This piece is based on my first police ride-along on a prostitution detail. What an eye-opener it was.

Police use new approach to root out prostitution / Often-ignored problem fought with stings, outreach
June 15, 2003

He had a proposition for the pony-tailed woman in jean shorts and a T-shirt who’d been standing on the corner of Eighth and Enterprise streets Tuesday night.

He could drum up work for her if she agreed to give him $10 from every trick.

“What if I only make $10?” she asked, making eye contact with men who drove slowly past, several of whom circled back.

He’d let her keep it, he said, boasting that he’s good to all his girls.

A customer pulled up to the corner then, and she jumped in his car, promising she’d return in 30 minutes with $10 for him.

The alleged pimp – a 24-year-old man wearing a hockey-style jersey – strolled to a picnic table in the park nearby, lit a cigarette and waited.

Little did he know, the woman wasn’t a hooker at all. She was a decoy working undercover on a prostitution sting with a team of Springfield police officers. Her “customer” actually was another undercover officer.

Police, armed with two-way radios and binoculars, had watched the conversation take place. While the decoy and her “customer” waited a few blocks away, officers broke out law books to look up definitions for pimping and pandering. Pimping arrests are rare, they said, and they wanted to make sure this one held up.

Thirty minutes later, the woman returned and handed the man a $10 bill. In seconds, five marked Springfield police cars swooped in and surrounded him.

Robert D. Brown of the 1500 block of East Brown Street was taken to jail. Police said they also found drug paraphernalia in his possession.

“You’ve really got to be an actor to do this,” police Sgt. Bill Neale noted after congratulating the decoy and other officers on a job well-done. He oversees many of the highly organized, and potentially dangerous, prostitution stings, which rely on officers to volunteer as decoys.

“It takes a special kind of person to get out there and do this. We want to have fun, but you have to stay sharp. You have to keep your wits about you,” Neale said.

Prostitution, primarily a drug-driven crime, is a nuisance that has ripple effects throughout the community, according to local police and social workers.

But it’s a problem that largely is “ignored and forgotten,” according to Jody Clark, an outreach coordinator with PORA (Positive Options, Referrals and Alternatives), which helps women who have a history of prostitution and exploitation by providing a safe residence for them, treatment programs, counseling, outreach, education and referrals.

“Not only do we see their lifestyles, we see the addictions that pull them into the lifestyles,” Clark said. “I’d say almost 100 percent of our women and men who are prostitutes are addicted to drugs, and most of the time it’s crack. Addiction is very powerful.”

Springfield police have adopted a new approach to combating the prostitution problem. It includes a combination of stings, which tend to have a highly visible yet temporary effect; neighborhood involvement; cooperation with PORA; and police interviews with arrested hookers to glean such information as where they live and work, where they turn tricks, why they prostitute, whether they’ve been arrested before and who they associate with.

“With prostitutes, you arrest them tonight and they’re back on the streets tomorrow. They’re not doing it for fun; they’re doing it out of necessity,” said assistant police chief Bill Pittman.

“We’re trying to deal with the whole problem instead of just the symptoms. We’re looking at these women and saying, ‘Why are they doing this here?’ In Springfield, it’s most likely because it’s easy to get the money – and significant amounts of money in some cases – to support a pretty serious drug problem.”

Police have scheduled 10 stings from May through August. Two already have taken place, including the one Tuesday night that netted five arrests. The other, May 29, resulted in four arrests. Charges typically range from prostitution and soliciting a sex act to pimping and drug offenses.

Pittman said the department has a list of about 40 known prostitutes, a quarter of whom are working at any given time.

Neighborhoods in which prostitutes are most active, according to police, are those along the North and South Grand avenue corridors; the area around Iles Park, which is not far from South Grand; Enterprise Street around Eighth and Ninth streets; and parts of an area known as Old Aristocracy Hill, a neighborhood bounded by Second and Ninth streets and Capitol and South Grand avenues.

“We see the worst of the worst,” said one resident of the southern part of Old Aristocracy Hill. The woman asked that her name not be used for fear of retribution by several pimps who live and work nearby. The pimps regularly try to intimidate and threaten residents by following them, banging on their doors and invading their homes, she said.

“We’re very, very frightened of them. They know who you are, what you drive and when you leave. They’re very terrifying,” she said.

“The danger with prostitution really is the pimps and the drugs. We get used condoms and used needles on our properties. It’s not nice when you try to come home in the evening and the only entrance to your driveway is blocked because a trick is being turned,” she said.

Prostitutes often walk the streets in the broad daylight, sometimes starting about 2 or 3 in the afternoon and continuing through the night, she said, though the activity tapers off in the winter.

“There have been times when we’ve had to call police up to 20 times a night. One night I saw seven girls out working. Isn’t that amazing? They know how to walk down the street and not look like they’re prostitutes, and they know who to look for, and they have hiding spots where they go when the police arrive.”

The woman added that people cruising for prostitutes are a nuisance, too.

“A huge problem is that these girls are very popular. They’re off the street as much as they’re on the street. They come and go and come and go. When you come through here and don’t see one, it’s probably because they’re working. Wait 15 minutes and they’ll be back,” she said.

Crack cocaine overwhelmingly is the drug of choice of prostitutes. Officials told of a woman who lives 30 miles away, drives to Springfield once a week and turns enough tricks to afford a week’s supply of crack.

Police said highly addictive methamphetamine also is showing up more in the city now, and some prostitutes are beginning to use it.

Referrals to PORA, which can help prostitutes get drug treatment and other assistance, is a key to the police department’s approach.

“We know these gals aren’t going to go away forever. We don’t care about what PORA has on these girls. But we want to make sure they have what we have,” Pittman said, noting that PORA is better equipped than the police to deal with prostitutes’ addictions, depression or other issues that can cause an arrest to become a crisis situation.

Clark of PORA agreed. She spends most of her time distributing condoms to prostitutes, teaching them about HIV and talking to them at shelters, in bars, on the streets and in jail.

She said most prostitutes have problems besides addiction – grief and childhood issues, sexual abuse, homelessness, the loss of children due to their lifestyles, legal problems and mental illness.

All those issues make prostitution a problem that affects the entire community, she said.

“People have to know this is taking place. … We know we have a homeless problem, we have people who are starving, we have a drug problem, and we do have a prostitution problem. We see it every single day,” she said.

Penalties for prostitution vary, according to Mark Silberman with the Sangamon County state’s attorney’s office. It is a misdemeanor, but multiple prior charges can cause it to be upgraded to a felony.

The misdemeanor is punishable by up to a day less than a year in jail.

The law requires that people arrested for prostitution be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. The state’s attorney’s office also requires they go through a drug and alcohol evaluation.

The penalty for the felony charge is one to three years in prison, with the possibility of probation or conditional discharge. Silberman said the state’s attorney’s office actively seeks to prosecute people arrested for prostitution, but other officials said they believe it’s rare to find anyone serving time for the offense.

For now, residents such as the one on Old Aristocracy Hill say they’ll continue to call police whenever they see prostitution activity in their neighborhoods.

But, the woman said, are the laws strong enough to have any effect?

“I think (the police details) are great, and they work that night, but the girls come right back the next night. And there is very little the police can do because of the way the laws are written,” she said.

“Proving prostitution is darned near impossible, and proving pimping and solicitation is darned near impossible. There’s not a lot of point in it. I think the police department does what it can, but it has to be terribly frustrating to do a job where you’re basically set up to fail by virtue of the way the laws are written.”