Alarm Sounds in Thousand Oaks Over Sex Video Supplier

Nowhere on the quiet, mostly affluent streets of Thousand Oaks can you find the strip bars and adult bookstores that mark some boulevards of Los Angeles. No theaters offer sex films; no massage parlors invite the prurient pursuits of customers.

But many in Thousand Oaks, with its family neighborhoods, many churches and a bent toward conservative politics, believe that their suburban barrier against vice has been breached.

In recent weeks, the city has become the scene of an extraordinary outcry against obscenity, triggered by the arrival of a videotape reproduction company that processes sexually explicit films.

City officials, lacking legal standing to reject an occupancy permit for Creative Video Services, say they will prosecute the company if its videotapes are considered obscene.

The company’s move into the city’s Newbury Park area, where it spent $2 million to create a state-of-the-art video reproduction facility, prompted some residents to form an anti-pornography group, Citizens Against Pornography. It is led by a retired agent for the FBI, Homer E. Young, who was the agency’s national field coordinator for obscenity cases.

With only 35 members, the group has succeeded in focusing the city’s attention on Creative Video Services, accusing the company and its head, Noel Charles Bloom of Hidden Hills, of spreading lewd entertainment across the United States.

Group of Businesses

Bloom is chairman of NCB Entertainment Group of Woodland Hills, a collection of media concerns that includes Creative Video Services.

Law enforcement officials contend that Bloom is a major distributor of sexually explicit videotapes and films. He has been arrested numerous times on suspicion of selling obscene materials. But in recent interviews, city, state and federal law enforcement authorities familiar with Bloom’s activities could not point to any convictions on pornography-related charges.

Bloom’s Beverly Hills attorney, John H. Weston, said Bloom, 43, was innocent of all earlier charges. With the exception of two obscenity convictions against companies Bloom was affiliated with, “Every case has been dismissed,” Weston said.

Despite Creative Video’s statements that very little, less than 10%, of its video volume is sexually explicit in nature, the company’s presence has struck at the core of Thousand Oaks’ suburban sensibilities.

The city’s growth to 94,000 residents was powered by the flight of families and retirees from the Los Angeles Basin and the San Fernando Valley who were searching for a tranquil atmosphere away from crime and crowding.

“It’s like a hometown you had when you were a kid,” said Marilyn Wade, 34, a Newbury Park homeowner and vice chairman of the anti-smut group.

Group members are worried that Creative Video’s presence may signal a shift of some sex-related businesses from Los Angeles to Ventura County.

The San Fernando Valley, in particular, is often called the nation’s center of adult entertainment. A Los Angeles police tally notes that of the top 48 distributors nationwide of pornographic films and videotapes, 38 are in Los Angeles County, 25 of those in the San Fernando Valley.

“If we don’t act now, we’re going to have a place like the Valley that’s nationally known as a haven for pornographers,” Wade remarked.

At an emotional public forum Monday night, which included one audience member invoking prayer against the threat of pornography, Wade told an audience of 200, “Before you leave here tonight, I want you to have a sense of the warfare we’re in.

“Let members of the pornography community know we won’t permit the onslaught of garbage into our town.”

Mayor Fiore on Panel

The forum’s panel included Mayor Alex T. Fiore, who vowed to prosecute Creative Video if city authorities learn that obscene videotapes are reproduced at the 120,000-square-foot former computer assembly factory.

“God, I wish we had the tools to stop it at the border,” Fiore said, referring to the council’s frustration in approving the firm’s move. “Our City Council has to abide by the law.”

The approval was granted in February after City Attorney Mark Sellers told council members that blocking the company from commencing business in the city would restrain the firm’s constitutional right to free speech, opening up the city to First Amendment lawsuits.

But that has not quieted the protest, which Weston, Bloom’s lawyer since 1970, charged is “grossly unfair and very uninformed.”

Weston stressed that Creative Video’s business handles relatively few adult videotapes and that the company does not make films, but reproduces master tapes for clients, including some in the NCB group.

He said the company does most of its business in family-oriented entertainment, noting that Bloom has the exclusive rights for distributing such children’s video programs as “Care Bears” and “Strawberry Shortcake,” as well as the feature movie “Supergirl.”

Outgrew Former Plant

Creative Video moved, Weston added, after it outgrew its Woodland Hills plant and found relatively inexpensive facilities in Newbury Park well-suited to housing its reproduction machinery.

