Much to the dismay of the Honolulu Police Department, legislators in the Aloha state considered making it illegal for undercover police officers to have sex with prostitutes, as part of a statewide effort to crack down on prostitution.
News that the police officers would lose the right to legally have sex with a prostitute before arresting her was so troubling for many of the officers that Honolulu Police Major Jerry Inouye not only objected to the legal change, but testified before the state Legislature on why the proposed changes should not be made.
“The procedures and conduct of the undercover officers are regulated by department rules, which by nature have to be confidential,” said Inouye in a statement to the House Judiciary Committee. “Because if prostitution suspects, pimps and other people are privy to that information, they’re going to know exactly how far the undercover officer can and cannot go.”
After listening to Inouye’s testimony, Democratic state Rep. Karl Rhoads, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he was convinced that the law needed to be amended to continue to allow police to have sex with prostitutes.
“I was reluctant to interfere in something that they face all the time,” said Rhoads, whose district includes Honolulu’s Chinatown, which has a notorious reputation for prostitution. “If they think it’s necessary to not have it in the statute, this is one area where I did defer to them and say, ‘I hope you’re not having sex with prostitutes.'”
However, California-based police trainer Derek Mash, who has testified before U.S. Congress about human trafficking laws, disagreed with Inouye. He said allowing police officers to have sex with prostitutes without any ramifications is “antiquated at best.”
“It doesn’t help your case, and at worst you further traumatize someone,” he said in a statement. “And do you think he or she is going to trust a cop again?”
Roger Young, a retired special agent who worked sex crimes for the FBI for more than 20 years, said he was also skeptical about this law. “I don’t know of any state or federal law that allows any law enforcement officer undercover to penetrate or do what this law is allowing.”
Human trafficking experts agree, arguing that not only is it surprising that Hawaii allows police officers to have sex with a prostitute without any consequences, but such a law is an invitation for police misconduct.
“Police abuse is part of the life of prostitution,” said Melissa Farley, the executive director of the San Francisco-based group Prostitution Research and Education. Farley explained that “women who have escaped prostitution” often report that they were coerced into giving police officers sexual favors in order to stay out of jail or to stop being harassed by law enforcement.
For example, a former Philadelphia police officer is now on trial after allegedly raping two prostitutes and forcing them at gunpoint to take narcotics, an officer in West Sacramento, Calif., was found guilty of raping prostitutes in his patrol car, and a Massachusetts officer pled guilty last year after he was accused of extorting sex from prostitutes, whom he threatened to otherwise arrest.
In Hawaii, a parole officer was convicted of sexual assault in 2011 against a prostitute, but Michelle Yu, the Honolulu Police Department’s spokeswoman, said officers who investigate prostitution haven’t been accused of sexual wrongdoing in recent memory.
Lauren Hersh, a former prosecuting attorney who now runs the global trafficking program for the women’s advocacy group Equality Now, agreed with Farley. She said the chances of re-victimizing a person who may have been trafficked should be reason enough to bar officers from having sex as part of an investigation.
“I can understand you’re in a drug den, and you have a gun to your head and someone says ‘snort this,'” Hersh said. But she says the the sex exemption is “so dissimilar from that circumstance on so many levels.”
Despite the protests from some officers and human trafficking advocacy groups, the state legislature amended the bill, which would increase penalties on pimps and johns, but keep selling sex as a petty misdemeanor, to include the provision allowing police officers to once again legally have sex with a prostitute.
The bill is scheduled to be taken up on Sunday. If it passes with the amendment, it’s not known how the police department will ensure that the law is not abused and that prostitutes are not exploited.