Fighting prostitution one john at a time
By Peter Hermann
Bill Lehman watches the cars go by.
A red pickup truck heads south on Second Street, disappears, then returns heading north on Second Street.
“That red truck will be back,” Lehman says.
Sure enough, the same red truck passes Lehman seven times in 20 minutes on the same residential block in South Baltimore’s Brooklyn neighborhood.
Lehman calls out the plate number as Jessica Mazan jots it down in her log and Jessica’s mother, Nancy Mazan, grabs her binoculars to confirm the sighting.
This is how these homeowners spend their nights, standing in the cold, the heat, the rain, the snow, watching the cars go by. When they’re sure the driver is not lost but is, in fact, circling the block looking for a prostitute, they send the information to the Baltimore Police Department.
A sergeant reviews it, makes sure the plate matches the car’s description and fires off a letter informing the registered owner that the vehicle was seen in an area known for prostitution and that its driver was involved in suspicious behavior.
“It’s not to accuse them of a crime, but to let them know the community is watching,” said the Southern District police commander, Maj. Scott L. Bloodsworth.
The missive is called a “Dear John” letter, and since police revived this long-defunct program in May, the cops have sent out 75 such letters, about 50 to people who live in Brooklyn who apparently use their backyards and neighbors’ streets for sex. Several residents keep track of the cars, but Lehman, a 50-year-old city fire lieutenant, is by far the most prolific.
This is one weapon the city is using to drive hookers and the men who solicit them from what should be quiet city streets – not just in Brooklyn but along Wilkens Avenue in Curtis Bay and Washington Boulevard in Pigtown, where frustrated homeowners have gone a step further by videotaping pick-ups and posting pictures on the Internet.
The letters on official police letterhead shame the men, Lehman said, “especially if the wife gets the letter, or the boss gets the letter. I used to feel sorry for them but they are coming here and destroying my neighborhood.” He said men slow down constantly, mistaking female neighbors heading off to work as working girls, sometimes as early as 5 on a weekday morning.
An interesting article about the online pay-for-sex scene. Read more at redOrbit.com…
Internet Fuels Virtual Subculture For Sex Trade
The Internet has spawned a virtual subculture of “johns” who share information electronically about prostitution, potentially making them harder to catch, according to a new study co-authored by a Michigan State University criminologist.
The research by MSU’s Thomas Holt and Kristie Blevins of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte challenges the common perception that sex customers act alone and do not interact for fear of reprisal or scorn. The study appears in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.
Holt, assistant professor of criminal justice, said today’s Web-savvy johns use the Internet to solicit prostitutes and to provide each other with warnings of prostitution hot zones and stings, which can hamper the efforts of law enforcement officials.
But the more police become familiar the johns’ Web activities, the more it can help them zero in on the perpetrators, Holt added.
“The growth of these deviant subcultures has made it more difficult for law enforcement,” said Holt, who has helped police devise prostitution stings. “On the other hand, it gives us a new opportunity to use the way the offenders communicate to better target their activities.”
The study analyzed prostitution Web forums in 10 U.S. cities with the highest rates of prostitution arrests: Atlanta; Baltimore; Chicago; Dayton, Ohio; Elizabeth, N.J.; Forth Worth, Texas; Hartford, Conn.; Inglewood, Calif.; Las Vegas; and Memphis, Tenn.
In the Web forums, the johns provide detailed information on the location of sexual services on the streets and indoors, as well as ways to identify specific providers, information on costs and personal experiences with providers.
The open nature of the forums led the johns to carefully disguise their discussions with a unique language, or argot, based largely on code and acronyms. This argot may help johns and sex workers to avoid legal sanctions and any social stigma associated with participating in the sex trade, the researchers said.
Howard County police continue their reverse prostitution operations. The most recent undercover effort resulted in 19 men being charged with solicitation of prostitution in Laurel.
Detectives and female officers worked to identify suspects soliciting prostitutes along U.S. 1 in Laurel Oct. 2. Female officers in plain clothes worked undercover in areas targeted by citizen complaints to determine whether they would be approached and offered money for sex. Suspects who approached the female officers and made such offers were arrested.
The ACORN prostitution and tax counseling scandal is bigger than their initial defenders anticipated. Read more at NPR, and listen to their report.
ACORN Grapples With Fallout Of Damaging Videos
by Pam Fessler
In the video that’s been splashed all over cable TV and the Internet, a young man dressed as a pimp and a young woman posing as a prostitute are talking with an employee from the community organization known as ACORN.
But instead of giving advice on taxes and home loans, the employee in Washington, D.C., tells the couple how to buy a house without letting anyone know it’s being used for prostitution.
“All that somebody needs to do is get wind that you’ve got a house and your girlfriend is over there running a house of women of the night,” she says. “You will not have a career. You will be smeared and tarnished for life to come.”
The man is really conservative activist and filmmaker James O’Keefe, with his colleague, Hannah Giles. Their undercover videos have set off an avalanche of criticism against the liberal nonprofit, which has long been accused by conservatives of misusing federal funds and falsifying voter registration forms.
