TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/052989/05298900.047

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 8KB | 144 lines

                                                                                AMERICAN IDEAS, Page 22

Vanquishing Vice


A Smut Buster Battles Sin in the City Activist Dan Hurlbut
crusades to stamp out pornography and prostitution in Houston

By Richard Woodbury


    "Bust!"  With that crack of an undercover agent's voice on
the Harris County sheriff's radio, an unmarked white Chrysler
rips out of a gravel driveway. From other directions, four cars
race down a seedy strip of highway toward an abandoned gray
house. A vice raid is under way on Houston's north side, and
alongside the sergeant in the Chrysler's front seat, citizen Dan
Hurlbut, smut buster, unsheathes a dark cigar and relishes the
upcoming catch.

    In a city known for world-class pornography, Hurlbut has
carved a swath of reform. An executive-search consultant in his
more mundane life, the burly 59-year-old launched a second
career as an anti-vice crusader a decade ago. He began by
leading a covey of angry citizens in stamping out sex shops in
his own blue-collar neighborhood of Aldine. He then expanded the
drive, harnessing the muscle of police and prosecutors to close
nude bars, massage parlors and so-called modeling studios across
a stretch of Harris County. Today, thanks largely to Hurlbut,
service roads and strips that once glittered with flagrant
fronts for prostitution are clean. Hurlbut is credited as the
prime mover in closing 60 sex shops and preventing dozens of
others from opening.

    In the battle against sin, a warrior is only as good as his
freshest kill, and that is why Hurlbut is riding shotgun this
gray Friday afternoon during an assault on a trafficker in lewd
videos. At the house, tires screech, and officers leap out with
drawn .45s. "If anything's going to go wrong, it's in the first
two minutes," says Hurlbut, taking it all in from the Chrysler.
Nothing does, but the raid nets only a few small-time video
wholesalers. However, clues quickly lead deputies eight miles
away to a cramped trailer that proves a cornucopia of hard-core
videos and books.

    As investigators gather evidence and make more arrests,
Hurlbut browses through rows of Hefty Mamas, Leg Show, Bizarre
Fantasies and other beckoning titles with the indifference of
a hardened vice cop. "Victimless crime -- crap," he whispers.
"Follow me." The white-haired Hurlbut eases his 225-lb. frame
through an entrance marked PEEP SHOWS and into a darkened warren
of viewing rooms. In each of the empty plywood cubicles, VCRs
still hum, and the trappings of recent sexual activity abound.
"The average guy has no idea what scumbags these places are,"
he snaps.

    Though the raid is a success, the skin shop is open again
in a matter of hours. That doesn't faze Hurlbut, who has lost
his share of go-rounds with crafty defense lawyers. He'll simply
try again. "Sex shops are like fungus," he says. "If we don't
apply the antibiotic, they'll sprout again anywhere." For
Hurlbut, the medicine involves marshaling public awareness and
applying legal pressure. "We're not on a moral crusade," he
insists. "The porn people are folks like you and me, trying to
make a living. We just want them to obey the law."

    In the state of Texas, as elsewhere, the laws on
pornography and prostitution are murky. The general benchmark
for defining obscenity is "contemporary community standards."
In Harris County a district attorney's committee helps interpret
that for law-enforcement authorities. Child porn is outright
prohibited. So are publications that display lewd pictures of
genitals and penetration. Alcohol laws are sometimes used as
further controls. For example, nude clubs aren't illegal in
themselves, but they are when they dispense liquor. Hurlbut's
talent lies in knowing just whom to lobby and how to use a
panoply of legal restrictions, including obscure statutes on
public nuisances, to battle smut. Working behind the scenes, he
puts heat on local council members, nudges prosecutors and
lobbies state legislators. He tips cops on new sex shops and
sometimes goes undercover, posing as a customer, in bottomless
joints to gather evidence. He feeds officials other information
gleaned from a network of local eyes and ears he has roused in
speeches to civic groups.

    There's nothing very imaginative about his strategy, but it
works because of his tenacity. When, for instance, a reluctant
county commissioner failed to move against a nude modeling
studio, Hurlbut brought TV cameras to the site to coax him. When
a prosecutor refused to act on cases, Hurlbut prodded him with
a scathing letter. A soft judge began handing out tougher
sentences after receiving similar mail from Hurlbut and his
allies. When Houston police had trouble combatting an invasion
of Asian modeling studios -- blatant fronts for prostitution --
Hurlbut helped organize a city-county task force.

    "Dan can get things done that we can't," explains County
Vice Sergeant Nick Griffin. "When he makes a call, things
happen." As Hurlbut sees it, the law-enforcement system does
work: "You just have to kick it, like a bucking horse, into gear
sometimes."

    It helps to be a police buff and friend to local lawmen.
Hurlbut, who holds membership in the Texas Narcotics Officers
Association, is an expert at working with police and smoothing
out turf battles among enforcement agencies. Three years ago,
he secured a drug dog for sheriff's officers. His annual
backyard barbecue has evolved into a sort of smut fighters'
summit. The mobile phone in his brown Caprice buzzes with calls
from vice cops as he tools down Houston's Airline Drive on a
windy morning. Once a seamy strip of skin palaces, the highway
is now a boring procession of convenience stores and
auto-wrecking yards. Hurlbut points out his triumphs: across
from the Baptist church he attends is the former site of an
infamous massage parlor. He closed it with a little-known
public-nuisance statute. Down the road, another skin house is
shuttered for liquor-code violations. Farther on is a defunct
girlie joint that lost its lease after Hurlbut put the screws
on the property owner.

    Hurlbut's campaign was originally driven by the threat to
property values -- particularly to his own 1 1/2-acre spread --
posed by the encroaching sex shops and bottomless bars, as well
as the fear that the neighborhood was becoming unsafe. Now he
claims a more abstract purpose. "I'm protecting my right to
bitch," he explains. "You've got to get involved, or you don't
have the right to complain."

    Porn's big profits ensure that Hurlbut will never lack for
work. The station wagon is now deep in the piney woods
northeast of the city as he searches vainly for the site of
another nude bar, one that he has chased from two other
prospective locations. "We'll get him sooner or later," he
chuckles. On the drive home, he wheels up to a fading stucco
relic aside the four-lane. Shut down long ago, the nude club's
blue canopy still flaps amid the weeds and litter, and a garish
neon sign towers skyward. "Twenty warrants for prostitution and
narcotics," he recalls. "Public-nuisance law and county
ordinance. We sent them packing."

    That, to Hurlbut, is what local activism is all about. "Ten
years ago," he recalls, "people thought this filth was just
something that came with the urban landscape. Now there's a
consciousness that we don't have to stand by and let it happen."