Read the whole article in The San Francisco Chronicle…

On prostitution in San Francisco
While city leaders look the other way

Spot a massage parlor in San Francisco, and chances are 1 in 3 that the storefront operation is a brothel. The women working inside are often near-captives, lured in many cases from Asia with false promises of good-paying jobs.

It’s no secret – not to city leaders or law enforcement – yet next to nothing is done about this flagrant trade and the sex trafficking behind it. Federal agents and city vice squad officers have made arrests but barely dented the problem. These busts rarely lead to parlor shutdowns.

A lone city health inspector, charged with checking on safety and hygiene rules, turns in reports indicating the lingerie-clad hostesses, mirrored walls and bubbling hot tubs are part of anything but a health-oriented business. His city department sidesteps the warning signs and arrest reports, saying its role is to oversee health licenses, not prostitution laws.

Meanwhile, the businesses, concentrated in the downtown and Tenderloin areas, continue to operate. How brazen is it?

On a ride-along with city investigators two years ago, Mayor Gavin Newsom walked through the door of one operation and encountered a sex act between a female employee and male customer. That it happened not once, but twice. One of the businesses, by the way, is still open.

Why the disconnect between city laws and this illegal sex trade? Because City Hall lacks the will and leadership in a pass-the-buck tangle of excuse making. For years, little beyond talk was directed at the issue.

Start with the mayor, whose two encounters qualify him as a veteran in the brothel wars. He stood outside the Sun Spa on Geary Boulevard last October and denounced the business as a “slave camp” because of the treatment endured by the immigrant women indoors.

He’s entirely right, but he needs to follow through. His staff is now taking the first steps to shut down the so-called spas, health clubs and rub-down parlors. Possibly next month, landlords and business operators at locations where police have made arrests will get warning letters.

The next step will be passage of new laws making the lines of authority clearer in who is responsible for cracking down on the sex trade.