Craigslist Hookers
So if you have been following the news for the past few weeks, or if you or someone you know is a pimp, you may have heard about what recently transpired on Craigslist.
The short version, is that they eliminated the adult section of the site.
The longer version is that throughout this country, law-enforcement and a variety of DA’s kept threatening legal action, on the basis that the Craigslist adult section was a haven for prostitution. Which to be fair, was probably a very accurate assessment of the situation. And even though Craigslist has traditionally assisted law enforcement, to the point of setting up a special interface for police to examine and track posters, many felt that it was their responsibility to society to take the whole section down, and failing that, these folks tried to use the courts to take the whole site down.
And so, in order to protect themselves Craigslist took down their adult section. More specifically they blocked access to that section from any computer coming from America.
Now I’m not going to talk about the 1st Amendment or the Federal laws that protect websites from the consequences of third party content. Others who are more knowledgeable and frankly better writers than me have already done a more thorough job than I ever could.
I’m not going to talk about the legalities and morality of prostitution. Police, and to a lesser extent Government lawyers don’t have an ethical right to choose what laws they will enforce. For good or ill, prostitution is illegal, and they are duty and oath bound to do what they can to stop it.
But what I am going to talk about is how incredibly fucking stupid those folks are who tried to bully Craigslist into shutting down the adult section.
Your job is to fight crime. Hookers and their clients are criminals. Therefore, it is up to law enforcement and the DA office to find a prosecute them. So far so good.
And then along comes a website that has not only a list of every harlot in town, but also a picture, a phone number, a vague geographic location, and more often than not, a price sheet.
I’m sorry, America’s law enforcement, but I am calling bullshit on this one. Given the information Craigslist just dropped into your lap, every working girl (and both guys) should have been off the streets years ago. I mean, it would have taken literally just one police officer about 15 minutes to have the contact info of nearly every sex-worker in the city.
I mean, at this point, the fact that they haven’t busted every single strumpet, floozy, and bawd in the market is really just laziness. Which brings us to the actual problem. It’s not that these folks are worried about the internet being used to spread the sex-trade. It’s that they are worried about how obvious the Internet makes it that they aren’t very good at stopping it.
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September 24th, 2010 at 7:28 am
Bra-Fucking-Vo
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September 24th, 2010 at 7:44 am
Part of the problem is that the police have to get the prostitute to say “I’ll do X for X amount of dollars.” A similar situation goes for catching their customers (I”l give you X if you will do X to me).
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September 24th, 2010 at 8:26 am
Leave it to Skippy to come up with a logical line of BS nobody else has mentioned.
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September 24th, 2010 at 11:06 am
That, and the police, as people, really aren’t interested in locking up hookers. They are interested in locking up abusive pimps and thieving hookers, and getting plain-old hookers off the street and into another line of work.
The fact of the matter is, the craigslist type stuff gives hookers a way to stay off the street and to not have to have an abusive pimp. The only problem was, like you said, it got too successful, and we can’t let the illusion slip.
Most vice cops know the score. Deal with the problems that are problems, and some chick hooking through college on the internet is not the same problem that a meth addict with a pimp that beats her ass if she comes back with less than $500 is.
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September 24th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Tim, doesn’t your clarification show that if we work for an employer, we are whores and the employer is soliciting our prostitution? It appears we are all breaking the law by just living. Cops and politicians are as big if not bigger whores than we are. Add to that, Our bosses pimp out our whoring efforts. I do like the way you made it simple. I like your logic, allows me to come up with shit like this. :0)
Skippy, You amaze me with your observations.
Phelp, Good observation. Wonder if we can get our pimp bosses arrested for being abusive to us whoring employees.
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September 26th, 2010 at 6:03 am
I had nothing to add here, except the Captcha.
“Probend Trover.” … Captcha, are you trying to say something, here?
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September 27th, 2010 at 7:43 am
I can only say one thing…ROFLMAO…well and I agree with Dan “Bra-F!@#$%-Vo” (I have small kids too)
P.S. Skippy, are you helping Captcha out? I mean where did the “word” “teeinksh” come from??
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September 28th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
I’m with Skippy whole heartedly. It was news a few years back that MS-13 was running a brothel west of Ft Bragg of below 18 girls that advertised on Craig’s List, I think it was the town of Sanford. I don’t remember how many of the gang members were caught, but the website really helped make the case.
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October 8th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Now this is the first original though on this whole ordeal that I’ve heard. Nicely put. Thanks for sharing. If we were on Facebook I’d hit the “like” button.
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