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Tuesday, February 14, 2006 

In the Line of Duty

A Virginia sheriff gives the go-ahead for undercover officers to have sex with prostitutes.
Court documents show that four times last month, county detectives allowed women at a massage parlor to perform sex acts on them. In one case, a lawman left a $350 tip. Smith acknowledged the practice is not new.

Smith told The Washington Post that only unmarried detectives are allowed to do the under-the-covers work.

He said actual sex acts are needed to help win prostitution convictions.
I'm not sure if the "tip" money is comes from department funding (tax dollars) or if it was seized in other busts. I would be interested to know that though.

I'm a little fuzzy on the intricacies of criminal law in this area. Amazingly, we didn't cover prostitution in depth during Crim first year. The sheriff says that actual sex acts are needed to get the conviction. What if we reverse the situation? It's not unheard of to have a female police officer pose as a prostitute and arrest men who try to solicit her services. Does the undercover female have to complete the transaction, so to speak, in order to get a conviction? Or is there a bias in the criminal justice system that makes convicting a John easier?

Best of luck to the brave men of the Spotsylvania Sheriff's Department's Gonorrhea Division. Pack protection, and I don't mean a gun.

For those of you MST3K fans, this is oddly reminiscent of the brilliant Joe Don Baker movie Mitchell, which focuses on a hooker lovin' (and arrestin') cop.

Honestly, I'm not trying to post this much about deviant behaviors. I'm just making my normal rounds on the web and this is what I'm finding...

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About me

  • I'm Steve
  • From Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States
  • "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." P.J. O'Rourke
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