Dude — gross. Never again do I want to read that ejaculation is part of the burden of proof…
…But this raises some questions, and reminds me of some points I’d previously made, in direct reference to cops, posing as Johns, receiving “tricks” from working girls, who then turn around and arrest them, back in November’s More on Hookers & Blow. But the rule applies to just about any conceivable “victimless crime”. Please allow me to restate my argument:
We are outlawing, and misallocating scarce law-enforcement resources to deter and arrest people for engaging in what they, in their individual capacities, have determined to be a mutually beneficial, purely voluntary transaction. If you really want to criminalize intentions and motives, consider that in these circumstances, the officer is the one who’s lying; the hooker is the one who’s on the up-and-up.
Radley Balko has a nice take on this issue, “The only way to enforce [consensual crimes] is to put cops in the precarious, corruption-tempting position of going undercover to conduct sting operations. And that gives rise to sleazy scenarios like this one, where cops engage in acts of prostitution, then arrest the women they patronized….for engaging in acts of prostitution.”
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From another angle, we don’t require that cops actually smoke the pot in order to obtain drug trafficking convictions, do we?
In “It’s not a war on drugs… back in September, 2005, probably in response to something that I saw over at the Agitator, which was fueled also by my day in court on traffic violation, during which I witnessed the testimony of an undercover narcotics agent.
By far the biggest problem I had with the whole thing is that engaging officers in this sort of behavior basically requires that they become a part of the problem, in order to “win the war on drugs.” Because the court doesn’t take into account the motives or occupation of any other drug dealers or purchasers (the white-collar accountant who needs a quick fix, or the immigrant day-laborer who slings rock to support his family), neither should the court allow police officers to fuel the problem by posing as drug dealers, or purchasers.
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I’m pretty much fed up with all the nannyism.
