Question on community opposition.

13 comments

• chandler

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  18 years ago

  A friend of mine who was a bartender in Chicago once got arrested for pandering and spent a night in jail before the charges were dropped. A cop working undercover had asked him what he knew about a hooker seated down the bar. He answered that he didn't know anything about her and that he (the cop) would have to find out for himself, or words to that effect. The cop took that as encouragement to solicit and cuffed him on the spot.
• chandler

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  18 years ago

  Book Guy: Re your point B, this kind of collusion happens a lot. I've heard of cases where the TV news trucks with their antennas would show up at a strip club in advance of a bust and it all would be scheduled in time to make it onto the 11:00 news. Chalk it up to strippers boosting news ratings, and publicized raids re-electing politicians. Re point C, I don't think there is anything at all unusual about publishing the names of those arrested for an offense but not convicted. Granted, both reporters and cops are more sure to see that they are included for a sexual offense than for most other misdemeanors. However, I don't agree that it would be better journalism to suppress their names because of a stigma any more than for any other offense. It's not like they're minors or rape victims.
• chandler

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  18 years ago

  The questions about pandering prompted me to google the Georgia ciminal code for that and other offenses cited. They're all at: [view link] - To clear up the main issue, Georgia oddly defines pandering the way most places define soliciting, ie, asking for prostitution. - They call pimping not pandering but, literally, pimping. Right there in the books. - Masturbation for hire means getting another person off, not being paid to get yourself off. Mainly handjobs, but the way it's written it could include lapdances or anything short of intercourse or oral. Orgasm optional. - Solicitation of sodomy probably was for blowjobs, not anal sex. If you recall, until the Supreme Court overruled it a few years ago, Georgia made it a felony for even a married couple to go down on each other alone in the privacy of their own bedroom. However, they still include oral sex as sodomy - "any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another" (Gee, what does that leave?) - punishable under what circumsstances I'm not sure. Solicitation of sodomy, however, is a misdemeanor. - Sexual battery means groping without permission. The massage girls probably grabbed the undercover cops' dicks, although the code includes buttocks and inner thighs. Some of the other definitions are worth reading, including fornication and adultery.
• Book Guy

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  18 years ago

  Quick points -- A. I don't necessarily stand by my AMP theory. It's just a thought, but an interesting one. B. The news story makes clear that the journalist knew about the impending sting (read carefully between the lines) before it happened. The plot-line ("Carpet man said, 'I'd like to see something happen' " and THEN "that something happened on Friday") makes for better reading. Very smarmy of the cops to involve the newspaper; and very culpable of the newspaper to let itself be thusly used. C. Why are the names of the ACCUSED in the story as though they were already CONVICTED? Another type of hypocrisy. "We all know" that if you get arrested in a prostitution sting, you're "already guilty" in our society. Well, it's again culpable of the paper to perpetuate that mistaken assumption about our justice system and be the tool of the cops. Bad journalism. D. Unwritten rules is where it's at. The cop-killer thing is one example; "letting" certain vice trades continue, as long as they self-regulate in a "proper" location and only to a small-enough size, is another. Our society has moved on from the world of gentlemen's agreements, to the point that video cameras and zealous nationwide publicity can make any act a prosecutable crime, if the right person does it. This is a good thing (more oversight of otherwise corrupt vice squads, for example) and a bad (less clarity of what is "harmless"; greater impact of religious zeal on law and politics).
• AbbieNormal

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  18 years ago

  Chitown, the first recognition of prostitution as harmful to the war effort came in DC during the civil war. So many union soldiers in the garrison were sick and infected that the army actually began a program to examine and certify prostitutes and get infected ones out of the buisness. The legend is that the term "hooker" comes from General Joseph Hooker as in Hooker's brigades. I don't think it is actually true, but it's a great story. Also, to reference another thread the threat of venereal disease also helped promote the popularity of the blow job among American soldiers who saw it (although incorrectly) as "safe sex".
• chitownlawyer

