How can they say you were doing something they never witnessed?
[off topic]
Back during the 1976 Democratic Convention at Madison Square Garde, the NYPD said it would arrest any unescorted woman near the place. Feminists like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan organized middle class white ladies to show up and demand they be arrested for being ‘unescorted.’
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You assume cops need evidence lol.
Jokes aside, stings are the most common way it happens.
However, when it isn’t something like that, it tends to fall into two groupings based on my limited area of awareness. Not a cop, not a lawyer, or anything related, and I can only guarantee this as factual in the areas I’ve lived.
The next biggest chunk of arrests after stings is warrants for places of business. Massage parlors, more blatant brothels. Once there’s suspicion of illegal activity, they get a warrant an d raid the place. Catch them in the act, and then manipulate the people they take in into confessing.
After that, it’s plain sight and/or hearing. While most of the street corner type of thing is gone in a lot of places, it isn’t totally gone. All it takes is the discussion over prices and seeing the exchange to make an arrest.
Plus, some places will post up with listening gear or cameras in hot spots and capture evidence that way.
The kind of services that are less open get less raids. An escort service is usually harder to nail down than a massage parlor, which is harder than an outright brothel, which is harder than someone working out of a hotel or home. The really hard to catch prostitution is outcalls and incalls with independent sex workers.
Escorts don’t do any transactions in the open, so you have to send in an undercover cop to fake being a john for individuals, or get enough probable cause to get a warrant for phone or other invasive surveillance when there’s an office.
Massage parlors have that veneer of a massage business, and if they aren’t doing it dumb, they can last years before police even know they exist in a big enough city.
Brothels, afaik, are pretty rare now because they’re easier to target. Since they’re really only serving sex, it’s more obvious.
Solo workers tend to have to go out to find clientele, which is obvious enough to get attention. Kinda hard to advertise yourself enough to get clients without cops being able to tell, and then hassle the worker. If they’re working out of a bar, it’s a little easier to hide their intent, as long as the bar is okay with it. Some places take a cut to ignore it. One of the few regular bars I worked at had a couple of ladies that had made arrangements like that with the owner. Iirc, they were handing over ten percent and getting the benefit of being inside and not hassled as long as they didn’t cause trouble.
At the titty bars I worked, some of the ladies would turn tricks with patrons. They only did it after their shift because the owner was not willing to fuck around and lose his licences over it. They’d get fired in a hot second if they did anything other than say they’d talk to the customer after their shift. None of them ever got caught. Hell, one of them turned tricks with a cop or two, which helped in that regard.
But, yah, the vast, vast majority of arrests are stings. It’s low hanging fruit tbh. Why spend resources trying to get evidence other ways, when it works and keeps the segment of sex workers most likely to cause disturbances more limited? Escorts don’t cause trouble usually. Massage parlors don’t until they get too big and busy. They want the obvious hookers and blatant shops out of commission. If it isn’t visible, it’s lower priority.
Now, the sheriff of our county handles it very lightly. Pretty much all sex work out here in the boonies is drug related to begin with, so that’s the key to keeping things controlled. Much, much easier to bust a prostitute for meth than for prostitution. So he’s got an unofficial policy against targeting prostitution as its own thing. Which, that’s its own problem, but he’s kinda stubborn about drug policy other than weed.
There was a place that got busted in town a few years ago though. It was a ratty little place that was billed as a massage parlor. But all of the workers were addicts, so they were sloppy as hell. The lady on the phones was even stupid enough to discuss pricing for sex acts on the phone.
Undercover cops are far more common than you think.
You’re right, that’s basically all there is. That and what people in America refer to as the IRS.
Often countries have laws that make the solicitation the illegal act for that exact reason.
Or the arrest folk for conducting their business in public… So lewd behaviour.
Again though, other than a sting, or you getting bawdy in the Audi, they didn’t see it happen.
You misunderstand. Soliciting merely means the act of trying to procure sex for money.
They don’t need a sting for that. They just sit someone near a red light district and roll every car that pulls up and let’s known sex workers get in their car.
Edit: not saying any of that is right though. It certainly feels like punching down… And if anything, it encourages some far more dangerous practices, particularly for sex workers.
So, you can get arrested for being in a particular place, or giving a ride to a particular person, regardless of your actions or intent?
Again, you misunderstand. They arrest you because of your actions and specifically because of the intent.
The actions aren’t illegal and they can’t know your intent.
Always has been meme
My first thought is the cops can say to the prostitute (who wants to get back out to work ASAP) we will drop the charges and release you right now if you go on record/confess that you were engaged in prostitution with the John
Customer gets ratted out, cops having evidence against him in the form of the confession from the sex worker, and prostitute sent on her way…
Works the other way around too, cops tell the John (who doesn’t want his family or his workplace to find out he’s been arrested for soliciting a prostitute) we will let you go and drop charges if you go on record against the prostitute
Wlsex worker gets charged with the John as the prosecutor’s evidence/witness and the John gets to go back to his life…
Just film it. Paying Porn actors is not illegal usually, but taking the camera away and …
You’ve got a point, but I’m not sure many johns want to be filmed in the act…
im not 100% sure but I assume its money first.
You mean like text messages? If you have texts and then video cameras of two people going into a hotel room, that’s mighty fine evidence. What the hell else were they gonna do? Yoga?
You don’t need eyewitnesses to get convictions. That is not the legal standard.
You are not proving they had sex. You’re proving someone PAID for the sex.
The jury decides what has been proven, not you. It really is that simple. People get convicted all the time of crimes where nobody saw them do it. Because of other evidence and common sense.
And look, think about the standard that you’re trying to push. If we have text messages before and after, plus video of them going in and coming out of the hotel room. Is that good enough for you? They could always say that they thought about sex but settled for monopoly and were only joking around later… Maybe you would believe that story, but maybe the average juror would laugh.
The prosecution must convince the jury that there is no other reasonable explanation that can come from the evidence presented at trial, leaving no doubt in their minds about the defendant’s guilt.
No. The expression you looking for is “proof beyond a reasonable doubt”. What you wrote is proof beyond any doubt, which is not the legal standard.
Also, please take a look at Florida Chapter 796, or if you were concerned about another location, look at the state or local laws for that location. You will probably see that actually engaging in the act of sex is one of several ways that you could violate prostitution laws.