The State - News from July 12, 1987

San Francisco police, with cooperation from some of the city’s finest hotels, have hooked up video cameras inside some hotel rooms to record prostitutes soliciting sex. Police officials confirmed use of the practice, calling it “very effective and within the law,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Police said undercover male officers, posing as tourists, are solicited by prostitutes and then go into the wired rooms. Usually, the prostitute states her price and is arrested within minutes after entering the room. However, police sometimes videotaped the prostitutes getting undressed, said Julie Pearl, a graduate of the University of California’s Hastings College of Law.