Reads more at MyEyewitnessNews…

12 Arrested in Prostitution Sting by Memphis Police
by Allison Sossaman

The Memphis Police Department staged an undercover prostitution sting this weekend. More than a dozen women were arrested for prostitution near a school or church. Detectives with the MPD’s Organized Crime Unit conducted these undercover operations overnight Saturday and into Sunday morning.

Garland Paige says he hears about a lot of stuff going on around his neighborhood near Hollywood and Chelsea.

“This is a high crime area,” Paige said. “A lot of things go on at nighttime here, lots of shootings stuff like that.”

Just blocks away from elementary schools, he says prostitution is a big problem. He’s glad to hear police are cracking down.

“Makes me feel good,” Paige said. “Because I’ve got little grandkids out here, and they’ll be out here at night playing.”

Undercover officers posed as decoys in several areas around the city. According to the affidavits, these 12 women were all willing to have sex for money, and they were all within a mile and a half of a church or school.

Read more at myeyewitnessnews.com…

Promise of Sex Leads To Northaven Murder
by Bridget Lovelle

Sheriff’s deputies say a meeting with a prostitute led to the November 19, 2009 robbery and murder of a man in Northaven.

A nineteen year-old man and a 17 year-old girl were arrested by Sheriff’s detectives just before 5:00 p.m. Tuesday night, November 23, 2009.

Detectives say sometime around 7:30 p.m. on November 19, 2009, a 48 year-old Memphis man was found shot to death in the front seat of his car.

Detectives say the arrested man planned to lure Collins to the neighborhood to have sex with the teenage girl. After the deceased met the girl at an abandoned home in the neighborhood, the suspect robbed the man and shot him inside his Buick Skylark, and he died there.

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.

Read more at NewsChannel9.com…

Five Busted in Craigslist Prostitution Sting

Five people, including three from Chattanooga, have been arrested in an undercover prostitution sting resulting from advertisement’s on the popular Craigslist web site.

On October 8 the Calhoun, Ga. Special Operations Division conducted the undercover operation. Undercover agents contacted individuals advertising as escorts on Craigslist.

Charges range from prostitution to pimping.

Sgt. J Marquez, Commander Of the Calhoun Special Operations Division said, “This operation was conducted due to the major problem of prostitution being advertised on Craigslist. It was a joint effort between agencies to stop prostitution and narcotics use in the City Of Calhoun”.

Read more at The Chattanoogan…

8 Men Caught In Reverse Street Prostitution Sting

Eight men were charged after personnel assigned to the Chattanooga Police Vice and Narcotics Units conducted a reverse street prostitution sting in Sector 2, Fox Team.

Undercover officers were used to pose as prostitutes to be patronized by “johns” for sex in exchange for money.

All those arrested were charged with patronizing prostitution within 1.5 miles of a school (Clifton Hills Elementary).

I really like how he denial is worded, so I have highlighted it, below.  Read the whole story at WMCTV.com…

Memphis stripper claims she was framed in undercover sting
By Jason Miles

Exotic dancer Ellen Lensing says she’s not a prostitute, and claims she was framed by Memphis police.

The 20-year-old was arrested late Wednesday night during an undercover sting at Babes of Babylon on Brooks Road.

Police say she agreed to have sex for $50, but Lensing says she offered four VIP dances for $100.

“I want to hear my voice say anything about money for sex, ’cause I don’t do that in the club, outside the club…none of that,” said Lensing. “I just had a baby two months ago and haven’t started back doing anything sexually yet.”

She says she believes politicians are on a crusade to clean up strip clubs and that police will do their bidding – even if it means framing anyone who gets in their way.

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.”

Read the whole story at The Commercial Appeal…

Memphis police crack down on prostitutes
Undercover officers arrest 20 across city
By Lawrence Buser

Undercover Memphis police units targeting street-level prostitution arrested 20 women in the early morning hours Saturday in areas throughout the city with some tricks of their own.

At Breedlove and Vollintine in North Memphis, a 46-year-old-woman was arrested and charged with prostitution near a church or school after this exchange with an undercover decoy officer:

Defendant: “What’s up? I don’t know you. You might be the police.”

Decoy: “You might be the police. I’m not.”

Defendant: “Cross your heart to God you’re not the police?”

The decoy officer then made a motion on his chest and when Lewis got into his car and agreed to perform sex for $15 she was arrested.

Looking for manlove has its risks, and some surprising revelations. Read more at WREG.com…

Police Employee Caught Selling Sex
by Shaun Chaiyabhat

Undercover cops on a sex for sale sting in a Midtown park caught a police employee behind bars.

Overton Park is one of the city’s most popular parks, but it has a a not-so-hidden secret: it’s one place where men go to meet other men for sex. This time, undercover cops were called by someone who was fed up with “aggressive prostitutes”. Prostitution there is so well known, many Memphians even have nicknames for the walking trail where hookers troll.

“We come during the day and we try to get out of here before it gets dark, which is sad, but it’s just kind of the way it is,” says Graham Kemper who is among many visitors to the park who expect peace during the day and crime to come at night. However, the latest arrest happened during the day.

…

A 29 year-old man works part-time for the Memphis Police Department. Cops say he walked up to an undercover cop and offered sex for 50 bucks. The man is not a cop, he’s a civilian traffic aide. But to folks who want to enjoy the park titles don’t matter.

Read the whole story at NPR.org…

In Chattanooga, Main St. Is A Prostitution Strip
by Kara Oehler and Ann Heppermann

On the surface, Main Street in Chattanooga, Tenn., looks nice. There’s a newly developed arts district with galleries, upscale restaurants, a packed breakfast joint called the Bluegrass Grill, even houses that have been certified as environmentally friendly. But if you stray from these newly renovated blocks, there’s a different side to Chattanooga’s Main Street.

“In Chattanooga, we have this underbelly,” Brother Ron Fender says. “You can walk down Main Street, and you don’t know that just over there, there’s prostitutes — or just over there is a camp where people sleep in the woods at night.”

Brother Ron, as he likes to be called, is a monk. He’s a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory, a Christian community that’s part of the Episcopal Church. Brother Ron helps to run the Chattanooga Community Kitchen, a day center that provides food, medical care and case management to the homeless. Tammy Clark is homeless and volunteers there every day.

“I didn’t know what prostituting was or what crack was until I moved to Chattanooga,” Tammy says.

…

Tammy says she wishes she never started prostituting, but one good thing did come out of it. She met her fiance, Ernest Waddell.

Ernest was visiting a friend and told him he was looking for a “lady companion for the evening.” His friend introduced him to Tammy.

“She came in and the first thing that I spotted about her that just totally attracted me to her is her gap in her teeth,” Ernest says. “All my sisters and brothers have gaps, but I don’t.”

Tammy and Ernest stayed up all night talking. In fact, nothing really happened except talking.

“Yeah, that’s when I fell in love with him,” Tammy says. “I was used to a man, having to give him something — when he said he didn’t want no money, he didn’t want no sex, I was like, wow.”

Tammy kept working on Main Street even after they started dating. Ernest says he tried to get her to stop.