Code Enforcement Officer Expresses Frustration with Sheriff's Office over "Houses of Ill Repute

BRADENTON – A county code enforcement officer claims that the Manatee County Sheriff's Office has repeatedly ignored his warnings that nine of the "houses of ill repute" identified by the division remain open. "They are places of prostitution," he said.

Sheriff Brad Steube says the businesses, as opposed to the prostitutes, are the job of the county attorney's office to close.
 
At a county commission work session yesterday, Code Enforcement officer Pete Dewar spoke about the three establishments the Sheriff's Office did close and nine more that he was told by sheriff's they "lacked the resources" to investigate. The investigations can take a long time, county officials acknowledged.

"It would be good if we could get the Sheriff's office a little more engaged," said Carol Whitmore, chair of the Manatee County Board of Commissioners.

"At one point we had a very good relationship with them.  I don't know what happened," said another official.  "The county has not been given a status update by the Sheriff's office," he said.

"They have limited resources, too," the official conceded..

But Manatee County Sheriff Brad Steube disputed Dewar's facts. "We have made 13 different cases against 12 different locations in the last several months," he said. "I don't know where Pete is coming from." Steube said eight of the cases were for acts of prostitution and five for giving massages without state massage certification.

When confronted by the Sheriff about their statements, the officials denied making them.  However, notes taken by the board records staff confirmed they had.
 
Steube said his officers met with Dewar on Monday to move a joint investigation between the Sheriff's Office and the Code Enforcement Division forward. "I don't know what his frustration is," Steube said.
 
Steube pointed out some of the hard facts of such investigations. As an example, he said, if his officers went to Cupid's, the first establishment on Dewar's list, three times over three days and found three girls in violation of prostitution laws, and he could then Mirandize the three and get statements from them to the effect that the owner of the establishment was taking a cut from their activities, he could take that information to the state attorney's office and get the place shut down.

"But the fact is that they won't do that," he said of the girls.
 
How will those arrests affect the establishments? "It will not effect it at all," Steube said.
The burden is now on the County Attorney's office to make a case that the establishments have violated county ordinances and can be shut down under Nuisance Abatement laws.
 
"This is a joint investigation," he emphasized. "Our [part of the] investigation has been completed," he said.
 
All the prostitution cases were forwarded to the office of state's attorney Earl Moreland, he said. Those are criminal cases; the closure of the establishments would likely be a civil action brought by the County Attorney, since incriminating evidence is so hard to secure.
 
Cases that are in the courts may or may not close the locations, depending on pleas, settlements and convictions, and may only lead to convictions against specific sex workers.
 
Asked if he was adamant that the nine are places of prostitution," Dewar said "Yes. I have investigated them." Though at Commissioner Whitmore's interjection that they "may be", he ultimately amended the statement,.