Of the 64 officers in our study, 86 percent identified as male and 14 percent identified as female. Approximately 63 percent of ride-along participants were white and 27 percent were black, the remaining were Asian or other. Thirteen percent of participating officers identified as Hispanic. Officers’ years of experience ranged from less than one year up to 34 years, with the average being seven years. Most officers reported that they did not live within Baltimore City.
Our observations with police in Baltimore City and key informant interviews with police leadership identified important themes that: 1) influence ongoing enforcement practices known to have a detrimental impact on FSWs’ health and rights; 2) impact non-enforcement that have implications for FSWs’ health and safety; 3) shape police’s continuing failure to protect FSW, including addressing sexual violence and 4) impede a shift towards a more public health and human rights orientated approach to policing sex work. Our results point to ecological factors at the structural, organizational, and community levels that shape individual level police practices and underpin police attitudes. Based on our findings, the discussion addresses the implications of this study for intervention and policy development to drive forward a public health and human rights centric policing of sex work.
3.1 Factors influencing ‘police enforcement’ practices towards FSW
Observations in this study highlight key ecological factors driving police enforcement approaches. Patrol officers, whilst rarely able to arrest sex workers for prostitution (due to the high evidential requirements), are under intense pressure from community associations and residents to actively police sex work, particularly where it becomes concentrated in gentrifying neighborhoods. As this observation note illustrates, both the physical and temporal geography of the area has a significant impact on policing practices:
The officer explains that he likes to keep them [FSW] north of [street omitted]. If they go too far south of there he gets a lot of complaints. He doesn’t really get any complaints if they’re kept in the “seedier areas.” The same is somewhat true for times, he explains he gets really concerned if it’s 7AM and the kids are going to school with the sex workers on the street, where as 4AM is not so much of a problem. (Patrol Officer, Male, White, 26)
The majority of officers’ approach in these residential spaces focuses on ‘move along’ tactics aimed at displacing women back to areas where communities are less likely to complain. Instead of arrest, other tools of law enforcement (e.g., contact sheets, open warrant checks, parking and watching FSW) are utilized to lessen sex work visibility. No patrol officers or command seemed to be aware of the public health and safety implications of move along tactics on FSWs’ health and safety, but most agreed that displacement of FSW was not an effective solution to policing sex work. Rather it appears to be a police response to prevailing and persistent community intolerance of FSW in more gentrified communities:
The officer explained that he received a lot of community complaints from the wealthier ‘white’ residents, both sex worker related and non-sex worker related, “They might as well call you a neighborhood watch.” (Patrol Officer, Male, Black, 32)
Consistent with other literature (Lyons et al. 2017; Hubbard et al. 2007), our findings also pointed to community association and homeowner complaints being a strong driving force behind FSW-targeted Vice ‘sweeps.’ Vice, unlike patrol, are responsible for conducting ‘stings,’ during which plainclothes officers solicit services from women to provide the necessary grounds for a prostitution arrest. However, an additional ecological factor driving these ‘sweeps,’ alongside community pressure, is the periodic need to respond to upticks in violent crime, such as shootings.
