Over 900 Prostitution Arrests Since 2011
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced that “Operation Losing Proposition” initiatives conducted citywide since 2011 have resulted in more than 900 arrests of individuals for patronizing prostitutes, resulting additionally in the seizure of 220 vehicles some of the defendants had used.
Operation Losing Proposition targets those who pay for sex, typically in areas where the department has received complaints about street prostitution. The operations were conducted in all five boroughs.
“The department is focusing on the demand side of the equation. The exploitation of women is not a victimless crime,” Kelly said.
In conjunction with the expansion of “Losing Proposition” enforcement, Kelly also established a Human Trafficking Squad within the Vice Division of the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau to identify and arrest individuals engaged in the wholesale trafficking of human beings for the purpose of prostitution.
Last month, the NYPD arrested and charged with sex trafficking and promoting prostitution a 35-year-old Harlem man for keeping three women-a 24-year-old, a 21-yearold and a missing 17-year-old from Connecticut-in an apartment in the Taft Houses on Madison Avenue near East 112th Street in Manhattan.
“The brutal sex trafficking industry, which preys on and victimizes New York City’s most vulnerable women, men and children, is fueled by prostitution patronizers, who believe that they can buy the bodies of people in prostitution with impunity,” said Dorchen A. Leidholdt, director of Sanctuary for Families’ Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services. “Thankfully, NYPD, under the leadership of Commissioner Kelly, is taking action to hold sex industry patronizes accountable through Operation Losing Proposition. Attacking the demand for prostitution is the best way to prevent and curtail sex trafficking in our city.”
The most recent “Losing Proposition” initiative, held from May 30 through June 1, was conducted in 28 precincts and resulted in 156 arrests for patronizing a prostitute; one arrest for knife possession; one arrest for assault; one arrest for criminal possession of a controlled substance; four arrests for obstructing governmental administration; one arrest for disorderly conduct; and one arrest on an open warrant. Thirty-two vehicles were seized.
Under New York’s law enacted in 2012, customers who pay adult prostitutes for sex face up to one year in jail; promoters of prostitution, or pimps, face up to 25 years.