“This is shocking,” Fox talk show host Glenn Beck, who has been leading the charge, said this week. “It raises serious questions about what is going on inside of ACORN. ACORN [will] say, you watch, ‘Just another rogue employee. We had nothing to do with her.’ Really? How many employees do you have like that?”
Hopefully none anymore, says ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis. She says all the employees involved in the videos have been fired.
“We were just as shocked, surprised as anyone,” she says. “I will not tolerate that sort of behavior on my watch.”
She says the group is reviewing its training procedures and will have an independent investigator look into what happened. But the videos have begun something that might be difficult to stop.
ACORN higher-ups have evidently decided not to even try to defend the antics at their Baltimore office. That was fast. Read more at The Baltimore Sun…
Video prompts ACORN firings Two appear to give tax advice to pair posing as pimp, prostitute By Justin Fenton
Two staff members of the Baltimore office of ACORN were fired Thursday after they were captured on hidden camera appearing to give advice on evading tax laws to a man and woman posing as a pimp and a prostitute.
The video depicts a man and a scantily dressed female partner visiting the Charles Village office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, where they appear to ask two employees about how to shield their work from state and federal tax requirements. The supposed pimp also appears to ask the employees how to conceal underage girls from El Salvador brought into the country illegally to work for him.
“If they don’t have Social Security numbers, you don’t have to worry about them,” the employee says.
Stuart Katzenberg, lead organizer for ACORN’s Maryland chapter, said ACORN is questioning the validity of the video but had fired the employees who appeared in it because their handling of the situation “did not meet ACORN’s standards of professionalism.”
“Our work historically speaks for itself – fighting for working-class families across the country and in Baltimore,” Katzenberg said.
One of President Obama’s favorite community organizing group, ACORN, is featured in some very incriminating video. Remember, ladies -- the world’s oldest profession is one thing, cheating on your taxes is another!
ACORN Officials Videotaped Telling ‘Pimp,’ ‘Prostitute’ How to Lie to IRS
Officials with the controversial community organizing group ACORN were secretly videotaped offering to assist two individuals posing as a pimp and a prostitute, encouraging them to lie to the Internal Revenue Service and providing guidance on how to claim underage girls from South America as dependents.
The videotape was made public Thursday on BigGovernment.com, a political blog launched by Andrew Breitbart as a companion site to his BigHollywood.breitbart.com blog.
In the videotape, made on July 24, James O’Keefe, a 25-year-old independent filmmaker, posed as a pimp with a 20-year-old woman named “Kenya” who posed as a prostitute while visiting ACORN’s office in Baltimore. The couple told ACORN staffers they wanted to secure housing where the woman could continue to maintain a prostitution business.
ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — bills itself as the nation’s largest community of low- and moderate-income families “working together for social justice and stronger communities,” according to its Web site. The organization has been accused by Republicans and conservative activists with fraud in voter registration drives around the country and has been under fire since last year for its support of President Obama and for its planned participation in next year’s census.
A spokesman for ACORN, Scott Levenson, when asked to comment on the videotape, said: “The portrayal is false and defamatory and an attempt at gotcha journalism. This film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed. ACORN wants to see the full video before commenting further.”
On the videotape, “Kenya” can be seen telling an ACORN staffer that she earns roughly $8,000 a month. The ACORN employee then suggests to “Kenya” that ACORN could submit a tax return for 2008 showing that she made $9,600 for the entire year — instead of $96,000 — and that ACORN would charge “Kenya” $50 instead of the usual $150 fee for preparing her taxes.
ACORN offers tax preparation and benefits application services free of charge during tax season; it charges nominal fees during non-tax season.
The ACORN staffer can also be seen suggesting that the prostitute list her occupation as a freelance “performing artist.”
“It’s not dancing, trust me,” the “pimp” says.
“But dancing is considered an art,” the ACORN staffer replies. “[Exotic dancers] usually go under performing artists, or yeah, they usually go under performing arts, which will be what you are — a performing artist.”
Another look at so-called John Schools, designed to change the mindset of the men who seek to pay for some TLC from women. Read the whole article at CNN.com…
‘John schools’ try to change attitudes about paid sex
The accused came from all walks of life: Retirees, dads and twentysomethings. An engineer, a business owner and an auto worker. A man in a wheelchair. Men in need of Spanish or Farsi translators.
About 40 men somberly entered a classroom on a recent Saturday morning. About half of them wore shiny wedding bands.
All had tried to buy a prostitute’s services and were caught by police. It was their first offense, and a county court referred them to a one-day program called the John School. It’s a program run by volunteers and city officials in conjunction with Magdalene House, a nonprofit that works to get prostitutes off the streets.
“Prostitution doesn’t discriminate,” said Kenny Baker, a cognitive behavioral therapist who is the program’s director. “Most of these men don’t have a prior criminal history, so our goal is to help these folks understand why they put themselves in a bad position, to prevent it from happening again.”
