In a crackdown on potential illegal activities at massage parlors, the Morgan Hill City Council is tightening restrictions on these establishments in the wake of concerns that some of these businesses are serving as fronts for crimes like human trafficking and prostitution.
“The idea is, simply put, to legitimize the existing good actors, and keep the bad ones out,” said Matthew Mahood, Economic Development Director for Morgan Hill. “That’s the bottom line.”
Concerns began when the Morgan Hill Police Department received complaints from community members about assaults by massage therapists. The city also saw an uptick in new massage parlors, which jumped from 12 in 2009 to 21 in 2024. Several Morgan Hill massage parlors also had ratings on websites that catered to erotic massage.
The police department has executed multiple undercover sting operations that found instances of human trafficking and prostitution. However, these operations often found victims of human trafficking, instead of yielding the ring leaders behind them.
Businesses that were shut down would often pop up again under a new “straw owner” — someone who signs their name to the business to allow the real owner to operate anonymously — or victims of human trafficking would be shuffled to other illicit massage parlors elsewhere, officials said.
As a result, the Morgan Hill Police department shifted its focus from undercover sting operations to providing resources to the victims of human trafficking and seeking ways to prevent it.
“This is a very real problem,” said Morgan Hill police chief Shane Palsgrove. “It’s not right to prosecute the women who are being trafficked, we need to have something in place to shut down these organized crime locations. That’s what we’re after.”
The new ordinance, modeled after one adopted in Sunnyvale, is meant to prevent the illicit parlors from taking root in the first place.
To that effect, the stricter permitting process establishes a suite of new requirements for massage establishments, for instance, all massage therapists must be certified by the California Massage Therapy Council.
The new permit also prohibits obscuring front windows or putting locks on the doors to massage rooms, which are meant to discourage human trafficking and prostitution, respectively.
Finally, if a permit is revoked, the owner cannot open another massage establishment in the city and the storefront can’t be used as a another massage parlor for five years. “One of the issues that we’ve had in the past is that we’ve been able to shut down some of the illegal operations, but they just pop right back up,” said City Attorney Donald Larkin. These efforts are meant to prevent that.
Some city councilmembers expressed concerns that the extensive permitting process might punish law-abiding establishments. However, city officials assured that legitimate operations are likely already complying.
“I don’t believe that this is a burden to a legitimate day spa that provides massage service,” said Larkin. “All the things we’re asking they do already.”
The City council voted 4-0 Wednesday to repeal the previous ordinance on massage parlors and replace it with the new permitting process. The new ordinance is subject to final approval by the city council at the May 15 meeting. If adopted, the ordinance may go into effect by July 1, 2024.
More information on human trafficking and how to report it is available at countysheriff.sccgov.org/human-trafficking.