Official: Massage parlors aren’t sex businesses

By ED RUNYAN

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Advertisements in out-of-town newspapers and items on the Internet may portray Warren as a place where sex can be purchased at massage parlors, but the city must treat them as legitimate businesses unless they are proved otherwise, the city’s safety- service director says.

“It’s not good for the image of the city,” Doug Franklin said of the ads. “We need to examine these businesses and make sure they’re following the laws.”

But Franklin said massage parlors are not sexually oriented businesses, despite their reputation, so legislation on such businesses is not the answer to that problem.

If they are breaking the law, the police department will have to root it out, Franklin said. The department has conducted undercover operations in the past, he added.

Franklin said the discussion Monday by city council’s health and welfare committee was designed mainly to address businesses such as those selling adult magazines and providing peep shows.

The committee’s chairman, Vince Flask, said he’d like the city to examine the possibility of establishing limits on where sexually oriented businesses can exist.

He asked Jim Ries of the city’s law department whether sexually oriented businesses can be restricted from certain roads.

Ries said the city cannot write regulations that deny sexually oriented businesses entirely, but a restriction can be written if it will improve residents’ health and welfare.

Ries and Bob Pinti, Warren’s deputy health commissioner, said Warren’s eight massage parlors are licensed, as are the people who work in them, and each building receives a couple of unannounced inspections each year to check to see that their practices are healthful.

Each employee providing massages has a background check and is checked for any communicable diseases, Pinti added.

Councilman Eddie Colbert, D-7th, from the city’s west side, noted that five of the eight massage parlors are in his ward, and some are right across the street from each other.

Franklin noted that despite the number of massage parlors in the city, the police department receives few complaints about them.