Adult book store raids net drug, lewdness, prostitution busts

August 22, 2008
By Jeff McShan / 11 News

HOUSTON -- For months, the Houston Police Department’s vice squad has been raiding adult bookstores and arcades across the city. The raids, including the latest at the Houston 420-Talk of the Town on Thursday night, netted plenty of arrests of those patronizing the stores.

What are the police finding inside these places? It’s a lot more than adult videos and magazines.

Often, the arrests are for illegal drugs. But more often the busts are for public lewdness, indecent exposure and prostitution.

And that’s just the customers.

At every bust so far, detectives have found the owners of the sexually-oriented bookstores are operating illegally because they don’t have the proper city license.

That’s the main reason police are conducting the raids.

Thursday night’s raid uncovered that Talk of the Town has not only not complied with the city’s sexually-oriented business ordinance; it hasn’t even applied for the proper license.

Since April, the HPD vice squad visited eight adult bookstores and arcades.

It’s not easy catching the illegal activity during these raids, though.

At one raid location, the clerk at the store’s cash register was able to push a button to change all the pornographic movies that were showing in the back into a live feed of the security cameras outside the store.

Luckily, vice officers were already staking out the place and knew what was going on inside.