Sixty-six men were arrested in Cook County this month as part of a nationwide prostitution sweep dubbed “Operation: Buyer Beware.”

Twenty law enforcement agencies in 11 states conducted simultaneous stings on the streets, in hotels and over the Internet over a 10-day period earlier this month in an effort to curtail human trafficking, according to the Cook County Sheriff’s Department, which served as the lead coordinating agency for the sweep.


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“Human trafficking is a worldwide concern that is affecting even the smallest of communities and neighborhoods and occurring in even the safest of places,” said Sheriff Tom Dart in a prepared statement.

The release said local participants included officers from the Cook and Kane County sheriff’s departments and from the Aurora and Elgin police departments. Information on the number of Kane County arrests was not immediately available.

Law enforcement agencies have increasingly targeted buyers of sex, also known as “Johns,” in an effort to end prostitution and sex trafficking, authorities said.

Of the 268 men arrested on charges of soliciting sex as part of the nationwide operation, 101 received civil citations or were charged with misdemeanors, including prostitution. Nine were arrested on charges of pimping or pandering. Authorities imposed nearly $300,000 in fines.

Virtually all (all?) soliciting-a-pro arrests in Chicago (not necessarily Cook County) are street-based.

Still - be safe ... be careful when you think about 'taking one for the team'.

This is scary, I am a newbie( new to this hobby), carefully searching for a safe incall through TER in west chicago land( preferably). Hoping to have some nice time by this weekend. Can I trust the BP ad's ? please someone suggest a safe incall place. Thanks

safe and BP do not necessarily go together.  It's the best free spot left since they shut down CL but it can be sketchy.  Better to hit the higher-end spots like Eros.

Check roomservice2000.com and the provider ads here on TER,  and always make sure who you are seeing is well reviewed!!!

Thx for the info. One more question, lot of providers are asking for referals or RS2k etc,. Is it safe to get memebership from these sites? Or better to provide the information directly to the provider? As a newbie anda being a professional and learnt that RS2k would call my work location, I am hesitate to reveal my id. I would be more comfortable to provide my ID at the meeting with the provider, but not sure how many will agree to this.

-- Modified on 8/22/2012 10:13:48 PM

I find it amazing that as soon as a post goes up regarding a "Nationwide" sting that nets over 200 local guys, the initials "BP" pops up.  Itis almost as if "LE" and "BP" are synonymous and yet probably within a day or two someone will be on here asking about this or that girl from "BP" or we will have to read a post on here about what a great place BP is and how reasonable their rates are!

It just goes to show you the "Power of the Pu$$y!

Hey all. I just wanted to clarify my last comment.

A 2004 study published by Venkateesh, based on street-based prostitution, found that men were arrested for buying services 1 out of 1200 attempted interactions.

A study by De Paul found that virtually all (all?) Chicago patronizing-a-pro arrests were street-based, and that one of 750-odd arrests over two years took place between Chicago, Canal, and Roosevelt.

Demand Abolition, which is one of the Hunt Alternative Fund's charities, is in charge of publicizing arrests for patronizing-a-pro.  The purpose of publicizing this (and the past three) 'nation-wide-reverse-sting-operations' is to reduce 'demand'/foster paranoia without putting $$$ into consistent & significant increases in law enforcement efforts to target 'demand'.

All I'm saying is - read these news stories with a grain of salt.

pussy flies will always be attracted to BP shit...

This post got me thinking. Pehaps my question is silly...

With the comment about the sting and internet what additional protection if any should I consider when posting a review on this site, or during a private message exchange?

Are any protection measures built into the way this site functions?

Thanks!

first of all, 2004 was almost 8 years ago and much has changed since then.  Secondly, you take an snippet out of an apparent article that was talking about 750 arrests over a two year period.  Where is the entire article?

Finally, there is no doubt that a large percentage of prostitution arrests are made at the street level however, I don't know of any "pro's" that are soliciting at the street level.... at least not here in Chicago.  In fact, a large percentage of the street level girls are now found on "BP" hello!

Here is a quiz for you.  When the powers to be are sitting down planning out an internet sting and they are making there decisions based on the man hours they will have to spend verses actual arrests pick two places they will end up leaning towards.....

TER

BP

RS2K

Eros

Duh!

It is bad if the girls are being forced to do anything by a pimp - that is human trafficking, but if they girl does not have a pimp and does it on her own it really would not be human trafficking.

Why don't LE just go after pimps to stop human trafficking as they are they true casue?

TO stay safe - when you get there check the closets and bathroom for LE or pimps.  You do not want to get jumped by either.  Also make sure to close/lock the door and put up the deadbolt.

