The Real Story about SacPD’s Vice Unit
Today, April 8, 2008, an editorial ran in the Sacramento Bee discussing the Sacramento Police Department’s enforcement of laws pertaining to prostitution and pimping. Several facts and statistics were omitted in the article, all of which were accessible to the Bee. Over the last few months, the Police Department has worked extensively with several Bee reporters, allowing them access to the Vice Unit and numerous interviews. The writer of the editorial, having full access to these reporters, failed to include facts from the volumes of information which explain the very issues raised. As such, the editorial is grossly misleading and inaccurate regarding the service being provided our community by the Police Department’s Vice Unit.
The editorial opines, “Explanations don’t add up to the kind of disparities apparent in arrest statistics.” This is simply not true. The explanations, as you will read, make perfect sense and clearly delineate any disparities. Conveniently or not, none of them appeared in the article.
The Police Department’s Vice Unit is not large, consisting of one sergeant and four detectives. These five individuals are tasked with enforcing and preventing crimes within the city of Sacramento related to prostitution, pimping, and gambling. They work extremely hard, constantly changing their schedules, traveling out of town, and forgoing personal family events.
The first sentence of the editorial concludes that the statistics provided, “..reveals an alarming gender bias.” Ok, time to get back to reality here. The term “bias” is defined by the American Heritage College Dictionary as, “A preference or inclination, one that inhibits impartial judgment.” The writer comes to the supposition the Sacramento Police Department is biased because the vast majority of the 210 prostitutes arrested in the last three months were females. The two “johns” (customers) arrested were men.
The writer goes on to justify her conclusion of misogyny based on the statement of a former prostitute. It appears both fail to recognize that a criminal case based on the testimony of the prostitute in question has huge witness credibility issues. Witness testimony under those conditions is usually paid little deference by a jury.
The reason more prostitutes are arrested than johns is quite simple. First, arresting a john is more difficult because, absent catching them in the act, it requires a time-consuming sting operation. Sting operations require a lot of resources to organize and carry out, and rarely net the number of arrests yielded when targeting prostitutes. This is because prostitute arrests originate via a variety of related violations. For example, prostitutes on probation are prohibited from walking along known “strolls.” Just seeing one of these individuals in a designated area is cause for an officer to make an arrest, without ever seeing the suspect engage in sexual activity. In addition, seeing a known prostitute flagging down vehicles, or talking to motorists in the street, can justify an arrest for “loitering with the intent to engage in prostitution.” Finally, a large number of prostitutes have outstanding warrants or attendant criminal charges, allowing for lengthier incarcerations. Lengthier incarcerations mean fewer prostitutes loitering the streets, using drugs, and turning tricks in our neighborhoods.
Taking the above facts into consideration, it makes sense for the Vice Unit to allocate its resources toward the type of arrests that make the greatest impact. The majority of the complaints we get from our citizens involve street walkers flagging down cars in neighborhoods, parking with johns on the streets, and the ancillary other crimes associated with prostitution (drugs, public intoxication, unhealthy bio-hazard conditions, etc.). Due to other applicable violations and the infrastructure of our criminal justice system, focusing on prostitutes has the greatest impact on the issues that concern our community. In a perfect world, with unlimited resources, the johns could also be held accountable as easily. Currently, that is not the case. Not surprisingly, the majority of good citizens I’ve discussed this with over my 10 years with the department have approved and supported our approach to dealing with this perpetual community problem.
The writer next calls into question the goals of the Vice Unit. Interestingly enough, our Vice Unit is one of the few in the state to shift our attention to juvenile prostitutes solicited out by pimps via the Internet. In the past, these young women were treated as adult prostitutes – arrested and incarcerated. The new approach treats these juveniles as victims, getting them the resources they desperately need to get their lives back on track. This is done while aggressively pursuing suspected pimps in this trade that peddles sex with children. Although this new approach takes a lot of resources, I think most would agree this is money well spent. Many of these juveniles are female and black. Helping these females is contrary to the Bee editorial’s conclusion the Police Department is both gender biased and racist. Getting involved this early in their lives gives us the best chance to keep them from going back to the streets. I don’t see how this long-term approach that helps children can be construed as a non-viable goal. Again, the Sacramento Bee was privy to all of this information at the time the editorial piece was written.
Finally, the writer intimates the Police Department is racist because 40 percent of the prostitutes arrested are black, while blacks make up only 11 percent of our population. Anyone observing the known strolls in our community can conduct their own study of the demographics of the identified prostitutes in the area and see the racial proportion. Alleging racial bias in prostitution arrests by our hard working officers, with no evidence whatsoever, is reckless journalism.
The fact is we have arrested many government officials and other high ranking individuals as johns over the years. None of them were afforded any preferential treatment, whatsoever.
I’ve taken the opportunity to post this blog because I feel strongly that our department is doing great work. The Vice Unit does not engage in activity predicated on bias or prejudice, and there is no evidence to indicate otherwise. The Sacramento Bee printed an editorial in which known facts were disregarded and substituted with conjecture, supposition, and unsubstantiated conclusions that have likely misled our community as to how the Sacramento Police Department operates.
Please direct any questions to Sergeant Matt Young at (916) 808-0808.
