Police to move forward with naming prostitutes, johns

By: ROB O'DELL - Staff Writer | Tuesday, October 14, 2003 11:22 PM PDT ∞

OCEANSIDE ---- Police Chief Michael Poehlman said Tuesday that his department will proceed with plans for a program to publish the names of convicted prostitutes and their customers in local papers despite a recent decision by the North County Times not to carry the notices.

North County Times publisher Dick High said Monday that the paper would not carry the notices, which the Oceanside Police Department wanted to buy as advertisements in the classified section. The ads were to have listed the names of convicted prostitutes and their customers, or johns.

Poehlman said he hadn't contacted other local papers yet, such as the San Diego Union-Tribune and The Coast News, but said the department also plans to list those convicted of prostitution on its Internet Web site: www.oceansidepolice.com. He plans to start compiling the list today, but has not said when he'll start posting it on the Web site.

Poehlman said many business owners and residents have told him they support the program, and they want prostitution out of the city streets. He said the Police Department is "looking at every avenue we can so these people don't come here to do business."

He said naming prostitutes and johns will give the message: "We don't want you here."

Some business owners and residents cheered the measure, saying it could dry up clientele for the prostitutes who work local streets, primarily Coast Highway. Many residents and police officials also said most of the clients are not Marines or vagrants, but well-to-do residents from other cities.

Police officials said 82 women have been arrested so far this year in Oceanside for prostitution or for loitering with suspicion of prostitution, a charge only applied to convicted prostitutes. In 2002, a total of 135 women were charged with both crimes, police said.

Cynthia Chibante recently moved to Oceanside about a month ago, but said she has been followed home twice while walking in her new neighborhood off Missouri Street by men who thought she was a prostitute.

Chibante said she was glad to hear of the Police Department's plan to name prostitutes and johns because it made her feel the city was trying to clean up the prostitution problem.

"I thought nobody was noticing it," Chibante said, adding that she might have gotten that feeling because she just moved to the city. "To me the (Police Department proposal) was proof that the community cares and something is being done about it."

Chibante said the proposal to name prostitutes and their johns was something that should be in the local newspaper.

"It's our community newspaper, it's our problem. It should be in the paper," Chibante said. "The idea ... is a simple thing that could help."

High said several factors contributed to his decision not to run the advertisements. He described the ads as tacky, and said they would open up a "Pandora's box" of negative advertising.

Poehlman said the city has reduced prostitution over the last 10 years using undercover vice teams. He said the Police Department wires or watches undercover officers posing as prostitutes or johns, who then wait for suspects to solicit them. Sometimes the department rents a hotel room for its vice stings, he said.

He said the department's latest proposal is designed to help stamp out the remaining prostitution, which is worst along Coast Highway in the south end of the city.

Contact staff writer Rob O'Dell at (760) 901-4067, or rodell@nctimes.com.