Monday, December 8, 2008

Seems about right

When street-level prostitution started surfacing in Lincoln a few years ago, it was an indicator of much more serious problems. You can argue all you want about prostitution being a victimless crime: when you arrest a john who's brought his baby along for the ride, bust someone who negotiates a $5 sex act with a desperate addict, or investigated a soup-sandwich robbery report in which the victim is lying about the hooker and pimp who jacked him, you'll soon discover that there are indeed many victims in street prostitution. One of those victims is the neighborhood.

Few things are more damaging to a neighborhood than street walkers hanging out while prospects slowly cruise by gawking. For that reason, our Southwest Team officers have worked hard to reduce street prostitution. This has been difficult and risky work. They should be commended for their dedication and courage. Their efforts should also be supported by an equal commitment by the rest of the criminal justice system.

I received this recap of sentences that have been meted out to johns seeking prostitutes in the Southwest Team area this year during our Project Safe Neighborhoods operations:



I'm encouraged, because I think this shows that these offenses are not being trivialized. I also think it has made a difference. The problem has been impacted, and the neighborhood has seen the results. It has been a team effort, and a good example of the collaboration of the community and the police to address a problem of mutual concern.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

How can I look up case numbers to see a description?

Anonymous said...

I find it hard to understand the people that would do this. In Nevada the brothels have legal prostitution.
So they could take the business to that state and not get arrested.

Anonymous said...

Roughly speaking, what proportion of known prostitutes are also illegal drug users?

Tom Casady said...

7:39-

Sorry, you can't .

10:13-

Roughly 100%. (+ - 5%)

Anonymous said...

Chief: When I view Crimeview it doesn't show "Sex Crimes", (The topic of the day.) "DUI", and Distrubing The Peace". I view Fort Worth's site occasionally as I have Clients there. Their map show all of the one we show in Lincoln and the three listed above.

Is there a reason why Crimeview doesn't show the Sex Crimes in Lincoln?

Tom Casady said...

11:56-

Not every City handles this the same way, but the Omega group (which hosts crimemapping.com) has to use categories and symbology that can fit the data supplied by all of their clients.

We send our Incident Report data to the Omega Group--which does not include drunk driving cases and disturbing the peace cases (these don't result in an Incident Report). We also intentionally redact the data on rapes, in order to provide greater protection to victims.

In our own internal applicatons, however, have good data on DUI and disturbing the peace cases. These are contained in our dispatch records, which we do not supply to crimemapping.com. You can read a little bit more about the difference between dispatch records and incident reports here.

One of the disadvantages of mapping dispatch records is that the "location" is the place where the police were sent, rather than the place where the event occurred. While these two locations are the same in some cases, in others they may be quite different. An assault may be reported from the hospital emergency room, for example, although it happened at a bar across town. The Incident Report data we supply to crimemapping.com consists of the location of occurrence, not the location of the dispatch or report.

Anonymous said...

actually there is a way to look up the case numbers-go to lincoln.ne.gov-then under government go to county agencies-look up county attorney
when that opens go to public record criminal search-look up by ticket or case number-uselincoln police-and poof there it is