Local News in Brief : AIDS Ads Aim at Hookers

A publicity campaign aimed at instilling prostitutes and their customers with the fear of AIDS was launched Thursday by Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs.

Posters, billboards and bus bench ads would be placed along Sepulveda Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley and in other undetermined areas of the city, if the City Council allocates $12,000 for the program, a Wachs spokesman said.

The signs also would warn of the likelihood of arrest, noting that police in recent months have focused their undercover efforts on customers as well as prostitutes.

“What we have is a buyer-seller relationship,” Los Angeles Police Capt. Mark Stevens said. “We try to remove the buyers and sellers, but we also try to destroy that link in their relationship.”

One billboard would show a gravestone inscribed with “AIDS” next to the slogan, “The Price of Prostitution Just Went Up.” Another would show the back of a handcuffed man with the message, “If You’re Into Prostitution, We’re Into Handcuffs . . . LAPD Undercover Vice.”