Thousands of Tucson massage customers unlikely to be charged
Arizona Daily Star 7/20/2015
“When you ignore prostitution, you see more sex trafficking. I have yet to meet an adult prostitute in Tucson who didn’t start as a minor.”
Several thousand suspected customers of a Tucson prostitution ring that operated illegal massage parlors are unlikely to ever be charged with a crime in connection with this case.
The Tucson Police Department said it simply doesn’t have the resources to investigate everyone on the list compiled by investigators and their involvement with the two brothels, known as Daisy’s Delights and By Spanish.
This decision isn’t sitting well with local advocates fighting against the exploitation of women.
“This massage-parlor situation isn’t just a TPD problem; it’s a community problem,” said Jerry Peyton, executive director of Tucson nonprofit Sold No More. “The police should be charged. All of the customers should. But the response we’re seeing here is that, yes, they broke the law, but it’s not that big of a deal.”
Along with providing services to victims, Sold No More aims to educate the public about sex trafficking and how to combat it. It also trains health-care workers, social service providers and law enforcement on how to recognize and respond to victims.
Last week saw one woman who worked at an illegal massage parlor get sentenced to probation, and five Tucson police employees were terminated for their reported involvement as customers of the brothels. A handful of police employees could face charges — likely misdemeanors — in connection with the case. Pima County prosecutors have not announced any charges.
But as far as any other customers of the massage parlors, it’s unlikely they’ll ever be prosecuted. The estimate of several thousand customers comes from the Police Department, which assembled the list from cellphone address books with those suspected to be involved with the illegal prostitution ring.
The Police Department had previously released the names of 14 men it said were frequent customers of the massage parlors, including Border Patrol agents, firefighters, government workers and Air Force personnel — but city prosecutors said then that they were not pursuing charges against them.
When Peyton and his group formed the Southern Arizona Human Trafficking Task Force several years ago, a number of members of local law enforcement jumped on board to help out on their own time, he said.
“There are so many good people in law enforcement who are making a difference against sex trafficking,” Peyton said. “They’re humiliated and outraged at this situation with the TPD officers. They feel like it undercuts what they’re trying to do.”
Part of the problem is that Tucson has ignored the “broken glass theory” of policing, which says that if minor crimes are neglected so that major crimes can be addressed, both types of crime go up, Peyton said.
“When you ignore prostitution, you see more sex trafficking,” he said. “I have yet to meet an adult prostitute in Tucson who didn’t start as a minor.”
Peyton said Tucson has become a hot spot for the illegal sex trade because law enforcement agencies in Phoenix have allocated more resources to fighting prostitution, which TPD has admitted to lacking.
“It’s become less risky for workers and their pimps to drive down here for the night or weekend,” he said. “We just ignore it, and the people who are getting arrested here aren’t the customers.”
But Tucson police detective Jennifer Crawford, who investigates sex trafficking cases, said the workers aren’t arrested unless they have an outstanding warrant.
“The way the investigations are handled has shifted and the women are immediately treated as victims,” she said. “They’re not cuffed. We offer services and we try to find out if there’s a pimp involved.”
Crawford moved over to street crimes last September but said that TPD didn’t have a specific unit for sex trafficking at the time. In addition to prostitution-related crimes, detectives were responsible for handling home invasions, arson and organized crime.
Early this year the unit began devoting personnel specifically to investigate sex trafficking, due in part to the shift in the sex trade from street to Internet and a spike in activity.
“Sex trafficking can go hand-in-hand with massage parlors,” Crawford said. “And it’s very frequent for the same girls to travel from Phoenix to Tucson, but I’m not sure why they’re moving.”
Before the gem show, Tucson police learned through social media of a group of sex workers who were coming from Phoenix to Tucson. Using undercover female officers, TPD was able to set up a similar operation using officers posing as prostitutes. Several johns were cited in the sting.
As of April, Crawford was the only detective assigned to investigate sex trafficking, but other detectives from street crimes are available for support.
“Things have been getting really busy for us,” she said.
Between 2010 and 2014, TPD made 546 prostitution-related arrests, according to a public-records request by the Arizona Daily Star. A department spokesman said it would require extensive research to break the statistic down to which person — customer or prostitute — was arrested in those cases.
Albuquerque, which has a similar population to Tucson, had 1,238 arrests during the same period of time.