Editor’s Note: Each month, the Advocate has lunch with bicycle patrol officers in the East Dallas Storefront. However, this month, the bicycle officers joined other officers as part of a lunch time neighborhood prostitution sting. The following story discusses the program.
The arrests came quickly and often. Once, it took only 97 seconds from the time the decoy was dropped off on a corner until an arrest was made.
“They are not even flagging guys down, but just standing out there,” says Sgt. J.S. Huey, who led a recent neighborhood prostitution sting.
“We only had two girls on the street at a time, and we were bringing them in about as quick as we could process them.”
Huey, assigned to the Street Crimes Unit of the Central Division, and a team of 20 officers, drawn from various units, thought they were prepared for everything during the sting.
Headquarters for the operation was an abandoned parking lot, complete with tents, ice chests and water coolers. An air-conditioned police van held those arrested, while suspects were making their phone call on cellular units. Wreckers were on hand to tow the cars of those arrested to the police pound.
Unfortunately, Huey and his officers were not ready to keep a truck full of ice cream from melting in the 100-degree heat. The police had arrested an ice cream vendor, but weren’t quite sure what to do with his frozen treats.
“We decided to call the guy’s supervisor,” Huey says. “He came out and took the truck off our hands. It was really pretty funny.”
Not so funny and not as easily handled is the problem of the prostitution in our streets, which the sting – where police officers pose as prostitutes, and men who proposition them are arrested – was designed to deal with.
Huey says that after a number of complaints from residents, police officials decided on the sting operation, which was held in the 4800 to 5400 block of Swiss, Junius, Live Oak and Gaston several weeks ago.
“We had numerous complaints from several different locations,” Huey says. “It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, you want the same things for your family, and they don’t include a prostitute in your front yard.”
Compounding the problem is that typically, neither the prostitutes or their clients are from our neighborhoods.
“The girls working the streets are not putting food on anybody’s table; they are doing this because they want drugs,” Huey says. “The majority of this traffic is women wanting to buy drugs.
“The guys picking the girls up can get AIDS, robbed or killed very easily, yet it seems like they don’t even stop to think about it. Ninety percent of them are hardworking guys with jobs. They think that this is a victimless crime, but it is not.”
Part of the plan called for coverage of the sting operation by local media, with the police hoping that potential clients would be scared away.
Radio stations KESS and KLIF did live reports from the operation, while Channels 5 and 11 had camera crews on the scene.
What the cameras captured were women officers walking the streets in bright colors – hot pink, red and purple. They wore tops that left their shoulders bare.
Nearby were a pair of undercover policemen wearing baseball caps, sunglasses and T-shirts from rock concerts and motorcycle shops. Often, a policeman sat in a car or truck a few houses down, reading a book beneath a tree.
Down the block and hidden in an alley was a marked police car with two uniformed officers.
Debra Thomas, usually a bicycle officer in the Central Business District, was one of four women officers who worked the street. Thomas, a 30-year-old who has been a policewoman for a little more than two years, had never been involved in a similar sting.
“We are basically just a decoy,” Thomas says. “We would ask the guys what they wanted. There is a lot of word play, but some of (the men arrested) would come right out and say what they wanted and how much they wanted to spend. Then you reach an agreement, and you got them.”
The decoy would give a hand signal to one of the undercover officers, who would radio the squad car. A uniformed officer then made the arrest.
The men arrested spanned the spectrum of races, ages and economic class.
Most of the men were arrested for prostitution, which is a Class B misdemeanor. The charge of prostitution is the same for both the buyer and seller of sex acts. The maximum penalty for a first-time offender is $1,000 and six months in jail.
Those previously convicted of prostitution are automatically charged with a Class A misdemeanor, boosting the maximum penalty to a $2,000 fine and one year in jail.
Many prostitution cases never go to trial, but are plea bargained. Huey says he wouldn’t be surprised if first-time offenders were able to hire a lawyer, then plead guilty to a lesser charge such as disorderly conduct.
“But it is definitely a deterrence to the guys and will keep them off the streets,” Huey says. “Nobody gets away from this. It is a memorable experience and makes an impression on the guys arrested and their families.”
Huey said the sting served its purpose, with complaints dropping drastically in the two weeks after the operation.
“It won’t stop it, but what we did will slow it down considerably for a couple of months,” he says. “Then a couple of months later, we will do it again.
