Posted on 03/08/2003 9:00:42 AM PST by forest
In Detroit, the world's second oldest profession is taking aim at knocking out the world's oldest profession. Never mind that many people who have received, or are receiving, a paycheck from city government are or have been involved in prostitution in some way. The hunt is on.
Except, in this case they are not exactly going after the prostitutes, per se. Hassling the working girls seems to be a lost cause. They pop up faster than spring dandelions on city owned property. And, like the dandelions, there seems to be a large bumper crop of new young ones every year. So, instead of thinning out the crowd of street walkers, local authorities decided to go after the "Johns."
It's a revenue enhancement thing for government, after all. Cops and prosecutors will not collect any money for busting hookers. Therefore, they tend to leave the street walkers alone.
Fact is, authorities can't even get enough fines from the Johns to make busting them worthwhile. So, government had a better idea:
Steal cars.
And that's the current policy in a nutshell. When cops bust a guy for soliciting a prostitute, they confiscate the guy's car. And, because many men soliciting prostitutes in Detroit are from the suburbs and drive nice wheels, the suburbanites get targeted first. The prosecutor's office and police department have found confiscating cars to be a great profit center. Since 2001, the City has confiscated about 15,000 vehicles.
Of course, that pesky natural law of unintended consequences then kicked in. That is, that profit center then becomes yet another reason to target Johns and leave the street walkers alone so they will keep attracting more business. After all, no street walkers attracting Johns means no more cars confiscated.
Is government partly a pimp in this arrangement, or just an enabler? Really, it's hard to tell. What is evident, though, is a lot of people are profiting from this system. Not the Johns, of course. But, no one seems to care about them.
This unintended consequences thing goes even deeper, though -- if anyone cares to think about it. Because, this practice by government not only steals cars, it also goes far to ruin otherwise salvageable lives.
Fact is, many of each year's new crop of cute, young street walkers are also teenyboppers. Each one is someone's daughter. Most have personal issues in their lives which, given half a chance and a little professional help, could be worked out. But, if they are left to walk the streets for a year or so, all bets are off for recouping anything resembling a "normal" life again.
Because, here's one old research physiologist who can offer proof positive that the gleam some may see in the eyes of these young girls is definitely not a twinkle of happiness. It's not, that is, unless you get your happiness from buying a rock of crack to smoke.
And there we have the real shame of it all. Police target the Johns, seldom the girls. So, by not getting busted and forced into professional assistance, these teenyboppers can become totally entrenched, within a year, in that morass euphemistically call "the life" on the street.
Sure, there is no "profit center" available to bureaucrats helping these girls. But, isn't that type of action more important to society as a whole than confiscating a few cars each year? And, wouldn't such a program help to keep the population of street walkers down considerably?
Many of those fresh-faced young girls walking the street would be happy to accept another chance at a normal life. What's needed is a program to take them off the street and get them pointed back in the right direction. Think about it. Because the police state mentality of a program like Detroit's will be proposed in your city soon.
To get city revenue, Detroit busts the guys looking for a girl and takes the guy's car, which is usually an expensive one. [Doug doesn't say anything about how much it costs for silence, maybe into private pockets.]
Is government partly a pimp in this arrangement, or just an enabler? Really, it's hard to tell.
Those girl's lives could be salvaged.
The police state mentality of a program like Detroit's will be proposed in your city soon. That should get somebody's attention.
What is the oldest profession?
One check of the book of Genesis shows the oldest profession to be farming.
Prior to the early 20th Century, society relied on social stigma to keep its young women respectable. It was because of the spread of disease that the law became involved. But then, once the law in involved, you can always expect "reformers" to ply their own trade. To paraphrase the late Westbrook Pegler's obituary for Eleanor Roosevelt: What the girls are selling is, after all, theirs to sell. But what the "reformers" are peddling is your and my country. And that is not theirs to play with.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
But I thought they started farming so they had something to trade the hooker.
I think it stared long before farming, " you know I give'em you meat, you give'em me ____."
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