Friday, July 23, 1999 | 11:20 a.m.
Every night on Fremont Street and the Strip gamblers are trying to beat the odds.
They aren't playing blackjack, roulette or craps, but a game that deals out robbery, disease and murder.
Just like with casino games, the key for players in the risky game of prostitution is getting out before the odds catch up with them.
Since December 1997 Metro Police and the Las Vegas Municipal Court have been providing people charged with soliciting prostitution a chance to beat the odds with the nation's second-largest "johns' school."
The program puts the offenders through a day of learning about prostitutes, pimps and the world the men became a part of when they tried to pay for sex.
"Prostitution is a subculture that most people don't see, but in that world everyone is a victim, from the girls to the babies to the tricks, you're all easy prey," Metro Vice detective Leon Glines tells the men in the monthly classes. "These girls wind up dead in ravines, and you can wind up robbed, with AIDS or dead yourself.
"This is the world you became a part of when you approached that girl on the street. A world of violence."
Of the 591 men who have been through the program, only two have been arrested again for soliciting prostitution.
"We don't want to pick them up again," Glines said. "Most of the time they leave the school saying they would never have solicited if they had known what we teach them here. We're not here to beat them up or put down their morals, but to educate them about what they've gotten into."
Municipal Court Alternative Sentencing Coordinator Roxane Clark-Murphy points to the almost nonexistent recidivism rate as proof that the school is working.
"The indicator that this program is working is that the detectives recognize a lot of the guys in the class, but don't see them again after they go through the course," Murphy said. "Knowing that they aren't seeing these guys back out there soliciting again is a good indicator of a strong program."
Murphy, a psychologist, was skeptical about the school until she visited the first and biggest johns' school in San Francisco.
"I truly did not understand prostitution and hadn't looked at it in terms of a human issue," Murphy said. "I didn't realize how women could be pressed into this and the cost the crime takes on a community."
The San Francisco school was started in 1995 and Las Vegas, Toronto, Nashville, Tenn., and other cities have used it as a model for their own schools.
In exchange for attending the school, the offenders get a chance to have their prostitution charges reduced to jaywalking if they stay out of trouble for six months.
After the six months the arrest record can be sealed, and after five years the court's record of the jaywalking charge can be sealed, Deputy City Attorney Martin Orsinelli said.
The program costs each offender $400, but it saves them from a misdemeanor conviction for soliciting prostitution, which carries a sentence of up to six months in jail and as much as a $1,000 fine in Nevada.
"It's like a second chance, but I guarantee if someone who has been through the class is arrested again for prostitution the city will be looking for jail time," Deputy City Attorney Martin Orsinelli said.
Twenty-three offenders filed into Judge Seymore Brown's City Hall courtroom at 8 a.m. for June's school session, including a man who plans to use the school as a way to put his life back in order.
"You can come into this with a positive or negative attitude," said a business man attending the class. "A lot of the guys in here just want to get in and get their embarrassment erased, but I'm trying to prove I can beat my addiction.
"A lot of these guys are addicted to sex, prostitutes and the lifestyle that's out there. It's going to be hard, but this is the start of me staying away from that.
Metro Vice Lt. Terry Davis and Glines greet the 23 johns as they find seats on the courtroom's wood benches.
"I'm a professional dirt finder, and I can tell you that you'll find what you look for, whether it's dirt or roses" Glines tells the group. "You guys were looking for dirt and now you're here."
The class begins with Orsinelli explaining what the men are facing legally and takes them through the paperwork they must fill out to have the record of their crime sealed.
From there Glines gives the group a lesson in pimps and the lifestyle of the prostitutes they are picking up.
"Once these little girls get into this their physical hygiene goes to hell, but they won't tell you anything's wrong with them because they have to bring back a certain amount of money to their pimp or be beaten," Glines said.
Glines also narrates a slide show of crime scenes and the bodies of dead hookers reminding the johns, "that little girl could have been with you the night before."
The class gets a lunch hour, but many return wishing they would have passed on lunch as Marlo Tonge, a Clark County Health District outreach worker, begins her talk on the various diseases that some prostitutes carry.
AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes and other sexually transmitted viruses are explained by Tonge who also uses graphic slides to showing the effects of the diseases.
Then two former prostitutes share their stories with the men.
"I quit five years ago because I got to the point where I just couldn't take my clothes off for another guy," one of the former prostitutes said. "It was a revolving door between turning a trick and getting loaded. I wouldn't shower for weeks or require condoms, but you guys didn't care.
"You may think, 'Hey they're offering,' but if you guys aren't out there the prostitutes can't work."
Murphy finishes the class with a discussion and asks the men to share their feelings about the class and what landed them there.
"I work in a business where I come into contact with dancers and people in the sex business, so for me it's a curiosity thing," said the businessman after he finished the day of class. "The school has been enlightening to me and the people at alternative sentencing have been available to talk, and have helped me get into therapy."
That enlightenment is the purpose of the school, Glines said.
"It's a lot like mowing a lawn," Glines said. "If you don't cut it day after day it grows into more and more of a problem.
"We know we're never going to stop prostitution or stamp it out completely but were doing our best to keep cutting it down."
archive
