Three out-of-town women were arrested Thursday on suspicion of prostitution, the latest in what’s become an annual crackdown of massage businesses in the Santa Clarita Valley by a specialty team of detectives battling human trafficking.
Members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s Human Trafficking Bureau had been investigating massage businesses in the SCV when they made the arrests, Lt. Dan Stanley said.
The raids were aimed at five businesses and carried out across the SCV with the help of other law enforcement agencies.
The alleged violations occurred at three of the targeted businesses, Stanley said, while the “other two checked out fine.”
“The Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task force, LASD Licensing detail, City Code Enforcement, along with deputies from Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station participated in the operation,” he said.
The arrests were made after the three suspects allegedly solicited money for sex from undercover sheriff’s detectives.
The suspects, each of them identified as a massage therapist, were arrested on misdemeanors at businesses on:
- 23300 block Valencia Boulevard, Valencia
- 25000 block Peachland Avenue, Newhall
- 19900 Soledad Canyon Road, Canyon Country
They ranged in age from 47 to 56, from Baldwin Park, Alhambra and Monterey Park.
An almost identical sting operation was carried out just over a year ago by members of the same task force, when three SCV massage businesses — different from the ones hit Thursday -— were also investigated.
The massage parlor crackdown in September 2017 led enforcement officers to at least one massage parlor on Soledad Canyon Road in Canyon Country and another in Newhall, between Canyon Crest Drive and Meadowridge Drive. Officials did not reveal the location of the third parlor.
More than a dozen law enforcement officers, including plain clothes detectives and uniformed deputies, were seen Tuesday walking in and out of the massage business with city officials.
Two of the three prostitution suspects arrested in last year’s operation – one aged 53, the other 42 – were identified in arrest reports as residents of Monterey Park.
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