this uh these cycles because I don't really know what the crux of the problem is. Uh last year we uh made right around 4,000 arrests for prostitution. And uh as a result of that, there were a lot of uh there there weren't many prostitutes on the street for two or three months and then all of a sudden uh there's a whole bunch. So, it's it's a very difficult problem to deal with. >> Have you found a drop in the crime rate when you do this and arrest a lot of the prostitutes? >> Okay. >> Okay. The task force will stay out here on the street through the weekend as long as they continue to be solicited. Then it's back to just the vice squads. Let me take again my nose. Okay. The task force will stay out here on the street through the weekend. Then it's back to just the vice squad cruising here as they normally do. That is until the businesses and the residents start sending in complaints again. Dixie Watley reporting for News at 10. The task force will stay on the street here through the weekend. I'm not doing well today. Okay.