“There has been a crime initiative the last two weeks as the crime is out of control, so we put boots on the ground including Vice. The last two weeks we’ve just been out rounding the women up [FSW].” (Vice Command)
While FSW themselves do not commit these violent crimes, they often observe crimes occurring on the street and can provide the police with valuable information. As this Vice officer explained during an observation of a sting operation:
I took the opportunity to ask the officers whether they thought what they were doing was getting women (FSW) off the streets. The Vice officer responded as he let out a laugh: “Ha. Not at all. They’ll be walking the streets again as soon as they get out (of jail). We’re out here for information basically.” (Vice Officer)
3.2 Factors influencing ‘non-enforcement’ approaches to sex work
Observations revealed that in marginalized and high-crime city locations, patrol officers do not police sex work as aggressively as they do in more residential and gentrified areas. Marginalized neighborhoods are characterized by few residential complaints and high levels of drug activity and violence. Observers’ field notes consistently documented that most police take no action to displace FSW in these areas, despite frequent sightings of sex workers actively working the strolls. Additional factors shape patrol officers’ approach to enforcing or not enforcing drug laws. A neighborhood context in which illicit drug use, in particular heroin, is ubiquitous and police prioritize calls for service associated with violent crime, is coupled with variations in individual officers’ outlooks. Whilst ‘rookies’ seem more enthusiastic about making low-level drug arrests, more seasoned officers seem more cognizant of the bureaucracy entailed in arresting vulnerable groups such as FSW, and of the limitations on their time. As this patrol officer explained:
“She [FSW] probably had a warrant if I had run it.” However, he doesn’t want to find out because “if she goes to central booking, she won’t pass medical and then I have to take her to the hospital and stay until she’s cleared before taking her back to booking.” He says they’re already short on officers, “We try to avoid locking up certain groups …handicapped people,” or other people who might not pass their medical. “Once you have a couple years on you, you know these things,” he says. (Patrol Officer, Male, Asian, 32)
However, the mere potential to invoke drug related arrests, remakes FSW as important assets for intelligence. District commanders described FSW as “the Google search engine of the street.” Although some FSW are paid informants, more commonly the exchange of information is informal and drives the frequency of interactions in marginalized spaces between police patrol and FSW. These exchanges are predominantly characterized as simply ‘checking in’ and being friendly to FSW, although as this quote illustrates there is almost always the underlying coercive threat of enforcement:
The officer started talking about FSW as informants, “We will buy them food all the time, or now with it getting colder, we’ll get them hot chocolate or coffee. They will literally tell you everything.” Another officer chimes in, “The dealers and stuff don’t treat them good, so they have no problem giving up information on them.” He elaborated, “We have a good relationship with them. We leave them alone [i.e. don’t arrest], and in return they give us information.” (District Operations, Male, White, 24)
It appeared that these exchanges primarily contribute to many officers’ intimate knowledge of FSWs’ lives and vulnerabilities (e.g. homelessness, lack of employment opportunities, hunger, need for wound care). However, we rarely witnessed officers utilize this knowledge and daily contact with FSW to offer any bridge to health or social services. Instead, observations highlighted that where help is given it is often ad hoc and predominantly reflects a complexity of moralistic, gendered and paternalistic attitudes by individual officers, with no guiding organizational norms around public health policing:
“Sometimes I do run into women who are genuinely selling their pussy to make ends meet – feed their kids, pay rent, etc., and when that happens I try to connect them with some services.” (Patrol Officer, Female, Black, 35)
“I try to help them, I really want to help them. I’ll give them my cell and tell them to call me on a specific date, if they call me on that date then I know they are serious and will do what I can to get them help.” I ask the officer how many have called on the date, “One,” he replies. (Patrol Officer, Male, White, 37)
3.3 Factors hindering police protection and assistance to FSW
The majority of officers appeared to view violence towards FSW as an inescapable part of the street existence, as opposed to crimes against vulnerable women that properly deserve police attention.
The first thing the female officer brought up was how they [FSW] are routinely victimized while engaging in sex work, such as being robbed or assaulted by clients. She then stated, “After they get messed with, they call us and report it! Can you believe that?! And we have to deal with it. Could you imagine if a drug dealer reported to us that someone beat him up while selling or took all his drugs? It’s unbelievable!” (Patrol Officer, Female, Black, 35)
Officers’ attitudes towards FSW as less deserving of police assistance and protection emerged as closely linked to broader stigmatizing attitudes to FSW in this context, shaped by both their identity as sex workers and drug users. This was underscored by the frequent documentation during ride outs of dehumanizing police banter including phrases such as “pregnant prostitute junkie”, “skanky”, “disgusting” and descriptions of FSW drug related sores and poor physical condition. One officer referred to a FSW he knew on the strolls simply as “abscess”. Some of the most dehumanizing language involved the use of animal imagery, including describing FSW as junkies waking up for “feeding.”
