For the third time in 10 days, police have arrested a Garden City merchant on charges he sold obscene material.
Attorneys in several camps are at odds over whether the arrests are proper.Garden City police on Friday arrested Lamar Larsen, 58, and two clerks employed at the Over 19 adult bookstore. They also seized videotapes.
"They arrest him three times in one week; they're harassing him," said Boise attorney Bill Tway, representing Larsen. "The agenda is to get him out of business.
"First they'll try to ban adult material, then something else," Tway said. "No freedom has ever been taken away all at once."
Authorities contend there is a link between sex crimes and what they consider to be pornography.
"Police are sick and tired of arresting pedophiles and rapists and finding on them the material that comes out of this store, or very similar to what is found in this store," Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Bruce Skaug said.
"There is a definite causal link between heavy users of this material and victimizers."
But attorney Jack Van Valkenburgh of the American Civil Liberties Union said the prosecution's efforts are misguided.
"They're taking a cosmetic approach to the problem," he said. "I think that in the cloak of protecting women and children, prosecutors are working to narrow the landscape of free speech."
A Garden City officer visited the bookstore and viewed videos in the booths. Skaug described the material as hard-core pornography.