Written by A new Facebook group has recently sprung up, called “City of Renton; Behind the Curve on Prostitution” Here is a link.
The new group is sharing information about suspected locations of prostitution activities, and pushing for increased resources to combat them.
We do take prostitution crimes very seriously at city hall. While some may mistakenly believe that this is mostly a victimless crime, there is actually a great deal of sexual/physical abuse and human trafficking associated with it. In addition, violators run down neighborhoods and set-back economic development efforts.
I’ve addressed this in previous journal entries, such as this one here
The city has been addressing prostitution in a number of ways. Our police have been raiding locations where the crime occurs, and arresting prostitutes, their pimps, and their customers. More recently we’ve been testing some new tactics such as contacting all the parties with financial interest in real property where this crime occurs, such as mortgage holders (banks), to let them know when their properties have become sites for prostitution and subject to police actions, code enforcement actions, or other litigation; we are working with these stakeholders to get repeat-offenders evicted from their locations and from our city.
We are open to any other ideas on how to combat this problem, and perhaps some will come from the new Facebook group.
I want to point out that part of this is true, and yes, paying a certain amount of attention to this is definitely necessary. But to what length is this really needed? I can’t help but feel this is a giant waste of city money. We have bigger problems than prostitution here. Geeze, would people just get their panties out of a bunch for once?
Renton has bigger problems than helping stop thugs trafficking in sex slaves? There’s some horror stories that come out of these places.
why buy the cow when you get the milk for free.
Apparently some are still renting the cow for milk.
I see nothing about a way to stop customers. We give free syringes to addicts to stop spread of AIDS, we give free methadone to get folks off herion. . . . oh wait, this isn’t going in a good direction. . .
nevermind
Maybe we could get a strong mayoral candidate out of this opposition drive, just like we got out of the drive against the adult theaters. 🙂
You are aware that prohibition causes the crime, right? Not that I’m asking Renton to be the leader in de-criminizing this activiity but it’s worth to point that out.
-H
“More recently we’ve been testing some new tactics such as contacting all the parties with financial interest in real property where this crime occurs, such as mortgage holders (banks), to let them know when their properties have become sites for prostitution and subject to police actions, code enforcement actions, or other litigation; we are working with these stakeholders to get repeat-offenders evicted from their locations and from our city.”
It would be good if the City began using the same tactics on apartment owners/mortgage holders/etc. where drugs are openly being sold in the parking lots.