Mississippi Law Enforcement Performed $200,000 Worth Of Illegal Forfeitures Because It 'Didn't Realize' Law Had Changed

from the ignorance-of-the-law-is-the-best-excuse dept

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, us lowly peons of the American justice system are told. The same does not apply to law enforcement, whose business it is to enforce laws. I mean, it's right there in the name. And yet…

Mississippi police agencies have been seizing cash, guns and vehicles without legal authority for months after a state law changed and police didn't notice.

An Associated Press review of a Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics database shows more than 60 civil asset forfeitures with nearly $200,000 in property taken by state and local agencies under a law that lapsed on June 30.

"Didn't notice." Try using that excuse the next time you, I don't know, hand someone a straw or... um... offer underweight ice cream to consumers. That's the AP's phrasing of the official excuse for law enforcement's inexplicable inability to stay abreast of laws affecting their work.

Here's what officials actually said, which uses more words, but doesn't sound any better.

Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics Director John Dowdy said he didn't know the law had expired until September, when a Rankin County prosecutor notified him.

"Honestly, we were unaware of the sunset provision," he said. "We thought that had been fixed in the legislative session."

Now, this could be a legitimate excuse. But not for a narcotics director who probably had plenty to say about the impending demise of the most profitable part of the state's asset forfeiture program. He could not have been completely "unaware." After all, here he is announcing the roll out of a website listing state forfeiture actions as mandated by the same law Dowdy now claims he didn't know much about.

It might be a legitimate excuse for a federal official who may not know the legislature included a sunset provision that gave legislators a chance to kill the passed law before it went into effect. Some efforts were mounted to roll back the reforms, but they both died without moving forward.

Because law enforcement can't follow the law, lots of people will be getting their stuff back. The Tampa Bay Times article says the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics is offering to return $42,000 worth of property it illegally seized -- a phrase that makes its effort sound far more magnanimous than the reality: relinquishing stolen property.

But this screw up isn't going to keep it from seizing what it can, no matter how petty the amount. The thirty-day window on seizures under $20,000 is still open on a few cases, so law enforcement is still moving ahead with a few small-ball forfeitures.

Dowdy said agencies that seized property could still sue, seeking a judicially-sanctioned forfeiture, if less than 30 days elapsed. In Harrison County, for example, officials filed suit to seize $939 from Danielle Laquay Smith on Sept. 26, exactly 30 days after seizure.

The new law requires all forfeitures to be handled in court. The old law only required that on seizures above $20,000. There's more than $200,000 in illegal seizures on the books, and the potential return of $42,000-worth still leaves a lot unaccounted for. And much of that appears to be held by another person who can't keep track of legislative developments despite his position as a government official.

In northern Mississippi, District Attorney John Champion said, "I wasn't aware of that," when asked about the change. Police agencies in his five-county district, particularly in DeSoto County, have the majority of questionable seizures listed statewide.

Officers are Johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to perceived violations by citizens, but blissfully unaware of legal changes directly affecting their daily work. This is absurd. And it is the status quo. Prosecutors -- who directly benefit from forfeitures -- aren't aware either, most likely because knowing the law would adversely affect a valuable revenue stream. This is inexcusable, but it's also likely to go unpunished. The law is clear on the matter: negative effects of legislation shall be borne by the general public.

Filed Under: civil asset forfeiture, mississippi, police

'See Something Say Something' Sends Philly Counter-Terrorism Unit After A Local Journalist Over A Harmless Facebook Post

from the citizens-need-to-learn-the-power/responsibility-adage dept

It's troubling how little is needed to trigger a police investigation and some ancillary damage to the First Amendment. Thanks to flagging tools provided by social media platforms, almost anything can be sent to local law enforcement for additional inspection, which results in the following sort of thing, in equal parts absurd and horrifying.

It all started Dec. 14, when local DJ and gay activist Matt Beierschmitt took to Facebook to chastise gays for patronizing a nightclub named ICandy at 254 S. 12th St. Its owner had made headlines in 2016 when he was recorded making disparaging remarks about black people. [Philadelphia journalist Ernest] Owens responded, echoing his sentiments and blasting both ICandy and the Mummers.

"I say, 'F– em,' they will be shown better than told," Owens wrote. "I will just leave it at that. A great reckoning is coming."