Do LE do this to protect girls from evil pimps, or to raise revenue.  If they go after the Johns or Escorts it is more about the money.  If they are going after the Pimps (who are the slavemasters and root casue of human trafficking) then they are doing it to fix the problem.  Girls doing this of their own free will - without a pimp is not the victim of trafficking.

a specialist in research.  However, I have somewhat of a degree in common sense and it seems to me that your statements hold true as long as the subject matter allows it to.  For example.... if someone were to site a study done 8 years ago on the percentage of people who owned and utilized a smart phone 8-years ago and was quoting that info to a comparison of todays results being even remotely the same, I would venture a guess that that research was not current and not  accurate.  

Using the same common sense, I am guessing that if you went back 20 years to the infancy of the pc and took info from a research on how many households had a pc in them and tried to convince me that this research was accurate for todays lifestyle, I would guess you would be just a little off!

In the last 8-years, craigslist's escort services section has come and gone.  The "Chicago REader" and yellow pages ads have all but vanished and you could drive through the City of Chicago and down Mannheim Rd. today and search hard to find 1-2 street walkers here and there today and yet 8-years ago, they were still plentiful!  

So, our industry has indeed evolved and changed in the last 8-years and not just a little but dramatically!  So, no I don't feel it is a fair comparison to take data from 8-years ago and think that it relates to todays facts in regards to this industry.  

I am sure there are still plenty of stings done at the street level but there are far more conducted today on the internet than there were in 2004.  Welcome to the 21st century!

Being someone who has an advance degree in social research and also someone who does social research for a living, I have to chime in here on your comments based on the information that MidwesternMaple posted.

Right.

They're going after 'johns' because they're doing something that is illegal.

Same reason as why they make appx 2000 prostitution arrests a year in Chicago.

Does it make sense? Not really.

It's harder to go after pimps & 'traffickers' because it's harder for the District Attorney to prove that than prove prostitution or patronizing a pro.

Why all the noise about going after the johns?

Dunno. Ask Swanee Hunt, Rachel Durchslag, Catherine Mackinnon, Melissa Farley, Norma Ramos, Laura Leiderer and the other dim-wits behind catch-phrases like "We're fighting the demand that fuels sex trafficking" or "As long as there is demand, there will be sex trafficking."

Why are law enforcement departments jumping on the band wagon? Mmmm... abolitionists have created a profit-motive as well as a political motive for cash-strapped cities & states as well as politically ambitious police chiefs & states' attorneys to do so.

Want it all to stop?

Figure out some rhetoric as catchy as "We're fighting the demand that fuels sex trafficking" and create financial and political incentive for politicians & policy-makers to change their policies.

Yeah, I agree that the risks of buying sex on the street have likely increased since 2004.

That said,  Read the press release for Operation Buyer Beware.

There were 66 'john arrests' in Cook County over a ten-day period.

There were 6.6 'john arrests' in Cook County each day for ten days.

So during those ten days, what were the odds that someone attempting to buy sex in Cook county would be arrested for buying sex?

Or, given that there are 400-600 ads on BP a day and 217 Eros ads in Chicagoland, and x number of UTR girls and y number of street-workers, divide 6.6 by an estimate of how many transactions take place in Cook County in one day, on average.

Ergo, paranoia versus facts.

There also was no spike in prostitution-related arrests in Chicago during that time-period (according to Data Portal - City of Chicago - they record data on all arrests made in the city) so I assume that the operation took place solely or primarily in the burbs.

You can fact-check the information above: Venkatesh: Empirical Analysis of Street-Level Prostitution. Lovell - Re/Search. DePaul Social Science Blog.

You can check the number of indoor v. outdoor prostitution arrests, and also compare overall number of prostitution-related arrests in any time period via City of Chicago Data Portal under 2001-Present Crime Data.

P.S. - I totally agree that indoor reverse sting operations have increased nationally. And they certainly have increased in the 'burbs. I'm not sure whether the Chicago Police Department has, as of yet, made a concerted effort. And even with increases, and even with the 'spike' re. Operation Buyer Beware on top of that. the overwhelming majority of attempted transactions do not result in an arrest.

That's all

- They have to deliver results, i.e. arrests.
- They have to do it at a reasonable cost per arrest, and in a reasonable time. Think about it. LE does not have unlimited resources or time.
- The results have to be publicized so as to allow them to appear to be doing a good job in order to be re-elected, if applicable, and to keep their budgets steady or increase them.
- The results also need to allow them to be able to demonstrate that they are on top of and doing something about all the kinds of crime that might become issues.

Which is not at all how LE will present it. They are catching criminals, reducing crime rates, and deterring others from committing crimes. And they are doing it in a focused way so as to catch and deter the worst stuff. But there are political and fiscal realities they have to navigate.

In the case of prositution, the explicit goals are to stop trafficking and underage sex work. Most people do not care so much about consensual sex between two adults, even if one is paying the other for it. But the problem is that investigations that focused only on traffickers or underage sex workers would be costly, time consuming and deliver a very small number of arrests. So LE almost always follow the path that delivers the most arrests and hope some of them will be, or can be spun to look like, the important ones they are after.

At present LE is also playing the current public opinion game that makes providers victims and clients and pimps of all sorts into the true criminals. If you consider the issues of trafficking and underage sex workers, this is the case, but for those who do not traffic or see underage providers, it is not completely clear that there is a criminal and a victim, of course. So the numbers they want to report are the busts of johns, and pimps, and how many underage prostitutes and trafficked women they save. So you catch as many pimps and johns as you can. Random chance says if you catch a certain number of providers, you will also find some percentage that are underage. Since all of the johns and pimps are, by this logic, traffickers or accomplices of trafffickers, this works quite nicely. It also pleases the End Demand people who are the ones most likely to care and squeeze LE on this issue.

Do you follow all that?

Finally, they publicize the busts because that publicity acts to deter others who might be considering commiting the same crimes. As you can see in this thread, that works. The publicity also may be the entire punishment, and sufficient punishment, in many cases, because it can be hard to prove someone is guilty. Most of the guys here would not much care about paying off a traffic ticket, which is pretty much waht what a misdemeanor is. But they would not like it to be printed/posted that they were arrested for seeing a prostitute and have to explain that to others.

If you want to take something practical from this, it is either that you should not break the law, or you should avoid doing it in ways and places where a relatively quick, simple and inexpensive action by LE might result in lots of arrests. I will leave it to you to work out where and how that would be. After all, there is every reason to think LE reads this site.

Hope that helps to explain. I am sure some of it is even true, unlike most of the fantasies you will find around here.

there is no doubt that the percentages are small.  However, a very small percentage of smokers actually die from lung cancer and a smaller percentage of people die from jaywalking, drinking etc....

Does this mean that it is any less catastrophic to the person it happens to.  I guarantee you that the married guy who ends up with his face in the paper, loss of a great job and a divorce with all the financial and emotional burden that this brings, finds no humor to your comment "take this with a grain of salt"  LOL!

Of course they are trying to use scare tactics and some paranoia to help in their cause.  It increases the effectiveness of what they are trying to accomplish.  Same reason a person would saw down the barrel of a shotgun and put buckshot in it.  If a guy was 20 feet in front of you, pointing that shotgun at someone 8' to your side, would you just stand there with a calculator and geometrically try and figure out if you were in danger (and take it with a grain of salt) or would you take cover.  Duh!

I doubt very much that Tom Dart and his cronies spent 10 days actively performing a sting and then netted 6 people a day in Cook County.  I am sure that the article should have read "simultaneously, over a 10 day period" and during that time each municipality involved did their thing and reported back in 10 days.  I doubt they were all on a conference call with stop watches and someone yelled "GO" and they all proceeded to spend all their energies and resources exhaustively over a 10 day period and then someone yelled "STOP"!  LOL!

There is no doubt and I agree 100% that the odds are against ever getting caught based on the numbers.  However, this does not mean we take these articles with a grain of salt.  

This is what 90% of the people on BP have done.  They don't screen and simply go with their gut with full acceptance that they may get "busted" and then have to get their hand slapped.  In the meantime, they make oodles of money and to them, the risk is well worth it. Then, along comes LE and they set up shop and they throw up an ad and like shooting fish out of a barrel, they bust one john after another, throw their pics in the paper or on the internet or both and they look like heroes.  Some of the guys are single and the jobs they have could care less.  Others are married, have more important jobs and suffer big consequences.

Are the percentages of guys busted verses guys actually participating small?  Absolutely!  Does this mean we should all take it with a grain of salt?  Each individual needs to be the judge of that.

Let me say this though.  All you guys that are finding yourself on BP trying to find that needle in the haystack and have found yourselves circling that Motel/Hotel, trying to decide whether or not to go in. Then proceeded with your heart pounding, until u got in there and did the deed or got to the door and realized that u were not gonna touch the thing at the door which looked nothing like the pic u saw or worse yet, found yourself at the business end of a 45 with some scary guy taking your money and jewelry etc, ask yourselves this.... "Is it really worth it"?  Or, is it smarter to visit the girl with a ton of reviews who screens her clients etc.... and minimize your risks ten-fold?

If you give yourself that test using the big head, the answer is obvious!

if you have to go through all that, you have not done your homework very well n should not even be there... LOL!

Mr. Pumbu, with not a single review, that you approve!  I will sleep so much better tonite... :-0))