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  18 years ago

  Chandler is right on the definition of "pandering." I, too, would have expected the predominant charge again the men to be solicitation of prostitution, not pandering. Apparently, the state stutute in play here defines "pandering"so broadly that trying to obtain the services of a prostitute on your own behalf can be considered "pandering.' Certainly not all those men were pimps. I am a little surprised by the lack of savvy of the men arrested. In this area, whenever there is a sting (usually of the "stroll" in East St. Louis, occasionally of an AMP), half of the men are identified as "John Smith, address unknown." Red light districts were widely tolerated is American cities until WW1, when they were considered a threat to the war effort due to soldiers getting infected with syphillis/gonorrhea. That was the end, for example, of the famous "Levee" districts in New Orleans, St. Louis and Chicago. AMPs in this area are quite discreet, usually just a storefront in a strip mall, with a monument-type sign out front saying something like "Metro-East Spa", no graphics. I had a friend who recently defended two Korean girls who were arrested in a raid. The AMP was supposedly connected with big money in Korea. He told me that the girls went directly from the courthouse where he got the charges dismissed to an airplane, where they were to be flown straight back to Korea. I think it's more likely that they were being taken, if at all, to work in an AMP in some other US metropolitan area.
• AbbieNormal

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  18 years ago

  Book Guy, interesting analysis of the AMPs being tolerated. I think this touches on something I find a lot of people have forgotten. Unwritten law. One example is that it used to be understood that if you killed a cop you would never make it into custody alive. Rough street justice to be sure, illegal, certainly, but well understood by all parties. There was also a well understood obligation on the part of the police also. You better be damn sure you got the right guy, and if you don't all bets are off. This certainly led to some abuses by the police, but overall it was widely accepted as justice if not legal. In it's day it served a purpose, to protect the lone beat cop in the days before radios and fast response for backup. I think there has always been a similar phenomenon with both prostitution and strip clubs. Most people understand that vices are a permanent part of the human condition, but that they should be discouraged. While prostitution (and strip clubs to a lesser degree) may actually serve a social function as a pressure valve they also have a lot of potential for social ills. The solution that societies all over the world arrived at was that these things were discouraged, but tolerated. The old red light district of most cities was an example of this. By keeping such buisnesses out of the way where families and those who didn't want to see them didn't, but where people who wanted them could with some difficulty get to them these buisnesses were both discouraged but allowed to operate. A certain amount of hypocracy is necessary for a healthy society so I don't think AMPs and red light districts, or attending strip clubs but nor wanting one in your neighborhood are necessarily bad things.
• chandler

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  18 years ago

  Shadowcat: Pandering means pimping. Legally, I think it can be any form of facilitating a whore/john connection. That would be a lot of pimps for one sting. I would have expected more to be charged with soliciting, as described in the story above.
• chandler

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  18 years ago

  Even when the authorities know full well what they're about, AMPs around here are lot more discreet than strip clubs. They're usually situated in rundown strip malls off of the main shopping streets with very modest, subdued signage. Strip clubs typically look like painted up whores luring passers-by with garish pink and purple awnings, lurid neon promises of GIRLS!! and suggestive billboard photos. They're in your face, and practically asking for a fight. All AMPs need is a storefront and a yellow pages listing.
• parodyman-->

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  18 years ago

  Yoda: I would guess that the MP's stay open until the wrong person (politician) wanders in and pops a load. Then the MP gets closed down by a hypocrite who is having a fit of personal disgust.
• Yoda

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  18 years ago

  FONDL: MP's don't put a sign up outside that tells you what's really going on inside. When the business owner applies for a permit he's not telling the clerk that his girls are going to be giving hand-jobs. Strip clubs have to apply for a liquor and entertainment license so the cat's pretty much ot of the bag. It's as simple as that. The real question would be how long do those AMPs stay in business.
• Book Guy

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  18 years ago

  A conservative community doesn't generally oppose AMPs simply because they don't know what goes on in there. A "massage" is the announced purpose on the sign, whereas at a strip club the announced purpose is "women get naked." The frightened community members take the announcements at face value. Another theory: AMPs have a long-standing positive relationship with military installations. They're essentially necessary pressure valves for the many men who only get a little bit of alone time, and in many cities the AMPs congregate around military bases and homes. Tampa, Shreveport, and other cities come to mind. People who are social conservatives are often generally military families as well. So, they're happy with the rules that get broken as long as its the familiar old conservative arrangement of rule-breaking.
• chandler

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  18 years ago

  AMP = Asian massage parlor, right? Perhaps it's because they are degrading only to Asian women, not nice college girls next door. Also, they might be harder to oppose. They don't need a liquor license or a cabaret permit to allow dancing. Fewer regulations means fewer obstacles to put in their way.