Metro vice: Police target Las Vegas ‘johns’

Sun, Jun 9, 1996 (11:59 a.m.)

In a tank top and cutoff jeans, Kim looks more like she should be washing cars than watching them.

Her soft blue eyes scope the single drivers on Ogden Avenue, a drunk walking toward her, a greasy black-haired teenager on a bike. One of them -- all of them -- could want her. She knows it's not her clothes that'll get them. It's just because she's available.

She's not on the sidewalk more than three minutes before her first john of the night pulls up.

He doesn't hedge. He wants oral sex for $20. She checks out his tie, his white button-down dress shirt drenched with sweat, his shiny dark shoes. "OK," Kim says.

Robert Danforth wasn't in Kim's motel room more than 10 seconds before the groping and the Polaroid camera flashes started. The 36-year-old Reno health care executive had officially made it into Metro Police's book of fame.

Monday's covert operation was Metro's 14th this year targeting downtown prostitutes' potential customers, or "johns." To date, they've caught 196 through these reverse stings, or "reversals," using female officers such as Kim as bait.

Their objective is as clear today as in 1971 when prostitution was outlawed in Clark County: Get prostitutes and johns off the street. Still, the sex trade remains resilient and robust.

* The vice section arrested almost twice as many adults -- 1,113 vs. 646 -- and almost four times as many juveniles -- 11 vs. 3 -- on prostitution charges through April this year compared with the same period in 1995.

* At least one new HIV-infected prostitute is arrested each month.

* Guides on the Internet direct the world to the hot spots for hookers in Las Vegas, which means free publicity for those working the streets, motels and casinos.

As a result, Metro plans to expand its vice section by five officers and one sergeant by January. Will it be enough?

*

Mona moved to Las Vegas 10 months ago, thinking it would be an easy place to blend into the community and make some money. Once a blackjack dealer in Mississippi, Mona figured there would be plenty of jobs.

"But it doesn't take long before they figure out what's up," Mona said, chilled in tights and a black leather mini-skirt by the swirling night air.

"It doesn't matter to the casino manager that you gotta make your rent or that you know how to work the cards. They find out you've been convicted of prostitution, and they throw you out the door."

In the late afternoon, Mona flips on the radio to psyche himself up. "I keep telling myself, 'I am a woman.' I say it over and over again. Identity comes from within. It don't mean a thing that I have a man's body."

He works the downtown streets as a woman by night, and men driving everything from motorcycles to Mercedes have helped him make what he says has been "a good living."

Casino executives, lawyers, teachers, waiters -- every walk of life has bargained for sex in Las Vegas.

Dr. Larry Edwards, a certified obstetrician-gynecologist practicing in Nevada since 1980, was cited May 15 for allegedly soliciting an undercover female officer outside a motel off 11th Street.

"Edwards was on his way home from work, like most of the guys we pick up," said vice Lt. Carlos Cordeiro. "There really wasn't anything unusual about him, but the fact he's a gynecologist is very disturbing."

Edwards did not return messages left for him by the SUN regarding the misdemeanor charge he is scheduled to answer to June 19 in Municipal Court.

Nevada's Board of Medical Examiners said felony convictions typically jeopardize a doctor's license, but misdemeanor convictions involving prostitution could also be treated severely.

In 1989, the Legislature granted police the right to extract blood samples from anyone arrested for prostitution. Metro adopted the resolution in 1989 and documented 32 HIV-infected hookers by year's end.

To date, Metro has tallied 216 local prostitutes with the virus.

Seven of those hookers' pictures were added to vice's files this year.

Brenda Jo Villagomez, 30, was nine months' pregnant and already in Metro's HIV book when she allegedly promised straight and oral sex for $40 after getting in a vice detective's car outside her home Feb. 18.

A misdemeanor soliciting conviction could mean six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Villagomez's deadly health status made her alleged crime a felony, enhancing punishment up to 20 years.

Villagomez pleaded to attempting to solicit, which brings one to five years. She is up for sentencing June 24.

"Most of the girls who work the streets have oozing sores, some don't have their teeth," Kim said.

"None of the guys who've approached me have ever asked if I have AIDS. One guy, he was about 62, he said he'd even pay me more if we didn't use a condom."

*

"When you look at things like gambling, drinking, eating, spending money compulsively, smoking, drugs, there is stimulation," said Eric Smith, a clinical psychologist.

"Even in securing someone for sexual purposes, someone they don't know -- there's stimulation."

Smith arrived in Las Vegas in 1977 to head the Juvenile Court's psychology department, and recalls the challenge of talking to young girls about "why they should work at McDonald's, when all they knew was the money they could be making on the streets."

"Being local rather than going to a (legal) brothel, there is a convenience factor, but people who are high-risk takers ... they operate on a pleasure principle," Smith said. "Regardless of the consequences, like AIDS or the police, they feel it won't happen to them. They're acting on a fantasy they might be unable to otherwise achieve."

Instant gratification is what the vice squad sees.

"One guy said he went out to get diapers, saw me standing on the corner and decided to get a blow job before he went home," Kim said.

The risks can be high. Street walkers gather in drug- and crime-infested neighborhoods.

"Guys can be robbed, trick-rolled by girls slipping knockout drugs into their drinks, they can be murdered," Cordeiro said. "It's very dangerous."

Groups such as COYOTE/Seattle (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) and the National Organization for Women have pushed in the past for decriminalizing prostitution.

Proponents point to Nye County brothels, where sex workers must be registered, have regular health checkups and use condoms.

Former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen says the issue is privacy.

"Why," she asked in a November 1994 column, "is the decision by a woman to sleep with a man she has just met in a bar a private one, and decision to sleep with the same man in return for $100 subject to criminal penalties?"

Detective Leon Glines, a 23-year veteran of Metro vice, offered a different opinion.

"It sounds really good when people talk about it. They say we could get revenue. But you've got people out here who are not used to working in a structured environment. They're not going to work in a house. They can't, because of the diseases they have, the thievery. Half of them make their money stealing.

"They get up, they turn a date, go to sleep, then go and shoot up -- that's their day. If we legalized prostitution, we'd have a much more major problem. We'd have to enforce legalized prostitution, but these girls would still be on the street."

*

Lt. Cordeiro's goal is "to make it as uncomfortable as possible to be a john in this city to drive out the demand."

Vice runs reverse stings at least twice a week. Twice this year, police towed alleged johns' cars and hauled the misdemeanor offenders to jail.

But the community has resisted some of Metro's more visible initiatives.

In January, the department began releasing to the media the names, ages and hometowns of johns caught in reversals, but none has agreed to publish or broadcast the listings.

Cordeiro put together a billboard campaign to run anti-prostitution messages in Metro's territory. One example: "Enjoy Las Vegas, but don't gamble with your life. Prostitution is illegal. Prostitutes may have AIDS."

Concerned about a negative image, local businesses objected because of the words "Las Vegas."

"I'm really disappointed," Cordeiro said. "I can understand where the business owners are coming from, but not the media and that isn't helping us. It's going to take community effort to make a difference."

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