Let 'em Holler - A Political Biography of J. Bracken Lee

Vice and prostitution

23 Vice and Prostitution Lee's feud with Skousen was not his last with a police chief. In April 1967 Lee severely criticized Chief Dewey Fillis and Public Safety Commissioner James L. Barker because two plain­clothes officers had spent three hours at a Jaycee installation party at a downtown hotel on a tip that a striptease act would be presented and that topless waitresses would serve guests. Chief Fillis defended the action as simple enforcement of the law, but Lee was unimpressed: "I didn't know we had enough policemen to go around babysitting for the club patrons." In a reply remi­niscent of Skousen, Barker said, "If the commission doesn't want the police department to enforce such laws, the city ordinances should be repealed." He reported that there were four officers outside the club who had handled two prostitution arrests and two liquor violations that night. The Jaycees were not unduly concerned; their president, Gary Miller, reported that the officers inside had stayed about an hour and a half, and he was proud that nothing unlawful had occurred.1 The Deseret News was incensed at Lee's reaction. It was well known that Chief Fillis was campaigning for more men and a better salary schedule and had made painstaking efforts to com­pile a detailed report on his use of manpower, yet he was criti­cized by the mayor. The News attacked Lee for ridiculing Fillis when as mayor he should have been "the first to uphold the law." Furthermore, the editors stated, The people of Salt Lake City are being well served by a Public Safety Commissioner and a Chief of Police who are trying diligently to enforce the law and make this the clean city its residents want it to be. If there is anything Salt Lake City doesn't need and want it is a repetition of the squabble that led to the firing of another effective and dedicated police chief just seven years ago.2 317 J . BRACKEN LEE Deseret News editors remembered the Skousen incident only too well and were preparing to do battle. What is more, the issue was a sensitive one in Salt Lake City. Respected authorities suggested that the city had drifted from a "controlled" community to one that was notoriously "soft," with prostitution infesting a two-square-mile area of town. There was also an astonishing 100 percent rise in cases of venereal disease reported throughout Utah during the first five months of 1967. These statements were made after a meeting between the police chief and two health experts, Donald P. Clough of the American Social Health Association and Byron T. Haslam, field health representative of the Utah Department of Health. Clough claimed that Salt Lake had become known in areas as far away as Alaska as a place where public officials and the courts main­tained a "soft" policy of coexistence with prostitution. Despite police efforts, Fillis believed that prostitutes came to Salt Lake from far-distant population centers.3 According to Clough, pros­titution could be eliminated quickly if public officials, law enforcement officers, and the public moved together rapidly: "Prostitutes and their aides don't like publicity. Word gets around fast and travels far when a town becomes tough." He cited a "new" problem of homosexual male prostitution developing in Salt Lake City: "Our specially trained undercover investigators discovered at least two such homosexual centers in Salt Lake City." He argued that prostitution must be combated because it would lead to other crimes and support drug addiction.4 As if these problems were not enough for the city commis­sion, the Utah State Supreme Court struck down a city ordinance dealing with prostitution, claiming that the state had "preempted the field" by enacting comprehensive laws on sexual offenses. James Barker angrily complained that the ruling made prostitu­tion legal because it was not listed in Utah's penal code among sexual offenses. The offenses included keeping a house of prosti­tution, detaining a female in a house of prostitution for debt, and taking a female under age eighteen-but prostitution itself was not listed. He suggested as an alternative that the city could swear out a complaint against a streetwalker and charge va- 318 VICE AND PROSTITUTION grancy, but such a practice was indirect and disappointing. There­fore, he asked for a clarification of the ruling by the court.5 While some people feared that Salt Lake would become an "open city," Lee vehemently denied it: "We are charged with enforcing state law, even if the courts have thrown out our ordinance." He insisted that the city had "all kinds of law" to control prostitution, but Barker thought that was misleading. "If you want an open city, the best way to get it is to have no law controlling prostitution or an unworkable law," Barker said. "The Supreme