Dirty johns

The largest prostitution-related sting in Sacramento County this year swept up 10 women ages 18-to-34 on solicitation charges.

The March 6 operation crystallized a statistical fact in what is anecdotally known as a hub for illicit sexual activity: Despite what law enforcement officials tell the public about their efforts to crack down on traffickers and pimps, they continuously arrest many more of the women they say are likely to be exploited.

According to arrest summaries reviewed by SN&R, the Sheriff’s Department targeted a stretch of Stockton Boulevard known as the “Stockton stroll,” sending undercover officers posing as johns to approach the women in question, negotiate a sex act in exchange for money “or other consideration,” and then arrest each woman when she made “an overt act indicating her intent to complete the transaction.”

Arrest summaries state that undercover officers recorded their conversations with the arrested women and noted that all but one of them possessed unwrapped condoms.

Senate Bill 233 would disallow cops from using condoms to arrest someone on prostitution-related charges.

“Using condoms as evidence of sex work is terrible policy and undermines anti-HIV efforts,” Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, the Democrat who authored the bill, said in an emailed statement. “We should be encouraging safer sex practices, not criminalizing them.”

A sheriff’s spokesman said he was unfamiliar with the operation and declined to look into it.

Sacramento County has seen sexually transmitted diseases rise sharply in recent years, according to public health data.

“This is why this is so important,” said Kristen DiAngelo, co-founder of the Sacramento chapter of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, a supporter of the legislation.