Intercourse employee advocacy teams plan to oppose laws from Seattle Metropolis Council Member Cathy Moore that will make prostitution loitering a misdemeanor crime in Seattle. Moore claims the invoice would assist individuals escape the intercourse commerce and reduce gun violence that endangers Aurora companies and householders, however advocates say this invoice solely endangers intercourse employees and disproportionately targets girls of colour and members of the LGBTQ+ for arrest, all with out growing wanted providers.
Moore’s invoice would reinstate a Seattle legislation that made “prostitution loitering” a misdemeanor, which town council unanimously repealed in 2020. Violators would resist 90 days in jail and a fantastic of $1,000.
Underneath the legislation, cops may arrest individuals for hanging round and beckoning passersby, or strolling as much as a automobile and leaning by way of the window to speak to the driving force in a method that provides off intercourse employee vibes.
The invoice additionally creates a selling prostitution loitering gross misdemeanor crime. Violators of that legislation would resist a 12 months in jail and a $5,000 fantastic.
Lastly, the laws creates a seven-mile Keep Out of Space Prostitution zone (SOAP) that stretches alongside Aurora Avenue from eighty fifth Avenue North to 145th Avenue North. Judges can impose a SOAP order as a part of pre-trial or sentencing circumstances on individuals arrested for or convicted of any prostitution-related crime, and cops can arrest individuals caught violating the SOAP order on a gross misdemeanor.
The teams opposing the laws embody Strippers Are Employees (SAW), a dancer-led advocacy group that not too long ago gained a serious victory in Olympia to reintroduce alcohol into strip golf equipment. SAW Marketing campaign Supervisor Madison Zack-Wu mentioned that when the council repealed the Metropolis’s loitering legislation in 2020, they acknowledged the legislation as “racist, transphobic, and classist” and that it principally damage intercourse employees and victims of trafficking whereas doing nothing to truly forestall crime.
Zack-Wu expects a couple of dozen intercourse employee and LGBTQ+ organizations to signal onto a letter later this week urging the Council, Republican Metropolis Lawyer Ann Davison, and Mayor Bruce Harrell to drop the prostitution loitering invoice. Already, a separate letter writing marketing campaign organized by SAW spurred individuals to ship in hundreds of letters to metropolis council members and to Harrell declaring their opposition to the invoice.
At a press convention final Thursday, the place Moore introduced her invoice alongside Davison and Council Member Bob Kettle, Moore justified the laws as a strategy to intervene in intercourse employees’ relationships with their pimps, or traffickers. She argued that law enforcement officials wanted a strategy to take away employees from doable exploitative conditions, and he or she apparently prefers this manner, which forces intercourse employees to interact with police below menace of prison sanctions. She promised diversion packages for the individuals arrested on prostitution costs, in addition to funding for a doable emergency shelter, plus cash to assist individuals take away prostitution arrests from their file. Moore additionally argued that by focusing on intercourse employees, the police may scale back gun violence within the space.
A torrent of arguments in opposition to Moore’s coverage has rushed in from all sides. In a telephone interview with The Stranger, former Democratic Seattle Metropolis Lawyer Pete Holmes got here in sizzling and mentioned that sending cops to intervene in these employees’ lives truly places them in danger for extra sexual abuse, not least of all from cops themselves. On a number of events, legislation enforcement companies caught Seattle Police Division (SPD) officers making an attempt to pay for sexual encounters, together with Officer Daniel Espinoza, who stays employed by SPD. In 2023, the Metropolis paid a girl practically $2 million to settle her lawsuit after she claimed an SPD officer and his accomplice forcibly raped her when she labored as an underage intercourse employee. Contemplating this council’s lack of curiosity in holding cops accountable, including the prostitution loitering legislation could be like giving cops a “looking license” for intercourse employees, Holmes mentioned.
In fact, the laws and Moore’s rhetoric implicitly forecloses on the concept intercourse employees can consent to intercourse work or possess any company in any respect. Fairly than search to re-criminalize consensual intercourse work, Holmes mentioned the authorized system ought to focus its sources on circumstances of abuse. “If a intercourse vendor calls to say that she was assaulted by a intercourse purchaser,” that’s when the authorized system ought to reply, he mentioned.