Citizens Against Pornography, meanwhile, has begun circulating petitions around the Conejo Valley protesting the “licensing and activities of Noel Charles Bloom,” labeling him a “purveyor of hard-core pornography.”

The group has affiliated itself with Citizens for Decency through Law, a Phoenix-based anti-pornography organization that provides legal advice to cities investigating dealers in sexually explicit motion pictures, magazines and mail-order publications.

The Thousand Oaks chapter, dubbed “Porn Busters” by one skeptical local newspaper columnist, plans to pressure city and sheriff’s officials to prosecute Creative Video, and may hold a protest march this summer.

“We are committed to getting these people out of town,” Wade said.

The city has long fostered a hostile stance toward sex-related businesses.

The council in 1973 adopted an ordinance that bans topless or bottomless bars by permitting nudity only in theatrical performances. And in 1979, the council approved a law requiring that news racks be covered with opaque screens if their front page pictures are sexually explicit.

Staff Study Ordered

As a result of Creative Video’s move into the city, Fiore requested Tuesday that the council order staff to study ordinances that would zone adult movie theaters--should they come to Thousand Oaks--into specific sectors away from homes, schools and churches.

“I’m trying to get something in place in case someone moves in,” the mayor said.

The city will also research the legality of requiring video stores to deny minors access to shopping areas carrying adult videocassettes.

In a further move, council members told Sellers to investigate the owners of news racks near the Newbury Park post office for a possible obscenity crackdown. Some local residents object to the sale of newspapers that contain depictions of sex acts.

In this emotionally charged atmosphere, Ventura County sheriff’s investigators are attempting to determine if the Newbury Park facility has begun, in fact, turning out sexually explicit videotapes.

If tapes are found that portray obscene sexual activities, as defined by two decades of California court decisions, prosecutors will take action, said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Oscar Fuller, who serves as police chief of Thousand Oaks.

Various Categories Listed

Lawyers and investigators in the field say that to be considered obscene under the law, the materials generally need to depict child sex, bestiality, sadomasochism, extreme bondage, rape, defecation or urination.

Under legislation signed into law last week by Gov. George Deukmejian that will take effect Jan. 1, prosecutors will have to show that the material “lacks significant literary, artistic, political, educational or scientific value.”

The law broadens the state’s definition of obscenity and is likely to encourage more prosecutions, but also engenders time-consuming court tests.

Bloom until recently owned Caballero Control Corp., a Canoga Park firm considered a giant among adult film manufacturers and distributors.

According to the February, 1986, issue of Adult Video News, a trade publication, Bloom has sold the privately held Caballero to two company officers, President Al Bloom (not related to Noel Bloom), and Vice President Howard Klein.

Los Angeles Police Sgt. Don Smith, a 14-year veteran of the department’s administrative vice division, said Bloom was arrested at least five times during the 1970s and ‘80s on suspicion of distributing obscene matter. The police sergeant could not recall any convictions.

Indicted in Miami

In 1980, as part of the renowned MIPORN investigation, a 2 1/2-year FBI probe of organized crime links to the pornography industry that led to 45 indictments, Bloom was indicted by a Miami grand jury for interstate transportation of obscene material and conspiracy to violate federal obscenity laws.

According to Marcella Cohen, a U. S. Justice Department attorney who prosecuted several MIPORN cases, Bloom allegedly shipped obscene videotapes and 8-millimeter films from the “Swedish Erotica” series from his Los Angeles company, California International Distributors, to FBI detectives posing as customers in Miami.

But charges against him were dropped in 1983 when the key witness was arrested for shoplifting, undermining his credibility.

Most recently, Bloom was charged Feb. 14 with distributing obscene videotapes with titles such as “The Punishment of Annie” and “Little Girls Blue” in connection with a 13-month Los Angeles police “sting” operation.

However, the misdemeanor charge against Bloom was dropped because prosecutors believe that Bloom was only peripherally involved, according to Ted Goldstein, spokesman for the Los Angeles city attorney’s office.

Of the 20 individuals and eight firms originally charged, only Bloom’s case was removed.

Officers Still Charged

Goldstein said a Canoga Park company in which Bloom is named as a company officer, California Video Distributors, as well as two other company officers, Steve Palmer and Eric Gutterman, remain charged with distributing obscene videotapes. If the firm is found guilty, Bloom and the other officers could each face a maximum penalty of six months in jail and $1,000 fine, Goldstein said.

Trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday in Los Angeles Municipal Court.