Four days later, Owens said, he got a phone call from Detective Lawrence Richardson Jr. of the Police Department's Dignitary Protection and Counter Terrorism Operations unit, informing him that he was being investigated because of his Facebook comment.

"I said, 'What?'" he recalled. "I'm thinking: 'They're calling me about something on Facebook?' Police shouldn't be engaging me over a Facebook post."

But they were. Philly police insisted on speaking personally to Owens about his post. He met them at the unit's headquarters the next day. Once there, the officers said stuff about "see something, say something" and proceeded to question Owens about gun ownership, bomb-making ability, and any plans he might have to harm anyone else. After answering these questions, the police told Owen he was "cleared" and free to go. The officers also told him this was standard procedure police follow when criminal activity is reported.

Except there was no criminal activity. There was only a single Facebook post helpfully forwarded to the police by another Facebook user.

During the interrogation, Owens said, he noticed paperwork listing the name of the man who had complained about his Facebook comment.

That man, James DePre, a saxophone player and leader of the Quaker City String Band, said Wednesday that he emailed Owens' comment to the police after someone sent it to him and after he'd attended a parade-safety planning meeting of officers from the Third and Fourth Districts and community members, including Mummers.

"At that meeting, the police said, 'If you see something, say something.' I don't even know who he is," DePre said of Owens. "'A day of reckoning is coming,'" that was the thing I reacted to. That's what prompted me to send it to the police. If you have a public event and you get a message like that, that stood out to me. So I said, 'Here it is, you can do whatever you want with it.'"

Well, they did what they wanted to with it. This should be a cautionary lesson to social media users. If you send something to law enforcement, they may decide to take away someone's freedom. If something goes wrong during this process, they may also take away someone's life. "Better safe than sorry" is a shitty platitude to deploy after some "see something, say something" do-gooding ends a fellow citizen's life. I don't expect social media users to be experts in sussing out true threats, but they should definitely be more careful about dragging men with guns into the mix over ambiguous words posted during heated discussions.

This doesn't necessarily mean the police are out of line. This is what we pay law enforcement to do: follow up on reported criminal activity. But everything about law enforcement is discretionary, which can result in rights violations or biased response rates. "See something, say something" very rarely results in actionable info, but police are just as invested in the "better safe than sorry" platitude and do what they can to encourage this unfortunate cycle of events.

There's no good fix for this. All that can be offered is an abundance of caution. People making complaints need to recognize the potential severity of a law enforcement response. And law enforcement needs to realize it doesn't need to disrupt a citizen's life just because some internet rando sent them a Facebook screenshot. All in all, this could have gone worse. But even when it goes well, it still has an adverse effect on people who committed no crime but still find themselves surrounded by cops demanding to know about the weapons they own (gun ownership: still legal) and their level of antipathy towards their fellow humans. Non-custodial interviews are bullshit because they often require proving negatives to law enforcement satisfaction while requiring almost nothing from the law enforcement officers asking the questions.

Ernest Owens has made more of this than is strictly necessary, but he's not completely wrong. He may be overstating the effect of this interaction with law enforcement, but he certainly will feel less free to post his thoughts in public forums, especially if those thoughts are critical of others.

Filed Under: ernest owens, free speech, philadelphia police, police, see something say something, social media
Companies: facebook

'Missing, Sex Trafficked' Children Neither Missing, Nor Victims Of Sex Trafficking

from the moral-panics-are-the-worst dept

For quite some time we've highlighted the horrible laws being pushed by aggressively misrepresenting the size of the problem of sex trafficking -- and especially sex trafficking of children. This is not to say that it never happens. Nor is it to suggest that the crime of sex trafficking, especially of minors, is not horrific and hugely problematic. But we shouldn't overreact to false information. A year ago, we looked at some of the numbers being presented in favor of passing FOSTA, and found they were almost entirely bullshit. This included Rep. Ann Wagner's (who is the leading pusher of bad laws around "sex trafficking") claim child sex trafficking alone was a $9.5 billion industry. As we noted, this number came from a bizarre nonsensical extrapolation of a very misleading and confused report by ICE that covered issues of smuggling (not just sex trafficking). Other stats -- such as the supposed number of kids "lured" into sex trafficking -- showed even more extrapolation, while police were finding very, very few actual cases of this happening.

