AMERICAN IDEAS, Page 22Vanquishing ViceA Smut Buster Battles Sin in the CityActivist Dan Hurlbut crusades to stamp out pornography andprostitution in HoustonBy 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."