Court has put us in this position and, by its opin­ion, has provided that the only law we could have would be unworkable." City Attorney Homer Holmgren studied the Utah Code and concluded that the state had empowered the city to "provide for the punishment of tramps, street beggars, prosti­tutes," and others. He believed that the city could prosecute prostitutes, albeit with great difficulty. The difficulty here is that this (section 10-8-51 of the state code) requires proof that the person charged has offered her­self to indiscriminate sexual intercourse with men in the plural. Proof of one offering is not sufficient. This presents considerable difficulty in securing a conviction.0 Finally deciding to accept Barker's contention that vagrancy was the vehicle, Lee recommended to the commission that the police department be directed to "enforce the state vagrancy law and any other law covering this type of violation." ft was his opinion that the police knew most of those involved, which would facilitate enforcement: "I believe these girls can be removed from the streets if they are continually arrested under the state va­grancy law."7 This approach failed to satisfy the commission, and instead they passed a new ordinance making it a misdemeanor for any woman to offer or agree to a sexual act for hire. In an effort to augment state law, the ordinance defined the misdemeanor as applying to "any prostitute, courtesan or lewd woman who shall by sign, word or action, endeavor to ply her vocation upon the streets or any public place . . . and any person who shall within the corporate limits of the city, make any insulting or licentious 319 J . BRACKEN LEE advance, proposition or salutation to a person. . . . " The punish­ment was determined to be imprisonment up to six months, or fine, or both. Immediately after the ordinance went into effect police arrested seven women and questioned four others, all between the ages of nineteen and thirty-one. All were charged with offering a sex act to an agent of the police department. Since there had been only twenty-six arrests during the first eight months of 1967, the ordinance seemed to portend improvement.8 But in spite of varying approaches the improvement was slight throughout Lee's tenure. Not only was prostitution an especially difficult problem, but Lee's record in Price made him vulnerable to suspicions that he was not sincerely interested in attacking it. For instance, in 1970 the commission attempted to combat prostitution by closing business establishments found guilty of "catering to prostitution" in the West Second South district. After hearing sworn testimony they voted unanimously to suspend the licenses of Nolan Jones, operator of Jeff's Grocery Store, 511 West Second South, for sixty days. Police Chief Calvin Whitehead testified that known prostitutes frequented the store, which also contained a rooming house and restaurant, but the lack of a registration book for guests made it difficult to obtain names.9 Jones's counsel, Robert McRae, asked what right the com­mission had to revoke licenses "because of alleged prostitutes being on the property?" Joining the battle with surprising energy, Lee maintained that the city had reached a "desperation point," for it was common knowledge that the area was busy with prosti­tute activity and the courts had not acted swiftly enough to cor­rect it. The mayor's attack was direct: "There is no one, better than you, that would know these prostitutes . . . so who is kidding who?" When McRae persisted, Lee blasted him with one of his famous lines about attorneys: "The law profession is a special group. You have a license to steal and we don't." Then he advised that McRae do a service to the community and "see that these persons [prostitutes] stay off the streets."10 Lee's aggressive approach was not sufficient to impress a woman named Cathryn Harvell who also appeared at the hearing 320 VICE AND PROSTITUTION to complain about "the bad situation around the Salt Palace on West Temple . . . and the transient type of persons that hang around the area." Aiming all of her venom at the mayor, she shouted, "I've been told that some of these places are remaining open because you get a payoff!" She claimed that more than two years earlier a police officer had told her that the prostitutes in the area were "Mayor Lee's gals." Visibly disturbed, Lee shot back, "That's news to me!" and demanded that the woman supply the name of the officer who made the accusation. When she declined, Lee claimed there was no truth to the accusation and requested that a police detective escort the woman to the hallway to interrogate her further: "I want to know the details of all of this."11 In spite of his disagreements with Lee over law enforcement, Barker rushed to his defense, assuring the hearing that "At no time did the mayor ever