Connecticut ping!
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Posted on 03/24/2006 12:08:41 PM PST by just deserts
NEW FAIRFIELD — The dark blue pick-up truck pulled into the driveway at 19 Barnum Road as dusk fell Thursday, the occupants apparently oblivious to the state police cruiser and unmarked cars already there.
Before the driver and passenger, both Hispanic males, could even get out, two troopers were on them, standing the pair up against the side of the truck and doing a quick frisk for weapons.
"You're not under arrest," one trooper said before leading the two into the small, cape-style house for questioning.
Police wouldn't say later what they asked the men, but when they left a few minutes later, the driver told a reporter he'd made a wrong turn while looking for nearby Old Farm Road.
"I don't know what is going on there," he said.
What was going on, state police spokesman Sgt. J. Paul Vance said, was a raid on a brothel catering to the area's immigrant population. Participating in the raid were the New Fairfield resident state trooper, the State Police Human Trafficking Task Force and agents from the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Houses of prostitution catering to the region's undocumented immigrant population first made headlines more than two years ago when 26-year-old Samuel Escobar was fatally shot in a brothel on Division Street in Danbury.
Escobar, who was working as the brothel's doorman, was gunned down during a robbery, and the killing remains unsolved.
Danbury police estimated at the time there may have been as many as six similar establishments operating in the city. Local authorities are known to be cooperating with a federal task force investigating the human trafficking rings that smuggle women into the country and put them to work, often against their will, in the brothels.
Two people were arrested Thursday in New Fairfield. Alterman Perez-Perez, a 23-year-old Danbury man who lives on Franklin Street, was charged with patronizing a prostitute.
Jorge Vasquez DeJesus, 21, a resident of the house, faces several criminal counts, including promoting prostitution, racketeering and two counts of conspiracy.
Perez-Perez was released on a promise to appear in Danbury Superior Court on April 3. DeJesus is scheduled to be in court this morning.
Vance said additional arrests are expected.
Just after 5:15 p.m., troopers and agents descended on the house, located in a quiet residential area less than a half-mile from a local school complex.
"There's a lot of cars going in and out all the time," said Steve Gibbs, as he watched the activity from his front yard on Donnelly Drive. "I was thinking drugs."
"At different times you'd see a lot of traffic," said Thomas Corbett, a next-door neighbor and member of the town Planning Commission. "You could never figure out what was going on."
Traffic seemed to be heaviest on Saturday afternoons. "When I'd be out mowing the lawn, I'd notice it," Corbett said.
Neighbors said the property, which is surrounded by woods on two sides and somewhat isolated from its neighbors, changed hands about two years ago. The previous owner ran a small construction company, and the house, situated atop slight knoll, includes a large, unpaved parking area.
It's currently owned by Teresa Kallivrousis, a Danbury Realtor, who runs Real Estate by Teresa on White Street.
Kallivrousis said she is renting the property to a husband and wife and a brother and sister, all in their late 30s, from Danbury.
Kallivrousis said no children live there, and the renters were "good tenants" who caused her no problems.
If women were living or working in the house, they escaped the attention of Gibbs and his wife, Ann, who said she passed by it while walking her dog every day.
"I never saw any women there. It's always men," she said.
I haven't posted articles here in a long tine and the list of what can be posted in full, as an excerpt, or even linked, seems to have grown so long. If this can't be posted in full, I trust those more in the know than me to take whatever measures are appropriate to correct the situation.
Sure Americans will do it.
Just for a more upscale clientele.
Open up any urban phone book to "Escort Services", and you will see pages and pages of willing "dates" segregated by sex, race, language and speciality, with "discreet credit card billing".
Illegal day laborers don't have credit cards, so this is just the downscale "clinic" type establishment. No housecalls.
I think he mentioned the human trafficking part of it and not the lay on your back and spread your legs part of it. There seems to be no shortage of that.
NEW FAIRFIELD — Rumors about an alleged Barnum Road brothel circulated for months before a police raid yesterday.
The brothel apparently catered to immigrant men.
"I had heard rumors a few months ago from a contractor who works with Hispanics," said a clerk at the New Fairfield Liquor Shop who gave his name as "John C." "I heard there was a house on Barnum with a blue light in the lawn and an American flag. I didn’t quite believe it when I first heard about it."
Another young man, who requested his name not be used, said he had lived within blocks of the house until recently.
"I used to live on Williams Road," he said. "I moved to Danbury three months ago. I’d heard about it (the brothel). It was mostly Hispanic guys going in. There’d be five or six cars in the driveway at a time."
Members of the state police Human Trafficking Task Force served a search and seizure warrant at the house Thursday and arrested two men. Alterman Perez-Perez, of Danbury, was charged with patronizing a prostitute.
Jorge Vasquez DeJesus, 21, who lived at the house, was charged with promoting prostitution, racketeering and two counts of conspiracy.
DeJesus was arraigned in Danbury Superior Court this morning. He is from Mexico and has been in the country for 8 months. He told court officials he is unemployed.
For Erika Gordon, a 25-year resident of New Fairfield, the news of the arrests came as a shock.
"I’m shocked that could happen in this town," Gordon said. "This is an upper-middle class town. I wouldn’t expect to find that here."
An elderly woman exiting the Food Center in New Fairfield Friday said "It was kind of a shock to hear that. You don’t expect that kind of thing in New Fairfield. After all, it’s a small New England town."
The Escort Services are not one off, but are run by solicitors (N.B.: the similarity to a term for lawyers is merely coincidental), and it's human trafficking.
It doesn't have the same level of brutal repression as the slavery at the low end of the economic spectrum, but go to Las Vegas, where it's legal, and take a good look at the service girls. Talk with some of them. They're slaves of organized crime too. They're often enslaved by drug habits instead of men with guns, so it's a "kinder, gentler" form of slavery (is it, really), but they're not just free actors spreading it for some cash. There's some of that, but not most of it.
Of course, there are worse things going on in this world than any of this.
Thank you for filling me in. If not your insightful comments, I would never have known that "escort services" exist and that people have preferences. It was because of the human trafficking aspects that I chose to post the article. I found it interesting that someone on the town planning commission was watching this occur while he would mow his lawn. It's CT, so unless he was mowing his lawn this winter, I'll take a wild guess that this was going on since at least last year.
You're welcome.
Perhaps they are just undocumented wives?
Ping
Connecticut ping!
Please Freepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent Connecticut ping list.
Thanks for the ping!
LOL! When court is in session there are plenty of whores there too!
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