A small number of officers did describe FSW safety as more of a priority and provided examples of proactively addressing FSWs’ needs. This emerged at the level of the individual officer and did not appear to translate into a more generalized organizational concern to address and prioritize FSW safety. Although, during key informant interviews police commanders would give anecdotal examples of their officers assisting women by buying food, bringing them warm clothes, and taking them to local service providers.
During the time that ride-alongs were conducted, a significant institutional shift towards the broadening of collaborations between public health and public safety was instigated by the BPD. This involves officers carrying Naloxolone (narcan) for overdose victims. However, as this vignette illustrates, patrol officers’ attitudes often embodied a lack of sensitivity and embedded ‘canteen (discriminatory) culture’(Van Hulst 2013) towards FSW who inject drugs:
She [FSW] had nodded out from heroin and was laying on the steps but was still breathing. “Wake up, ma’am! Ma’am! Ma’am wake up!” the officer said to her, with no response. He then shouted, “Narcan!” and was about to use it but she shot up to her feet instantly and began walking away. She made it about a block and a half away when she hunched over and fell asleep standing up. He again yelled, “Narcan!” and she woke right back up and walked away. “Man! This Narcan stuff is great! It works so good you don’t even have to use it!” he said. Everyone shared a laugh and the female officer showed us a video entitled ‘Baltimore Gold’ of a women nodding out from heroin in a parking lot and a male that was with her trying to keep her awake. (Patrol Officer, Male, White, 29)
3.4 Identifying barriers to more public health and human rights orientated policing of FSW
In interviews with district commanders the phrase “you can’t arrest your way out of the problem,” was frequently quoted with respect to FSW. However, in talking about the alternatives, there was recognition at an organizational level of the complexity and scope of FSWs’ vulnerabilities and the considerable gap between understanding traditional law enforcement isn’t the solution, and viable public health and rights orientated policing approach.
The Captain reflected, “How do you stem the tide? When you get one off the street, get them in a re-entry type of program to provide services, what do you do with the next one? How many officers do you need to deal with all the women on [stroll name omitted]? We need long term goals.” (Key Informant, Major)
Command also recognized the realities of day-to-day patrol policing and organizational resource constraints (e.g., shortages of officers, other policing priorities, lack of specific training) considerably hamper a proactive response. This was backed up by observations with patrol where field observers noted understaffed shifts, backed up calls for service, and a focus on the surge in violent crime. Interviews with District Command advocated for organizational level improvements to officer trainings, aimed at better equipping officers for the “social worker aspects of policing” (District Commander, Male, White, 45). However, most patrol officers sense of low self-efficacy around helping FSW focused on the more structurally embedded lack of external support from other agencies, coupled with a fatalistic attitude towards FSWs’ prospects of finding a way out.
“People expect too many things from us – we’re not social workers.” He says, “I feel sorry for them, same as for young guys on the corner selling drugs. But it’s not our primary duty to deal with them directly. There are other agencies getting paid [to provide these sort of services], but where are they? It takes an act of God, damn near, to get them to help them [the women] – they are failing all of us.” (Patrol Officer, Male, White, 35)
The officer explains that in his experience there’s not really much you can do - sex workers are stuck in what he calls a “revolving door.” (Patrol Officer, Male, White, 47)
Crucially, the broader structural context of criminalization and stigmatization emerged as hampering a shift in policing at an individual officer and organizational level towards public health and human rights approaches. Despite many patrol officers’ negative attitudes to FSW, many advocated that a first step would be to move away from criminalization:
“Don’t tie my name to this but they just need to decriminalize it. From talking to these girls out here you see they have so many issues and they see drugs and prostitution as their only way out. If it was decriminalized, and I don’t know what kind of [employment] benefits they would have or what that would look like, maybe you can figure that out, but then they could get the help they need.” (District Operations, Male, White, 24)
The same sentiment was reflected by almost all senior police leadership at the time of the study. Although Vice officers did not specifically mention decriminalization, Vice command indicated that the units resources and core work had shifted to investigation of human sex trafficking.