Vanquishing Vice

By 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."