A couple of readers have asked us if we have any info about something they read in a Boystown bar magazine this week.
In a letter to a legal affairs columnist, a man alleges that he was swept up at Halsted and Roscoe in a major prostitution sting:
[A] really cute guy pulled up in a car and began to hit on me. He then asked if I wanted to hook up and when I said “sure,” he asked me how much. […] At that very moment, a bunch of cops appeared from nowhere and arrested me…and my friend… for prostitution!
When I got to the police station, they put me in a cell. There were about 25 other guys in the cell, all charged with prostitution and all set up by the same hot guy!
We can tell you that we have heard of exactly one prostitution arrest since we started this blog. That is a CPD vice unit bust of a in-house call operation at Surf and Broadway in late October.
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| Screen shot of arrest data that indicates a prostitution sting in 2011. Source: Chicago Data Portal |
We have searched the city’s crime database, the CPD ClearMap site, and even the CPD’s online photos of recent prostitution arrestees.
According to all of those resources, the only other prostitution arrest in our area this year was a single arrest on April 2nd near Belmont and Sheffield.
There is no evidence of any prostitution sting in our area since 10 arrests were made over the course of 12 days in February 2011. One of those arrests received a mention in RedEye.
The other prostitution stings or special enforcement operations in the area that we can identify in city records dating to 2003 are:
• August 11-15, 2011—Seven arrests in the area of Clark-Belmont-Sheffield-School.
• September 23, 2006—Seven arrests on Belmont between Halsted and Seminary.
• June 3, 2006—Eight arrests spread across Halsted, Brompton, Aldine, and Belmont
• November 19, 2005—Seven arrests across Halsted, Belmont, and Aldine
• May 7, 2005—Seventeen arrests in a variety of previously-mentoned places.
• January 28, 2005—Nine arrests in various locations.
There were a significant number of prostitution arrests throughout the area in 2004.
