This summer, San Francisco Police Department Sgt. Robert Glenn walked into the Richmond Serenity Spa at 3446 Balboa St., where he was — allegedly — given a hand job.
He says he stopped the masseuse, paid an extra $50 for the service, and left.
As Glenn later wrote in a police report, he was part of an undercover operation “to see if there was illegal prostitution taking place” at the Richmond District spa. Glenn wrote that he entered the spa, asked for a massage, and waited for his masseuse to solicit him.
The massage parlor’s owners, however, say that Glenn’s sting operation was bungled, and the subsequent administrative hearing process to strip them of their massage license was unfair.
The spa’s owners, Jing Huang and Liyan Wang, are now appealing a November Department of Public Health ruling that ordered the revocation of their massage permit, a $7,500 fine, and a ban on seeking another permit for five years.
They claim that their due-process rights were violated, and in an appeal of that ruling, are accusing Glenn of “outrageous” conduct, and call the operation “highly suspect.”
Glenn, they say, not only accepted the alleged hand job, but never identified himself, made any detentions or arrests, or notified the owners, who claim they only learned of the alleged incident a month later.
In July, the Department of Public Health came in for an inspection, found no violations, but later sought to revoke the business’ license.
This isn’t the first time Richmond Serenity Spa has come under scrutiny from the police department’s Special Victims Unit. Police raided the spa in 2021, filings show, and the owners were accused of allowing lewd conduct in their parlor, which at the time was located across the street.
That time, records show that the hearing officer, Tinnetta Thompson, an attorney who now works for the Department of Police Accountability, cleared the spa of any wrongdoing.
The spa is also reviewed on various adult websites that aggregate erotic massage parlors.
The owners deny the characterization of their business.
“I have invested too much to allow the spa to be closed for illegal behavior,” Huang wrote in a statement in November. According to her appeal, Huang purchased the unit at 3446 Balboa St. in 2023 with her life savings.
When patrons ask for sexual favors, Huang said her workers inform them: “You have come to the wrong place; we don’t do that!”
Huang and Wang also allege that, in the latest police operation, they never got access to video that Glenn purportedly recorded of the incident. They believe that this footage, if it exists, would exonerate them.
“No evidence was presented that appellants knew that the masseuse engaged in an act of solicitation,” Huang and Wang’s attorney, Paul Horcher, wrote in a brief earlier this month.
The City Attorney’s Office, in its rebuttal last week, noted that massage parlors are responsible for the workers at their establishments under the city health code, and must ensure they do not “wear improper attire or engage in lewd conduct.”
Horcher claims that the officer overseeing the spa’s public health hearing, Public Works employee Traci Lawrence — who ruled against the spa owners in November — did not allow oral testimony from the former head of SFPD’s vice unit. Retired Lt. Raymond Kilroy has expressed “serious concerns” with Glenn’s investigation, and said that the city should “pattern of conduct” before revoking a permit.
In a prior declaration, Kilroy called it “abnormal” that Glenn would “strip naked and allow oil to be placed on his genitalia.”
“Once you have solicitation, why go further?” he wrote. In a filing supporting Lawrence’s decision last week, the City Attorney’s Office called Kilroy’s testimony “irrelevant.”
A ‘coordinated undercover enforcement operation’
On June 17, 2025, a police incident report indicates that Glenn and three other officers began a “buy-walk” operation at 4 p.m.
Unlike in a “buy-bust” resulting in an immediate arrest, officers in a “buy-walk” let the suspect “walk” so as to avoid compromising a larger investigation.
Glenn entered the Richmond Serenity Spa with $200 in city-marked bills, and was greeted by an Asian woman of about 50 years old, according to his statement at the time.
He undressed, Glenn wrote, and the woman soon began trying to rub his perineum area during the massage, which Glenn noted he “tried to prevent” by “clinching [sic] my buttocks cheeks.”
Then, the woman asked if he wanted a hand job, Glenn wrote, making an “up and down motion with her hand.”
“I know based on my training and experience that [she] was asking if I wanted her to manually stimulate me (hand job),” Glenn wrote in his statement attached to the incident report.
They negotiated a price, he continued, and she applied massage oil to the area in question.
“She then grabbed my penis and manually stimulated me with both hands,” Glenn testified at the November hearing, according to a transcript attached to the appeal packet.
“I then told the woman I had to leave … the woman told me to lay back down so that I could finish.” Glenn wrote that he left anyway.
In a legal brief requesting a reversal of the hearing officer’s November decision, Horcher says Glenn “let an unidentified rogue masseuse rub his penis with hot oil, assuming … that the incident occurred at all.”
