When I used to drive members of the George Watts Elementary School softball team to after-school games in East Durham it wasn’t unusual to see prostitutes on the streets in broad daylight. But if you go by the number of arrests for prostitution in Durham, these women in hot pants and fur jackets were just apparitions. Between 1999 and 2004 there were only 32 prostitution arrests in Durham. Check it out.
That link is via Tony Soprano on the LieStoppers forum. In fact, he pointed out a few months back how Durham’s arrests for prostitution compare to other cities in the region:
There’s a pesky little fact about Durham that sticks out like an elephant at a horse race – that’s the unbelievably low number of arrests for prostitution. Numbers that make absolutely no sense for a City of its size.
Incredibly, statistics compiled by the FBI show an astounding total of 33 [sic] prostitution and prostitution related (solicitation) arrests over a SIX-YEAR SPAN in Durham County. Guilford County just to the west, in the same span, when adjusted for the population differences, equates to approx 462 arrests!
One particularly fine year for prostitutes in Durham was 2003 when they didn’t make one single prostitution type arrest during the entire year.
Tony reprises his old post today(scroll down) in response to the announcement yesterday of an investigation within the Durham Police Department regarding “sexual misconduct.” One has to wonder if there’s a connection.
So far, everyone’s clammed up. Mayor Bill Bell, doing his best Sergeant Schultz impersonation, knows nothing about it. City Manager Patrick Baker says he told Chief Jose Lopez, to “get it done as expeditiously as possible but not forget thoroughness.”
If I’m not mistaken, I think that’s how Bell and Baker told Mike Nifong and Chief Chalmers to handle the Duke lacrosse case.
