Police, Prostitution

Police Pay Informant to Frequent Prostitutes. Court Cries Foul.

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Frankly, this is the kind of scheme that Detective Jimmy McNulty would have come up with. The Legal Intelligencer reports:

In a case of first impression, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled last week that state troopers committed “outrageous government conduct” when investigating alleged prostitution at a massage parlor in the Lehigh Valley by giving money to an undercover informant to have sex four times with two different women at the parlor.

You read that correctly. Pennsylvania state troopers pimped out an undercover informant to have sex with prostitutes:

[T]he police investigation started when a patron of the massage parlor complained to state police that he had been offered “‘manual sexual stimulation'” after being given a massage. The patron did not accept the offer because he could not afford it, the opinion said.
The patron then agreed to become an informant for the police, the opinion said. He wore a wire and was provided money with which he purchased sexual acts with two different women at the massage parlor on four occasions, the opinion said.

Does the work of the undercover informant count as a “shovel ready” stimulus job, or are the two prostitutes counted as jobs the Obama administration has created or saved?
You have to love the informant. Who hits up their local police officer for hooker cash? Real sense of moral integrity by that guy.
Not surprisingly, the court was outraged by the actions of the police officers. Details after the jump.


Nobody ever talks about the downside of prostitution. No, I’m not talking about venereal diseases. I mean that some guys forget that prostitution really isn’t all that fun for the prostitute. Really, no matter how awesome you think you are, chances are the woman isn’t enjoying servicing you for money. At trial, the director of sexual trauma and psychopathology program at Penn — Mary Anne Layden — testified that each act of prostitution further damages the psyche of the prostitute:

“‘When police officers act as johns, and they traumatize an individual unnecessarily, it’s outrageous,'” Layden testified, according to Bender.

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See, the cops wouldn’t have thought to conduct series of fake serial killings in order to swing public opinion towards spending more money on crime fighting. The moral turpitude of that would be obvious on its face.
But paying so that a prostitute has to ply her trade? Yeah, that seemed like fair game to the state troopers and the district attorney’s office. It’s like we’re suddenly living in Hamsterdam.
Let’s see if the troopers involved will get the McNulty/Freemon treatment.
Sex With Informant Voids Prostitution Case [Legal Intelligencer]

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