1-18-06

Bait and Switch

Okay, this is a special bonus rant because I'm pissed (that is, angry, for my British and Canadian readers, it's too early for me to get drunk yet); if you want to read the original rant it's here.  But there's something on my mind and if I don't get it out, I'm just gonna be smacky all day.
          Houston City Council is considering a proposition from some of the geniuses in the Chief of Police's office to charge hotel owners a fine for renting rooms knowing they would be used for prostitution.  Now some folks compare this to the ABC fines leveed against stores and bars (and their employees) for violating the age limits set on purchase of tobacco and alcohol; this is—and forgive me for being blunt—a dumbass load of shit.  There's a huge gulf between identifying a fourteen-year-old kid and a prostitute; this proposed ordinance would open a whole new can of legal worms for the city and for the department (just off the top of my head I can come up with profiling issues, fair trade practices issues, and the inevitable complaints against targeting low-budget hotels and motels).  But the legal ramifications aren't even my main concern.
          It's a dodge.  Didn't get that?  Let me say it again.  It's a dodge.  One more time to lock it in for you:  It's a fucking DODGE!!
          It's not even a new dodge; it's just a different angle on the same old dodge that police chiefs have trotted out in Houston for years.  Every time there is a complex and difficult problem facing the department, our chiefs have this habit of targeting "gateway" (by which they mean "victimless") crimes.  Last year, when the police officers' union warned that police forces were dangerously overworked and underpaid, they went after convenience stores and laundromats running gambling dens (they had a couple of slot and keno machines).  The year before, when the police officers' union warned that police forces were dangerously overworked and underpaid, they went after strip clubs breaking the "three foot rule."  This year, when a spike in murders has finally proved that HPD is in desperate need of personnel, they decided to start offering hiring bonuses to any experienced officer willing to join the force.  And they're going after "hotsheet" motels.
          Who the hell do they think that's going to help?  Who is helped by any morality laws?  Is your life any better or your streets any safer because little Johnny down the street got 5 to 20 for blowing a joint in his back yard?  Does preventing a college arts student from rubbing her breasts in a middle-aged businessman's face in any way reduce the number of robberies every year?  Will there be fewer murders because lonely men are denied the opportunity to go around the world for two bills?  I think not.
          I think, and maybe I'm just talking crazy here, but I think we need fewer laws that govern people's morals.  Vice laws only distract the police from doing their real job of protecting the populace from those who would bring them harm.  Every hooker or john on the Megan list is a burglar who got away because the nearest police officer was too busy enforcing your morals on your neighbors to answer the alarm call.  Every stripper in the tank is a armed robber with an extra thirty minutes to get away because police officers were pulled from their patrols to participate in a raid.  Every kid doing time in juvie for being a stupid kid is a murderer who had time to apply what he learned watching CSI to cleaning the scene of evidence.
          Okay, so maybe street prostitutes are a problem in some areas (in the southwest part of town, they tend to rove from one area to another in packs, always seeming to know in advance where the cops are going to start picking them up), and their presence often corresponds to other crimes both petty and felony.  I understand why folks want them out.  But busting hotel clerks for giving them a place to do their business (whether knowingly or not) is not the answer.  If anything, the answer lies in having state approved and controlled houses of prostitution.  Nevada still has some street prostitution, but it is not nearly as big a problem as it is elsewhere.  One of the oldest and cleanest businesses in the Hobby Airport area is a "modeling studio" that's been there as long as I can remember and has always been rumored to be a front for prostitution (I can't actually say that it is, because I don't actually visit brothels).
          We don't need further distractions; we need two hundred more police officers.  And we need them to be allowed to do their job—their real job.