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We watch a female Portland Police Officer, dressed in very ordinary, casual clothing – not a flashy, attention-getting costume – slowly walk up and down 82nd Avenue. With all of the team in place, we watch as this “female decoy mission” or “john mission” swings back into action. If his wife or girl friend is on the car title, she will have to be present when the car is released from seizure, and that might be a little exciting too. Instead of having the illicit sexual thrills he’d expected, this alleged john is getting another kind of excitement – being arrested, booked, and taken to jail. They leave behind used condoms.”īeyond negative impacts on neighborhoods, the officers say they’ve seen an alarming rise in the number young girls – as young as 14 years of age – being pressured into prostitution. They’ll do it in a church parking lot, in front of a school, just along a side street. “Unlike a ‘john’ (customer) who sets up a ‘date’ (sex-for-money meeting) from a CraigsList ad in a motel room or apartment,” Steinbronn adds, “these johns will drive the prostitute around the corner and into the neighborhoods alongside 82nd Avenue.
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“Street prostitution ‘imports crime’ – it brings individuals into a neighborhood for the purpose of committing an illegal act,” Gallagher says. “Normally, women who walk along a street don’t keep looking around trying to make eye contact with passing cars,” he says.Īfter the undercover officer gives the signal, she walks away and the “custody team” of uniformed officers rush the man about to be charged with soliciting prostitution.Īs we wait for officers and decoys to get into position, the officers candidly admit they’ll never put an end to street prostitution. It isn’t necessarily the way these prostitutes wear their hair, dress, or are made up that makes them stand out as being different from female pedestrians – as we learn from Gallagher, as we watch the action on 82nd Avenue, while hidden in an undercover police vehicle. But if they’re forced to, they’ll work in any kind of weather.” Typically they really don’t like working in the rain. “Prostitution has been steadily increasing – and with nice weather, it’s really taken off. “It’s not your imagination,” says Portland Police Bureau East Precinct Officer Rich Steinbronn who, along with Officer Michael Gallagher and a team of cops, is working a prostitution mission. On any afternoon or evening these days, along 82nd Avenue of Roses, it seems like we’re seeing more and more “girls on the stroll” – prostitutes, slowly walking along, or hanging out at bus stops as bus after bus rolls by. “We leave that to the precincts.Īlthough a little blurry because this photo was taken at a great distance and through glass, the john looks jolly to be making a deal for a street-side sex act, just off SE 82nd Avenue of Roses. “Even though we see it on the rise, we don’t have the manpower to go after street-level prostitution,” Justice added. Doug Justice, the man who currently heads DVD, how their three-person “division” targets pimps who are promoting prostitution using underage girls. Working without fear, most prostitutes – like this woman, later arrested, and charged with soliciting prostitution – openly troll for customers in the light of day.Ī couple of weeks ago, we told you how – even though it’s vastly understaffed – the Portland Police Bureau Drug & Vice Division (DVD) goes after the fifty or so local sex-for-sale pushers, commonly known as pimps. In outer East Portland, the prostitution trade isn’t plied in the dead of night. And, the tragic news is that even more of these “sex workers” aren’t even old enough to drive … See why the number of prostitutes working 82nd Avenue has skyrocketed.