tell me not to enforce the law. He always insisted that the law be followed to the letter." Perhaps Barker had forgotten about the differences the two men had had about raiding of private clubs. Commissioner Jake Garn added per­suasively that in a commission form of government "it wouldn't do any good to pay off just one commissioner . . . you would have to get to all of them."12 The most impressive evidence of police success in combating prostitution appeared the following year, 1971, when vice squad officers made 120 arrests in five weeks. Only 17 were woman prostitutes, while 5 were male juveniles and 98 were adult males. This concentrated drive to rid the city of professional prostitutes known to frequent the Second South district was a direct result of a decision to change tactics and pick up men for soliciting through a decoy system using nine women. The decoy was Barker's idea, and he claimed the city was cleaner than it had been in years.13 The emphasis on the solicitor instead of the prostitute became almost as controversial as prostitution itself. Lee was one of the critics and complained that Barker was always embarrassing him and other commissioners by forcing them to take stands on highly sensitive moral issues. Frequently, the commission supported 321 J. BRACKEN LEE Barker because no politician wanted the public to think he was "on the side of sin." As a result, Lee voted for bills that he knew were unconstitutional because a negative vote might be mis­understood. "Now he's down there arresting the men for solicit­ing," Lee protested, "when all in the world you have to do with these streetwalkers is keep arresting them." Lee maintained that the process of being arrested and getting an attorney over and over again eventually discouraged most prostitutes. According to Lee, Barker wanted to be "judge, jury, and everything else. I think he's a mental case, myself. Strange fella."14 Barker believed that Lee saw little wrong with prostitution or pornography-"if you wanted to do those things, you did them. He didn't enjoy them himself. I never knew a guy who was quite as dedicated to his wife as Brack Lee." Nevertheless, Barker regarded Lee as a good mayor who would have been "one of the great men of this country if you could have added a couple of attributes to him. He was always 'agin.'" Although he thought that Lee opposed programs with good reason, he very rarely produced a positive program to meet any problem in the com­munity. Lee operated on principle and had "moments of true greatness" as exemplified by his refusal to "give in" to the school­teachers at the 1964 Republican State Convention, even though he knew they could defeat him. On the other hand, Barker perceptively admitted that Lee had "no particular love for me." Therefore, when Lee was calling him a "louse," Barker remem­bered some of those moments of greatness and thought, "Hell, maybe he's right."15 Barker's colorful characterization of Lee's attitudes was essentially accurate. Lee's rather tolerant approach to vice and prostitution in Salt Lake City was substantially the same as his earlier approach had been to the same problems in Price. Allega­tions of payoffs were not substantiated in Salt Lake any more than they had been in Price. However, his public utterances and his behavior were more temperate in the more sensitive environ­ment of a large city. If Lee failed to exhibit any of "those moments of greatness" in his handling of vice and prostitution, he certainly demonstrated consistency and credibility. 322 VICE AND PROSTITUTION lSalt Lake Tribune, April 18, 1967. See also Deseret News, April 18, 1967. 2Deseret News, April 20, 1967, editorial. 3Deseret News, June 21, 1967. 4Ibid. ••Salt Lake Tribune, July 21, 1967. "Salt Lake Tribune, July 26, 1967. 7Salt Lake Tribune, August 2, 1967. See also Deseret News, August 2, 1967. sSalt Lake Tribune, September 18, 1967. See also Deseret News, Septem­ber 18, 1967. 9Salt Lake Tribune, July 31, 1970. «>Ibid. Lee's diatribe against the legal profession failed to amuse either the presi­dent of the Utah State Bar, J. Thomas Greene, or Utah's attorney general, Vernon Romney, both Republicans. Romney asserted that "Lawyers are more honest than the general public. They have a great number of controls on them." Romney accused Lee of literary license and exaggeration. Greene challenged Lee to name specific lawyers guilty of unethical or illegal conduct instead of making a blanket indictment. "Your vague and general charges, while perhaps popular from a political point of view, simply do not hold water," Greene said. He called Lee's comments "grossly unfair and misleading to the public." Sail Lake Tribune, August 27, 1970. "Salt Lake Tribune, July 31, 1970. 12Ibid. "Deseret News, July 15, 1971. 14Lee interview. 15Interview with James L. Barker, August 4, 1972, Salt Lake City. 323