I read the other day that a local police department busted 15 more people for participating in a prostitution ring. There were several articles algorithmically put in front of me, but I clicked on that one. Why? Is it schadenfreude? Maybe I just want to make sure it’s not someone I know.
You may have watched How to Catch a Predator or similar shows. I’ve seen bits and pieces, and would do admit I slightly cringe but enjoy it when they catch the kid-lover in the act. But I have also seen a hundred stings on ordinary police body cam, no commercials. It is hardly as dramatic. Mostly it’s just pathetic. I would have a hard time if I was doing the “catching.” I don’t like the confrontation of catching someone red-handed.
As I confronted the predator with his wrongdoing, there would be an awkwardness that stands between us, like this sticky slime that no human can go through, which for me is the feeling I have any time I’ve caught someone red-handed. And this particular act is especially slimy. Twenty dollars for a blow job? C’mon dude, have a little respect for yourself.
Most times when they catch these grown men looking to hook up with prostitutes, it is not nearly as sexy, so to speak, as what you’ll see on TV. I have viewed this from a police cam propped up on a hotel room nightstand as a female undercover officer has coaxed a horny middle-aged man to agree to pay a pittance for some outrageously vulgar sex act.
It goes something like this. The horny man is lured in by a message posted by an undercover female police officer. The message goes up on one of those sketchy websites where society’s dredges linger, a step or two down from Craig’s List, and one more step away from the full-on evil of the Dark Web.
The female officer posts something about wanting to hook up. Often the horny man will ask for a selfie in return, to prove it’s really her. And, believe it or not, the officers will send a selfie, which adds to the dangerousness of it.
Enter the VICE Operations Unit. Usually three to four burly dudes in tactical gear and armed with rifles, waiting in the hotel room that adjoins the room that the criminal will enter to make contact with the undercover officer.
Pro-tip: if you’ve responded to one of these messages and you go and there’s an adjoining hotel room, go ahead and turn around and run. Though that won’t always save you. Sometimes a member of the VICE unit is just hanging in the bathroom.
Either way, they’re ready to bust in as soon as the female officer gives the queue. She gives the queue when the man makes an overt act of agreeing to pay for a sexual act, e.g., “Yes ma’am, here is $20 for [insert sex act here].” When the man realizes he’s been tricked (it’s never not a man), the resignation appears on his face, and the four officers there to do the “take down” seems like overkill, so long as the resignation doesn’t turn into desperation.
“Hey! Hey. Dude. Get back here. We got you on video, man. Let’s do this the easy way.”
The messages that the undercover officer posts on the sites that elicit responses are meant to sound slangy. Rather than “Hey, I am a woman looking to have sex for money,” which might lure in a robot, she instead posts a message like “Lewking 4 meetup/hookup, txt me at ____. Xoxo.” Sure enough, like the sun rises in the morn, several men will fire back a message to this female undercover female officer, and it’s off to the races. Next thing he knows, the man is in a hotel room, on camera, with his pants down, wondering why he's such a sucker.
And a quick comment on the fact that these “sting” operations are conducted at hotels. These are not your seedy looking motels on the side of the highway where this luring is happening. No, this is happening at Holiday Inns, at Comfort Suites. I’ve seen officers do it out of a Sheraton. I imagine they’ve graduated to the Embassy Suites by now.
I always wonder how the hotel manager takes it when the local police sergeant walks up to the concierge desk and says, “Hey so I am going to set up four burly dudes in an adjoining hotel room, decked out in tactical SWAT gear and heavily armed, with a female officer in the other room dressed in civilian clothes. My female officer is going to try to coax horny men into her hotel room, and my officers are going to be waiting in the adjoining room to bust down the door at her signal. I promise, no one will get hurt. But now that I’m thinking about it, maybe put us in a corner room in case some gunfire breaks out.”
Hopefully your local PD compensates the hotels when they conduct “sting” operations like this. I would like to think that they do. After all, it’s not good for business when a guest has to call the front desk to report that she can't go to the ice machine down the hall because four guys in bulletproof vests are carrying a half-naked, diminutive man down the stairway.
“Sure” says the manager to the sergeant, “and will your officers be staying the night? The continental breakfast is $20 per person, but I’ll throw it in for free if you book another night’s stay.”
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