A month after the alleged incident, in July, the Department of Public Health arrived to inspect the spa and handed down a $7,500 fine. In late August, the department sought to revoke the spa’s massage permit.
It does not appear that health inspectors found any additional evidence during their July inspection. According to city attorney spokesperson Jen Kwart, the permit revocation case against the massage parlor stems entirely from Glenn’s report.
Glenn is San Francisco’s only undercover operative investigating illicit activity at city massage parlors, according to a statement Glenn made requesting that his identity be concealed from the record of the proceedings.
He worked for University of California Law, San Francisco’s safety department and the Ukiah Police Department before joining the San Francisco Police Department, according to that statement.
Horcher, Huang and Wang’s attorney, argued at the November hearing that Glenn has a “history of being careless.”
Glenn was reportedly one of four officers who arrested a kidnapping suspect in 2022, but failed to notice the suspect had a gun in his waistband when they placed him in a holding cell. The gun was reportedly found hours later as the suspect was booked into the county jail.
In 2023, records show former police chief Bill Scott placed Glenn on a four-day suspension for conducting an unlawful search in 2019.
An ‘unidentified rogue’ employee
Huang and Wang are seeking to reverse the Department of Public Health order to revoke their masseuse license permit and place them under a five-year ban from getting another permit. Horcher called the determination “illogical, excessive and unfair.”
Horcher’s brief describes the masseuse as an “unidentified rogue” employee whom Glenn failed to name, who Glenn described as at least a decade younger than the spa’s actual employees. This, they added, prevented the owners from investigating or mounting a defense.
Horcher accused the health department hearing officer of unfairly favoring the city in the proceedings.
He said she shortened the spa owners’ time to present a defense, communicated privately with health department prosecutors about the case and said that the Department of Public Health increased penalties on the spa owners in retaliation each time they requested evidence.
The owners say they seek to prevent prostitution at their spa, and Horcher said that the health department has an “axe to grind” against the spa’s owners because they were exonerated less than five years ago for similar allegations.
According to the appeal, Huang and Wang “sharply questioned” the two masseuses who had been working the day Glenn arrived, and both, around 60 years old, “adamantly denied any involvement with him.”
In a filing against the appeal signed last week by Deputy City Attorney Megan Ryan, “evidence of lewd conduct and solicitation is undisputed” — adding that the massage parlor owners never introduced a masseuse to contradict Glenn’s testimony.
The matter will be heard on Wednesday before the San Francisco Board of Appeals.
So long as the women are not being trafficked, so long as the establishment is not bothering the neighbors, who cares, and why are we wasting SFPD and City Attorney resources on this?
I can only assume that if there was suspicion of trafficking the police would have said so. So if people are giving out handys for a fee voluntarily without trafficking or coercion then who exactly is supposed to be the victim here? Waste of time and taxpayer funds.
“lewd practices”
People should be allowed to be as lewd as they want as long as it’s private and everybody involved is over 18.
Let’s all be grateful there’s someone in SFPD with the grueling job of getting jerked off on the clock for us all. Someone’s gotta do the dirty work, I guess.
There are literally 100s of happy ending massage parlors in San Francisco. They’re everywhere, and don’t bother anyone. It makes no sense to try to prosecute any one of them in particular like this. It forces the owner to falsely deny what in fact is obviously happening, which is understandable since they would lose their business if they admit it. But why harm this particular business owner while hundreds of others do what they are doing? It makes no sense and this type of police sting should be prohibited.
This is sketchy. SF should drop this issue immediately. If you want to do an investigation, why would you rely on an officer who already has been reprimanded by his boss?
So, legalize the Sex Trade, already ??
We get the crime and disease.
Why not cut out the Pimps and replace them with Cops as Protectors of the Practitioners of the World’s Oldest Trade ?
We could turn a buck and cut disease and draw planeloads of Tourists for our Red Light District (Mission Street from Armory to 24th) and RV Parks (Lincoln and Harding Golf Courses and TI) …
Oh, I know, it doesn’t fit in with the War on San Francisco Values.
I’d go much further and decriminalize drugs to take cops and dealers out of that scene.
Then, I’d make a deal with Trump to open several Indian Casinos, one in Armory and another in Twitter bldg. and another in the Cow Palace and a small one in my place.
lol
go Niners !!
h.
go Niners !!
h.
How much is this cop getting paid to go get hand jobs?? Why don’t we fire him and use this money to fund the sunset dunes festival. Let the masseurs keep their business, if the complaint isn’t coming from the employees why investigate?