Anatomy of a Raid

I've never been in a raid myself, but I know quite a few girls who have. So here's what I know and heard.

Before ending up here at The Business, I worked at a place that had recently been taken over by a new owner. This guy has no idea what he was doing and instead of acting like a manager, he acted like a pimp. Not only did he not mind the girls doing full service in session, he actually encouraged it. So the place basically went from massage parlor to brothel overnight. And when this asshole told us we had to fuck him to keep our jobs - most of us quit.

That place got raided about a couple months later. Not because any of us squealed on him, but because his business began to attract the wrong kind of customer. That's one of the main differences between the clientele of a massage parlor and a brothel. In a parlor, the customers are mostly guys who are just thrilled to see some boobies and get a handjob. In a brothel, you'll get criminals spending their latest haul, and drug dealers looking to score a few new customers.

So to answer some of your questions, yes the cops do come in with guns drawn and making a lot of noise. This is for 2 reasons. First, they want everyone in the building to know that this is a raid and not a robbery. So anyone packing (and I will neither confirm nor deny whether we typically pack or not) will think twice before reaching for their own stuff. And second, they need to protect themselves just in case someone is dumb enough to pull a weapon (ya never know if that big spender you just had in session got all his money from knocking over a liquor store).

Raids happen super fast. They have to if they want to actually catch anyone in the act. Unlike a drug bust, we don't have any evidence that can be instantly flushed down a toilet. Instead, they want to catch the girls (and guys) naked in session. That way they can at least get you for public lewdness/indecency/etc. for having 2 naked bodies in the same room. Judges don't tend to buy the "...but she was topless for therapeutic reasons!" defense. Believe it or not, they go for the lesser charge of indecency because it's hard to get the charge of solicitation to stick. Mainly due to lack of evidence.

Now before some of you start crying "bullshit" because you read in the paper that the girls in a raid were all charged with prostitution - that's because they had all solicited undercover cops before the raid even started. Unless they have on camera a guy offering money for sex, there's no evidence to prove anything. There can be a pile of money on the counter, a guy tied to a bed with a gag in his mouth and a dildo up his ass, and a trashcan full of used condoms - there's no real evidence of prostitution. My friends that have been caught up in raids all had those charges thrown out in court.

HOWEVER... that doesn't mean that no one's going to jail. With enough "prostitution paraphernalia" lying around, they can usually bust the owner for running a house of "ill repute." The girls can all be arrested and have the shit scared out of them. And depending on the true nature of the raid, the customers may or may not be dragged through the streets for all the neighbors to see. At the very least, the guys will be questioned and released with the promise to never show their penises in public again. At worst, they'll be actually arrested and charged with public lewdness, with their names sent to the local paper.

That's exactly what happened around here a number a years ago. A place got raided not for the girls, but for the high-profile customers. No one famous, but a couple of business-owners and community-leader types. We all guessed they had a few enemies looking to take them down.

As for the businesses themselves - this is a free country and there is no law against offering massage services to the public. The cops can't confiscate your building. In fact, one of the first AMPs to be busted a year ago petitioned to reopen shortly afterwards. The owners reasoning - "I didn't know the girls were all illegal immigrants from Korea having sex for money." So if the place doesn't reopen under a different name, it'll probably just pack up and move across town.

Now why would anyone running an illegal business want to stay in the exact same notorious spot you may ask? For the same reason any good business would - location, location, location. If you've spent a few years building up a clientele at that address, why confuse anyone by moving it? Face it - EVERY town has 'that place" that's rumored to be a brothel/parlor/crackhouse/etc. And notoriety is the kind of advertising that money can't buy. So if you can't reopen at your old address, someone else will.

So if we're taken down tomorrow, chances are I'd post bail and be on my computer telling you all about it that night. Or maybe not since the DOJ is monitoring this website.

CJ