Although Moore additionally justified the invoice as a strategy to minimize down on gun violence related to the intercourse commerce, the Greenlight Undertaking, a peer-led mutual help group that serves intercourse employees on Aurora, mentioned the laws does nothing to handle it. Spokesperson Amber argued that intercourse employees aren’t committing violent crimes, and that they–like close by enterprise house owners–additionally don’t need to get caught in shoot-outs. And but, the brunt of this invoice’s enforcement falls on arresting intercourse employees and “promoters,” which might embody individuals simply dropping off a buddy to work at Aurora. These legal guidelines assist to isolate intercourse employees, making them extra susceptible, Amber mentioned. When this legislation existed earlier than, she added, fewer employees walked in teams, decreasing safety even additional.
If SPD officers resolve solely to arrest these employees, they nonetheless face jail time or doable prosecution, which might lure them in dire straits. Whereas Davison promised diversion, realistically, any pimps or traffickers who truly do management employees will forestall them from collaborating in these types of packages, in response to Audrey Baedke, the cofounder and director of coaching and partnerships at Actual Escape from the Intercourse Commerce (REST).
REST offers providers to transgender and cis-women making an attempt to flee the intercourse commerce, they usually’re the one group offering wraparound providers and prolonged housing for this inhabitants group. Ladies can keep for as much as 90 days, and this system goals to assist them exit into steady housing. The issue is that REST solely has seven beds, they usually’re virtually continually at 90% capability. The group typically diverts individuals it can not assist to home violence shelters, however these shelters additionally battle with capability.
Baedke mentioned REST took no official stance on the prostitution loitering legislation, although they appreciated the council’s try to make use of cops to go after the intercourse consumers and intercourse sellers. The group additionally acknowledged that folks working within the intercourse commerce can discover interactions with legislation enforcement complicated, they usually identified that police may be clients.
Intercourse employees who go away the commerce have instructed REST that essentially the most useful factor legislation enforcement can do when interacting with employees is to supply actual providers, however in the intervening time Seattle and King County have little or no to supply. Baedke burdened that REST doesn’t have the capability to assist all of the individuals calling its hotline, and with out more cash it can not deal with the rise in demand ensuing from this invoice.
In Thursday’s press convention, Davison didn’t element out what occurs if employees refuse to take part in a diversion program, however the legislation leaves open the likelihood that these arrests may result in a conviction.
A prostitution arrest on an individual’s file could make it more durable for them to safe housing or discover a job, and the imposition of courtroom fines and charges could make leaving intercourse work that a lot more durable, mentioned Elizabeth Hendren, advocacy counsel on the Sexual Violence Legislation Heart (SVLC), one of many teams signed on to oppose Moore’s invoice. The SVLC offers trauma-informed authorized counsel to victims of sexual and gender-based violence, together with former intercourse employees. Whereas Moore’s laws could supply some funding to assist take away costs from an individual’s file, that course of can take years and requires at the least one–and possibly extra–full-time attorneys, Hendren mentioned. The best strategy to forestall individuals from struggling below the load of a prostitution cost is to not not put a cost on their file within the first place, she argued.
In an electronic mail, even former Metropolis Council Member Alex Pedersen, one of many earlier council’s extra conservative members, instructed Moore ought to contemplate eradicating the portion of the invoice that criminalizes employees. Pedersen co-sponsored the unique prostitution loitering legislation repeal in June 2020, together with Council Members Andrew Lewis and Tammy Morales. After studying Moore’s invoice, Pedersen mentioned he appreciated the components that focused pimps and johns for arrest. He additionally had no drawback with the plan for a SOAP on seven miles of Aurora Avenue. Nevertheless, he argued the invoice included a “problematic portion” in its focusing on of employees, and he mentioned it presumably “encroached” on an individual’s proper to free speech and free meeting.
Amy-Marie Merrell, government director of the Cupcake Ladies, an anti-trafficking group that works with individuals who need to go away or stay within the intercourse commerce, mentioned their group by no means forces employees down any explicit path as a result of they’ve “already handled sufficient coercion.” Cupcake Ladies additionally signed on to oppose Moore’s invoice as a result of her plan targets essentially the most at-risk inhabitants of intercourse employees–that’s, individuals out on the streets–and presents them nothing however dangerous choices, Merrell mentioned. If Moore actually wished to assist these girls, Merrell added, then she’d supply them housing, a fundamental earnings, or some type of actual, sustainable possibility for exiting the intercourse commerce. In providing not one of the assist these employees really need, the invoice could solely push some individuals off Aurora and into deeper, darker, far riskier shadows.
