Since 2006 Jennifer Sue Heard, 44, has been booked into the jail 45 times mostly on prostitution and or drug-related charges, serving 1,316 days behind bars. Factor in the $62 a day to house a jail inmate, court costs, HIV tests and police resources, and Heard’s public bill tops $100,000.
Repeat offenders are not as prevalent in Springfield, Lt. Noel Lopez said. Those arrested and charged with prostitution in Springfield tend to be repeat offenders, but public records searches show most are arrested and charged a handful of times, generally two to five instances.
Many of the Dayton arrests are the result of a cat and mouse game played by the police department’s Vice Crimes Unit.
It is a response to citizen complaints of prostitution mostly in the North Main and East Third street areas. The stings usually involve a four-man undercover crew working overtime shifts trying to find women and convince them to solicit sex for money while providing them alcohol or cigarettes.
Once the woman agrees to have sex for money, she is usually arrested on soliciting of prostitution, a third-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail.
Debbie Lynn Peak, 31, has been arrested 30 times and spent 1,356 days in jail since 2006, according to jail records. Her latest arrest came in March, and she later pleaded guilty to loitering to engage in prostitution, a third-degree misdemeanor.
Uthona West, 24, has been arrested 36 times and has spent 801 days in jail since 2006.
“This makes the case that we are spending a lot of money for no true beneficial result,” Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl said. “We don’t really have a particularly effective way to deal with this issue.”
So why do police continue?
“It’s a quality of life issue,” Biehl said. “There’s a very strong relationship between street level prostitution and other crimes like robbery so you can’t just ignore it.”
Springfield Police Chief Steven Moody said the there’s a bigger issue at hand – the women who are soliciting are victims themselves.
“The majority have substance abuse problems, so they are victimized by that addiction. They are victimized by the johns, and they are victimized by this lifestyle. That’s a grave concern,” he said.
Instead of just focusing on arresting the women, going after the johns is also an important task, Moody said.
“To me, they are more of the problem. They are the ones that need to be dealt with on a regular basis too. They are victimizing these women again and again,” he said.
Prostitution and/or solicitation arrests have fluctuated in recent years in Springfield, a fact that police attribute to increased enforcement.
In 2009 there were 60 arrests for solicitation and/or prostitution, and in 2010, there were 61, according to Lopez. That’s up from 2007 and 2008, when there were 38 and 31 arrests, respectively.
“We have focused in on areas and targeted those areas ... Officers will spend more time in an area ... once we become aware they are starting to congregate in that area,” Lopez said.
Dayton’s prostitution problem is nothing new. Police make between 350 and 400 prostitution-related arrests per year. Numerous programs with small budgets like Dayton Municipal Courts Johns School, a probationary program for men convicted of trying to buy sex, Oasis House and Southeast Dayton Weed N’ Seed have struggled to make marginal dents in the problem or have folded operations altogether.
Dayton, desperate for a new solution, floated the idea in 2008 of applying for $1.5 million in stimulus money to create a stronger social services network for prostitutes that included a temporary-stay facility.
“You can’t blame the officers, and police aren’t policy makers,” said Anthony Talbott, a University of Dayton professor who teaches a course on human trafficking and forced prostitution. “This links to a lack of social services ... Cops also get promoted by how many busts they make, it’s the way the reward system is set up.”
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