Speaking at a hearing on four federal civil rights lawsuits brought by five men who charge they were falsely arrested for prostitution in porn shops and a spa by New York City vice cops, an attorney for the city said police made such arrests in 10 businesses from January 2007 to the end of 2009.
Attorneys for the five men have argued that the city made the arrests so it could later cite them in nuisance abatement lawsuits it brought to try and shut the businesses down. Tonya Jenerette, a senior counsel in the city’s Law Department, said that the city’s data did not support that.
In the three-year period, 75 lawsuits brought against businesses by the police department’s legal unit cited prostitution arrests, but just eight of the 75 cited arrests of men, Jenerette said. Two of 24 lawsuits that cited prostitution arrests brought during that time by the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement cited arrests of men.
“Their theory of the case is just nonsense,” Jenerette said at the July 7 hearing before Judge Shira A. Scheindlin. Jenerette did not say how many men were arrested altogether and she declined to comment following the hearing.
Reporting for Gay City News, I previously identified six porn shops and two spas in which men were arrested for prostitution by officers in the Manhattan South Vice Enforcement Squad in 2008. Among the six porn shops, only five were sued by the city so it is possible that there are additional businesses where such arrests were made, but they are not included in Jenerette’s data because those businesses were never sued. At least 30 men were busted in the six porn shops. Eleven men and one woman were busted in the two spas.
Attorney Michael L. Spiegel is representing three men who were busted in Unicorn DVD on Eighth Avenue and one man who was arrested in a 34th Street spa. James I. Meyerson is representing Robert Pinter, a gay man who was arrested in Blue Door Video on First Avenue and blew the whistle on the city in late 2008. It appears that the police department largely stopped making these arrests after Pinter went public. A man who was arrested in an East 37th Street spa is suing the city in state court.
While interesting, Jenerette’s data does not disprove the plaintiff’s theory. It may supply more information to bolster that theory. Then the plaintiffs never claimed that they were the only population targeted by the police.
What Jenerette’s data clearly does not explain is the improbable nature of these arrests. In Blue Door Video, eight of the 12 men arrested were between 42 and 54.
These arrests were made by the same crew of undercover officers who were identified only by their badge numbers in criminal and civil court records. Just two officers -- 3371 and 31107 -- made most of the porn shop arrests. Undercover 3371 is known to have busted at least 16 men. Four were 27 or younger, six ranged in age from 32 to 38, and another six were 41 to 49. Four of the seven men that 31107 arrested ranged from 34 to 37 and two were 43 and 44. The oldest, Pinter, was 52.
In a December 3, 2008 email to me, Paul J. Browne, the police department’s chief spokesman, wrote that “So far in 2008, 31 out of 179 men who were arrested for prostitution-related offenses in Manhattan South were above the age of 40. In other words, 82.7 percent were younger, often in their 20s.”
Or, in other words, male prostitutes arrested in Manhattan South, which ranges from 59th Street to the bottom of the island, were overwhelmingly younger men. So how does one explain this concentration of older male prostitutes arrested in Blue Door Video and other porn shops?
What Pinter and other men who were arrested said was they were first approached by a young, attractive man who flirted aggressively with them. After they agreed to consensual sex, with the young man insisting that the sex take place in his nearby apartment or car, the young man then said he would pay them for the sex. The offer of money usually came right before the arrest.
It certainly looks like the city was less interested in addressing prostitution and more interested in racking up arrests to be used in closing porn shops, an industry that the city has been attacking for decades.
In 2008, police arrested 151 men, 329 women, and 32 people whose gender was “unknown” for prostitution in Manhattan, according to statistics from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. In 2009, police arrested 57 men, 247 women, and 28 people of “unknown” gender for prostitution in Manhattan. Inexplicably, prostitution arrests in Manhattan fell by 35 percent in 2009 over 2008. In the other four boroughs, prostitution arrests were stable or increased in 2009 over 2008.
I know from reviewing roughly 35 nuisance abatement lawsuits brought by the city in 2008 that the undercover officers who arrested men in porn shops and spas also frequently worked together arresting women for prostitution and unlicensed massage in other businesses.
What the state data suggests is that when the gay community objected in late 2008 to the police tactics used in these arrests, the bosses at One Police Plaza flipped a switch and Manhattan prostitution arrests plummeted in 2009. That may be due to the city not caring so much about prostitution and caring more about shuttering porn shops, spas, and massage parlors. Of course, that also means that Jenerette is wrong.
