Police With A Free Pass For Prostitutes

For more than 40 years, officers have been allowed to solicit prostitutes while on duty. And they’re lobbying to keep it that way:

The state law that exempts police officers, which has been on the books since 1972, attracted attention in Hawaii earlier this month when legislators were considering a bill to toughen the state’s laws on prostitution and some other crimes. The new bill didn’t include the exemption for law enforcement officers. That’s when the Honolulu police lobbied to have the exemption put in. The measure subsequently passed by the state House included it.

Sullum rolls his eyes:

Since an entire chamber of the state legislature agreed to this request, the cops must have had a pretty persuasive argument. Here it is, as summed up by Jason Kawabata, captain of the Honolulu Police Department’s Narcotics/Vice Division:

As written, this bill would nullify the exemption if the officer agrees to pay a fee for sexual penetration or sadomasochistic abuse. This would limit the type of violations law enforcement officers are able to enforce. Even if the intent of the amendment is merely to limit actual conduct by the officer, we must oppose it. Codifying the limitations on an officer‘s conduct would greatly assist pimps and prostitutes in their efforts to avoid prosecution.

In other words, if it were generally known that police are not allowed to engage in sexual penetration or sadomasochistic abuse with prostitutes, suspicious hookers might insist that undercover officers do so to show they are not cops. … That scenario seems rather implausible, since a person commits the offense of prostitution as soon as she “agrees or offers to engage in sexual conduct with another person for a fee.” For Kawabata’s fear to be realized, a prostitute would need to have sex first to make sure her customer was not a cop, then negotiate payment afterward, which does not seem like a very good business strategy.

Rebecca Rose is incredulous:

What policies are in place to prevent officers from using this exemption to have sex with people who are being forced into this lifestyle? (Is that even a consideration or concern for Hawaii law enforcement?) How exactly would they even know what someone’s situation is before the bust them? And what about underage sex workers? If a young girl is working as prostitute, what’s to stop an undercover from engaging in a sexual act with her under this exemption?

The bill exempts police officers from the rules governing “solicitation of a minor for prostitution,” although as Mark Memmott notes, it doesn’t address “sexual relations with someone under the age of 18.” Marcotte zooms out:

There’s a heated debate in feminist circles about how best to deal with the issue of sex work. Some feminists support sex work and want to decriminalize it, while others see sex workers as victims but want to focus criminal penalties on the pimps and johns who exploit vulnerable women. These two camps fight a lot, but they do tend to agree on one thing: that prostitutes are too often abused by the police. This bill, which increases penalties for johns and pimps while keeping the selling of sex at a misdemeanor level, suggests the influence of the latter group, but all that could be dramatically undermined if the state continues to give police the authority to have sex with prostitutes and then turn around and cuff them.