Roseville adopts new massage business regulations - Press Tribune Newspaper

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Given frequent complaints about prostitution at local massage parlors, the city of Roseville adopted a new ordinance this month to help law enforcement crack down.

The ordinance, which amends part of the city’s municipal code that deals with massage services, gives police authority to penalize or shut down businesses that sell sex acts, and it holds the owners responsible. Specifically, it requires business owners to hold a city business license and liability insurance, provide acknowledgement of the business from the property owner, submit to a background check, maintain a minimum level of training among their staff, take health and safety measures and refrain from sexually suggestive advertising.

According to Deputy City Attorney Michael Christensen, penalties for violations can include warnings, criminal citations, and suspension or revocation of permits. If a business loses its permit, the holder cannot reapply for one year, and no massage businesses will be allowed in the same location for one year.

Council voted 3-0 to pass the ordinance after a first reading on May 17, and formally approved it June 7 via consent calendar. The ordinance will go into effect after 30 days, on July 7. Businesses will have 60 days from that point to apply for the new permits, which cost $28 the first time and $25 for renewal, not counting liability insurance and fingerprinting fees for the applicant.

Police Chief Daniel Hahn prefaced the first reading by describing why the ordinance was necessary.

“We believe this is a critical step in our local, city ability to control sex trafficking and related activities in our city,” he said, before the vote. “We’re no different than any other city, we do have these sorts of activities, and right now we’re very limited on how we can, at the local level, control and eliminate that.”

Prompted by a question from Vice Mayor Bonnie Gore, Hahn clarified that his department would not be putting all massage businesses under a microscope systematically, but responding to already-identified crimes.

“If there was a business … practicing prostitution, that’s what we would be looking for in the (license) revocation process,” Hahn said.

For details about the problem he called on Sgt. Dave Buelow, with the city’s Vice and Narcotics Enforcement Team. According to Buelow, there are an estimated 496 massage providers — people, not businesses — in the city of Roseville; 121 massage businesses with a license from the city; and at least 15 businesses associated with favorable online reviews for prostitution activity.

Buelow added that his department has five open investigations generated by citizen tips about suspected prostitution activities in massage businesses.

“We have another 30 here that would be unvetted, meaning we don’t know if they’re actually doing the act or not, so we’re dealing with a rather substantial impact to our legitimate massage parlor industry, based on the illegitimate component of this,” he said.

Assistant Chief Jim Maccoun also weighed in on what he called “very regrettable” but necessary small-business regulations, explaining that in the state of California, if your work requires you to touch or manipulate someone else’s body, you usually have to be regulated. He gave the example of barbers, who have to be licensed, background-checked, trained and inspected for sanitation; but none of that exists in the massage industry, he said.

In 2008, the state created a voluntary certification process exempting massage therapists from local permit requirements if they were certified by the California Massage Therapy Council, or CAMTC. This law had the unintended consequence of making it harder for municipalities to regulate illicit massage businesses.

According to a city staff report, the statewide Massage Therapy Act of 2015 returned some authority to local jurisdictions regarding land use, permitting and enforcement of health and safety requirements. The report said Roseville proposed a massage ordinance amendment in September 2015 that would have required all massage business owners to get CAMTC certification, but public feedback sent the city back to the drawing board. Specifically, many business owners said the ordinance should focus on closing illicit businesses instead of placing more burdensome regulations on legitimate operators.

Maccoun said Roseville’s new ordinance does this by placing the onus for illegal conduct on business owners instead of individual employees. What it doesn’t do, and can’t due to restrictions of state law, is require CAMTC certification or local permits for individual employees, necessitate a doctor’s prescription for services, or forbid mobile massage providers from visiting customers at home.

Executive Director Jenny Davidson of Stand Up Placer, an advocacy group for victims of abuse and sex trafficking, condoned the ordinance and expects it will have a “huge” impact locally.

“This code will allow (law enforcement) to shut down a business when something like that is happening, and I think it’s fantastic,” she said. “It holds the business responsible.”

Stand Up Placer was designated in April 2016 to serve human trafficking victims in Placer County, and since then, according to Davidson, the organization has taken in more than 100 victims and provided over 6,000 services.

She said the actual number of trafficking arrests in Roseville are low, because it’s a lot easier to prove prostitution than sex trafficking — the difference being that in trafficking, someone is being made, through force, fraud or coercion, to perform sexual acts for money — but the scrutiny of Roseville’s new ordinance could change that.

“When (massage businesses) are advertising on some of the shadier websites, and they have people dressed in lingerie advertising a massage, you and I know that’s not what they’re advertising. (The ordinance) changes how people are allowed to advertise. It changes what they’re allowed to be wearing when they’re supposed to be providing (massage services),” Davidson said. “They shouldn’t be dressed in lingerie, they shouldn’t be dressed in open-toed shoes or miniskirts or whatever. There are certain things (police) are looking for that are alarming.”

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