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NYPD sting charges 156 johns in second massive prostitution bust in metropolitan

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Cops said Operation Losing Proposition has netted more than 900 arrests since 2011, also seizing about 220 vehicles used by solicitors of prostitutes.

The NYPD's announcement of 156 johns being arrested in New York City follows Monday's announcement that 104 johns were busted in Nassau County.

A prostitution sting put in place across roughly half the city has been an arrest machine, leading to the arrest of 156 johns last week alone, police said Thursday.

Police also seized 32 vehicles during the latest application of Operation Losing Proposition, held Thursday through Saturday in 28 of the city's 76 police precincts.

The operation targets johns in areas where people have made several complaints about prostitutes working the streets, cops said.

“The department is focusing on the demand side of the equation,” NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a statement. “The exploitation of women is not a victimless crime.”

The operation has netted more than 900 arrests since 2011, and cops have seized about 220 vehicles used by johns.
Kelly said the NYPD has also established a Human Trafficking Squad within the Vice Division of the department's Organized Crime Control Bureau.

The officers assisted in last month's arrest of Taye Ellerby, 35, who allegedly forced two women and a teenage runaway from Connecticut to prostitute themselves in his East Harlem apartment.
“The brutal sex trafficking industry, which preys on and victimizes New York City's most vulnerable women, men and children, is fueled by prostitution patronizers, who believe that they can buy the bodies of people in prostitution with impunity,” said Dorchen Leidholdt, director of the Sanctuary for Families' Center for Battered Women's Legal Services. “Attacking the demand for prostitution is the best way to prevent and curtail trafficking in our city.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd…