Vice Unit's "Hands On" Tactics for Catching Prostitutes is Rubbing People the Wrong Way: CrimProfs Weigh in

From SeattleTimes.com: "Lynnwood police concede they engaged in "rarely used" tactics during an undercover investigation into a suspected prostitution ring.  Those tactics, which included officers allowing prostitutes to masturbate them in exchange for cash, have raised questions among law-enforcement officials, legal experts and the Snohomish County Prosecutor's Office.

Lynnwood police Cmdr. Paul Watkins said he spent a great deal of time justifying the officers' actions to prosecutors to prove that the officers themselves weren't breaking the law...The officers didn't cross that line of engaging in intercourse or oral sex," Watkins said. "I advised them no oral sex, no intercourse, that's not going to happen. That's the understood policy. There's no written policy regarding this."

But other law-enforcement officials who weren't involved in the investigation say allowing officers to engage in such acts, even in an undercover investigation, goes too far. The usual tactic, they say, calls for an arrest once someone agrees to perform a sexual act in exchange for money.  Seattle and King County police, for example, do not allow undercover officers to have sexual contact with prostitutes...

Mark Roe, Snohomish County's chief criminal deputy prosecutor...plans to meet with the officers and their supervisors and said if he finds the actions were questionable, the criminal charges could be amended or dismissed...

[CrimProf John Strait of Seattle University], said what the Lynnwood officers did is not illegal in an undercover investigation, but he calls it "very bad policy."  "This is the equivalent of [undercover] cops doing drugs," Strait said. "I think very few narcotics officers toot crack, shoot heroin, do coke and marijuana. Here they are doing the same thing they are busting for."

University of Washington [CrimProf John Junker] agreed that it is bad form for police officers to engage in any sexual behavior with a person being investigated for such behavior. "It's unconscionable for the officers to actually engage in sexual contact with these women when it's being done for purposes of simply arresting them," Junker said. "Every cop who's ever worked vice knows that. I would think most departments prohibit it."

Junker said that because of the officers' actions he would be "astonished" if the women were prosecuted. "Either the prosecutor or the defense counsel is going to have to bring out that the officers had sex, and I would think the jury is going to be outraged," Junker said. "I'm outraged."...Watkins insists that he runs a "very ethical police department" and that these incidents don't "violate the ethical standards of [the] department." Story... [Mark Godsey]