This story was originally published by Daily Montanan: URL: https://dailymontanan.com This story has not been altered or edited. (C) Daily Montanan. Licensed for re-distribution through Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. ------------ City of Billings targeting legal massage therapists instead of going after criminals – Daily Montanan ['More From Author', 'April', 'Susan Carlson'] Date: 2022-04-27 00:00:00 In the April 20 article concerning the massage therapy lawsuit against the City of Billings, Mayor Bill Cole remarked that, “They (massage therapists) didn’t seem to want to compromise in any way.” He implied that we didn’t want to be inconvenienced. I disagree. I’ve been involved in writing, supporting or opposing massage therapy laws on the city or state level since 1983. Human trafficking and prostitution are crimes and should be treated as such. These criminals have hijacked the good name of massage therapy. We have had to put up with jokes and innuendos, lewd texts, and sex buyers coming to our places of business for years. So we know about inconvenience. However, inconvenience is hardly the word to describe being forced to give up our constitutional rights. And we have been willing to help. The city has been inflexible in their demands. The ordinance was already written by the time the city decided to meet with us. And the template used was from anti-trafficking groups who did not even work with massage therapists to develop a law that would work for all of us. And this law doesn’t. We were asked, basically to agree to put lipstick on a pig, and that’s not right. I attended the meeting where Mayor Cole specifically said “can’t you gals just take one for the team?” We offered at least four alternatives to the city of what they could do instead. And later, we offered a fifth. They rejected all of them, including enforcing current laws because of the cost and how it would inconvenience other people. In one case, the city simply refused to implement a state law that was passed for their benefit. HB749 (2019 session) allows city code inspectors and law enforcement to enter businesses and check for licenses. Since unlicensed practice is rampant in trafficking operations, we thought it a good place to start and was a very low-cost solution. Massage therapists supported this bill and showed up at every hearing in Helena. The anti-trafficking groups and people behind the ordinance did not. We also proposed a landlord education project which has been implemented elsewhere and works. It consists of approaching landlords with evidence that businesses are acting as sex parlors, educating them to the issue, and pressuring them to evict the business. This is also a low cost solution that has been 75% effective in some areas. In fact, a variation of this program was implemented in Billings and several sex parlors closed shortly afterward. We thought that formalizing the program would also be a good, low-cost way to impact the issue. The city refused because they did not want to inconvenience landlords renting to criminals. Another solution we offered was to enforce prostitution and anti-trafficking laws already on the books. Too expensive, they said. And another was to follow the examples of other states and cities that declared these businesses to be a public nuisance. They said it’s only a misdemeanor, completely ignoring the provisions in Montana law (MCA 27-30-204) that allow “removing or, if necessary, destroying the thing that constitutes the nuisance…” which would shut these places down. After the ordinance was enacted, the city brought in out-of-state trainers to help the city implement it in July 2021. During the training, trainers created a fake sex parlor business in Billings and posted it to a sex website. Penny Ronning posted on Facebook that, “Within minutes… One call after another came into our classroom…wanting to schedule time.” And yet, none of these leads were followed up, no arrests were made. As I’ve always said, if there is no demand, there’s no need for supply. The groundwork was laid for a demand sting, another one of our suggestions (to follow the laws already on the books), and yet the city did not want to inconvenience the sex buyers by following up or arresting them. No, the city and Mayor Cole are the ones who didn’t want to compromise and they didn’t want to inconvenience anyone but massage therapists. Massage therapists are very willing to work on solutions that don’t treat law-abiding state-licensed massage therapists like criminals or make massage therapists responsible for stopping human trafficking. Massage therapy, a healthcare profession, is not the problem. Our massage therapy businesses should not be treated any differently than any other law-abiding business in the city of Billings. No law-abiding citizen should be forced to forfeit their constitutional rights in order to make a living. I’m not a plaintiff in the lawsuit, but you can bet I’m cheering them on. Please support your local massage therapist. Susan Carlson is a licensed massage therapist in Billings. [END] [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2022/04/27/city-of-billings-targeting-legal-massage-therapists-instead-of-going-after-criminals/ Content is licensed through Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/