Set in a church in Nashville, Tennessee, the John School is led by former prostitutes, health experts, psychologists and law enforcement officers who talk to — and at times berate — the men about the risks of hiring a prostitute.
Prostitution is based on the law of supply and demand. The thinking is: Women won’t stop selling sex until men stop buying.
So Nashville and a growing number of cities are shifting their focus from locking up suppliers to educating buyers. Across the country, about 50 communities are using John Schools. Atlanta, Georgia, and Baltimore, Maryland, are among dozens more cities that plan to launch similar programs by the end of the year.
“It will make them [offenders] see that this is not a victimless crime, and they are contributing to the exploitation of women,” said Stephanie Davis, policy adviser on women’s issues at the mayor’s office in Atlanta. “It’s hurting them, the man, and it’s hurting their families and its hurting the community.”
Prostitution Court to focus on diversionary tactics
by Brendan Kearney
“Anne Smith’s” put-together appearance in court — matching white and pink summery outfit, manicure and make-up — belies a rap sheet that stretches back at least a decade.
Smith, 47, came into the basement courtroom at Baltimore’s Eastside District Courthouse on Thursday with a pretrial agreement with the prosecutor for a 90-day suspended sentence for prostitution.
But before the full list of Smith’s prior drug and prostitution convictions, including four for prostitution in the past five years, could be read into the record, Judge Nathan Braverman interrupted.
After a brief bench conference, he announced, “I cannot agree.”
So Smith (not her real name), accused of agreeing to exchange sex with an undercover police officer for $30, got a trial date late next month. She will almost certainly face jail time if she is convicted.
…
Also in the courtroom last week was Jennifer Etheridge, who is in charge of community prosecution for the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office. And if all goes according to plan, Etheridge will soon be in that courtroom once a week, taking a new approach to prostitution prosecution that just might help women like Smith.
…
Downsized
A year ago, it looked like Etheridge’s program would be up and running by now.
Last July, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office announced it had won a state grant to launch a Prostitution Court Pilot Program, an alternative approach that would follow in the footsteps of Maryland’s existing roster of specialty courts for nonviolent drug defendants and those with mental health problems.
Since that development, the project essentially stalled, in part due to the Office of the Public Defender’s wider opposition to the state’s so-called problem-solving courts.
A year later, a new centralized, specialized approach to the city’s prostitution problem, a downsized version of what was originally contemplated, seems to be on the horizon — “by the end of summer,” Etheridge said.
The plan is to put all prostitution cases throughout Baltimore on one docket at the courthouse on the corner of North Avenue and Harford Road. There, Etheridge would offer a 90-day diversion program to commercial sex workers without a violent past as an alternative to prison or probation.
If the defendants agree to enroll, a pair of dedicated social workers will put them in touch with relevant service organizations and track their progress.
“I think in 90 days we have an opportunity to say that, ‘This isn’t the life you have to live,’” said Sue Diehl, a veteran social worker who joined the effort in May. “We have the opportunity to mess up their thinking, so to speak.”
States demand details from Craigslist on anti-prostitution screening
Attorneys general from seven states are asking online classified site Craigslist for details on how it will keep pornography and prostitution off its newly created adult services section.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and others are making the request two weeks after Craigslist agreed to eliminate its “erotic services” ads. The Web site came under intense scrutiny after a Boston man was charged with killing a masseuse he met from Craigslist online classifieds.
Craigslist has not prescreened ads in the past, but says postings in its new adult services section are reviewed before being posted.
Blumenthal says attorneys general from Maryland, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Mississippi and New Hampshire signed the request asking Craigslist for more detail on the screening process.
A Craigslist attorney did not immediately return a call.
Prostitution sting results in 10 arrests
By LISA BEISEL
The city Police Department arrested 10 people last week during a prostitution sting on West Street.
In a little more than two hours on Thursday, officers rounded up men police said were trying to solicit prostitutes in the 200 block of West Street.
They were arrested in vehicles, on scooters and on bicycles. Officers also seized one vehicle after drug paraphernalia was found inside, police said.
“It needs to be clear that Annapolis is not a place to come to and solicit prostitution,” Chief Michael Pristoop said in a statement. “We want to send a message that we are out there and that this type of activity will not be tolerated.”
The sting was not done as a result of citizen complaints, but was a proactive effort, said Ray Weaver, police department spokesman.
The area has had problems with prostitution in the past. In 2006 police said there were as many as 20 prostitutes working on West Street, according to previous stories in The Capital. In 2007, residents of Ward 1, in which part of West Street falls, banded together to complain to police about prostitution and show up to testify in court.
“People argue that it’s a victimless crime, but the thought here is that it can lead to assault and other sorts of crime,” Weaver said.
The most recent sting targeted men who were seeking prostitutes, but there are other stings being planned that target both men and the prostitutes they’re looking for, police said.
“The technique they use here is to sort of be in front of things rather than behind them,” Weaver said.
In the video that’s been splashed all over cable TV and the Internet, a young man dressed as a pimp and a young woman posing as a prostitute are talking with an employee from the community organization known as ACORN.
