473 customers arrested July 25 to August 26, 2018
16th National Johns Suppression Initiative
Chicago Daily Herard Reports:
80 arrested in Cook and Lake Counties and published all their mug shots - no word on Phoenix yet.
The campaign did provide some reason for optimism in the fight against online sex trafficking. A bot deployed to measure the level of potential trafficking taking place across several emerging "escort service" websites in five locations, including Chicago.
"Of course, the days of sex trafficking are not behind us and countless victims and perpetrators remain," (Sheriff) Dart said. "We must remain vigilant, continue to reach victims and work to hold offenders accountable for the harm they cause."
8/31/2018 Reason.com says:
'National Sex Trafficking Crackdown' Nets Zero Sex Traffickers
Last week concluded the latest "National Johns Suppression Initiative," an appropriately draconian name for a coordinated cross-country targeting of sex workers and their customers. This year's stings netted "hundreds of would-be sex buyers," the Chicago Tribune reports, "as well as a half-dozen alleged pimps."
The Tribune headline describes it as a "national sex trafficking crackdown." But let's do the math from the figures it gives us:
473 people arrested for attempting to pay for sexual activity
6 people arrested for pimping (i.e., profiting off of prostitution)
0 people arrested for sex trafficking
This "national sex trafficking operation" has a zero percent success rate if the goal is, you know, actually catching sex traffickers. Even counting the six alleged pimps, these arrests make up less than 1.3 percent of the total arrests reported (and that's without including sex workers arrested in the course of these stings).
The focus for police here is allegedly on "rescuing children." But either there's drastically fewer minors in need of rescuing than they say or they've barely bothered to make a dent in the problem, instead squandering resources, attention, and action on shaming adults who seek consensual commercial exchanges with other adults.
In stings that spanned cities across the country for an entire month (July 25 to August 26), 11 teenagers were found to be working in prostitution.
Of the 473 "john" arrests, just 10 are accused of agreeing to go forward with the encounter once an undercover cop posing as a sex worker "admitted" to being underage.
The stings are organized by "abolitionist" Swanee Hunt and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart; this is the 16th annual operation. You might remember Hunt from the time she paid Seattle prosecutors to frame the bust of an escort web forum as the takedown of a "sex trafficking ring."
Hunt, Dart, and their ilk frame these as productive despite the dearth of actual victims because they say they're "ending demand" for "child sex trafficking." But as sting after sting like this shows, the demand just isn't there. Prostitution among adults is popular; paying minors for sex is not, thank goodness. And to the extent that there are people out there seeking such things out and profiting off of them, stings like this don't work to catch them.
After more than a decade of doing this annual "anti–sex trafficking" charade, it's time to stop letting zealots like these two not only destroy the lives of innocent people but hijack police and media focus for their weird authoritarian ends.
Some departments are starting to wise up and opt out. For instance, after two years of participation, the McClennan County Sheriff's Office in Texas decided not to participate. Said Chief Deputy David Kilcrease: "The john suppression effort is...primarily all misdemeanors. We've proven we can fill our books with misdemeanor arrests that are time-consuming to do," but it pulls focus from folks actually instigating exploitation.