But, the narrative has been set and the media makes it into reality, even if... it's not. Take this headline from the NY Post from last week, claiming "123 missing children found in Michigan during sex trafficking operation":

Wow. That would be a pretty astoundingly successful police operation, and certainly gives weight to the idea that so many kids are lured into sex trafficking rings and then disappear and go missing. Except... details matter. And deep in the NY Post story they actually admit that out of the 123 missing kids only three were "identified as possible sex trafficking victims." So, uh, why does the headline suggest that all 123 kids are sex trafficking victims when it's not clear if any are, and clear that the vast majority are not?

And then there's this: only four of the kids were actually missing.

What's more, all but four of the "missing children" were not actually missing. In the remaining cases, minors were listed in a police database as missing but had since been found or returned home on their own. "Many were (homeschooled)," Lt. Michael Shaw told The Detroit News. "Some were runaways as well."

Indeed, if you look at the report, it notes that all of the kids outside of those four "were found safe with their parents or guardians."

So, remember, the headline screamed that 123 missing children were found in a sex trafficking "operation." Now it seems that most of them were "found" at home with their parents, and only three of them might have been victims of sex trafficking. These seem like important details, especially when you have election officials like Rep. Ann Wagner pushing a vast surveillance bill on the basis of the problem of sex trafficking. Pushing bogus information like over a hundred missing kids being engaged in sex trafficking only helps build that narrative -- one that appears to actually be much, much more limited than the media or lying politicians will let you know about.

Filed Under: ann wagner, exaggeration, fosta, moral panic, police, sex trafficking, surveillan

New Laws Will Force Transparency On California Law Enforcement Agencies Starting Next Year

from the here-comes-some-of-that-responsibility-that's-supposed-to-accompany-power dept

Starting next year, California law enforcement agencies will finally be subject to a bit more scrutiny and accountability. For years, law enforcement officers have been able to hide misdeeds behind super-restrictive public records laws -- laws so restrictive even law enforcement's best friends (i.e., prosecutors) couldn't see them.

For the general public, this meant near total opacity. For criminal defendants, this meant rarely having the chance to impeach an officer's testimony by offering evidence of past misconduct or routine untruthfulness.

Over the past few years, efforts have been made to roll back the restrictions built into California's public records laws. All of these efforts died on the way to the governor's desk, most riddled with rhetorical bullets fired by California police unions who claimed making this information public would endanger the lives of bad cops.

The status quo -- in place for the last forty years -- is being disrupted. Two bills have been signed by Governor Jerry Brown, creating holes in law enforcement's law-enabled opacity.

Under the law, records involving “personnel, medical, or similar files of disclosure which would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” were exempt from the public. Police records often fell into this category, with officer personnel records - such as use of force violations - subject to additional protection under the law.

Now with two new laws, SB-1421 and AB-748, the public has the opportunity to review records that were once exempt from oversight. Under SB-1421, law enforcement agencies are required to provide public access to records related to use of force, sexual assault complaints, and dishonesty in investigations and reporting of a crime. AB 748, authored by Assemblymember Phil Ting (D - San Francisco), supports Skinner’s bill by requiring the release of body camera footage within 45-days of a critical incident with a 30-day delay if a case is still pending.

The state's police unions are still complaining about the new laws, calling the governor's decision "reckless" and "disappointing." But the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC) goes even further, claiming the law requiring the release of body cam footage will encourage bad behavior by the usual suspects: people protected by the First Amendment.

Brian Marvel, President of the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC), representing more than 70,000 public safety members, said AB 748 creates significant problems by doing the following:

It jeopardizes the privacy of witnesses, which in today's society is exceedingly difficult to have them come forward, given the bullying tactics of certain activists groups.

[...]

It invites the media to interfere with investigations and prosecutions by contacting witnesses, second guessing determinations, and driving a false narrative regarding an incident, all to sell newspapers and get clicks on their websites.

These arguments are pathetic. Anyone arguing their critics are serving up criticism "for the clicks" has already lost the battle. The best way to combat a "false" narrative is openness and transparency. If law enforcement agencies really wanted to set the record straight following a shooting, they'd proactively dump footage and documents. Instead, these agencies spent years hiding behind the state's public records laws, only making long-delayed appearances to claim people criticizing an officer's actions were wrong and were being misled by public enemy #1, the Fourth Estate.

It's likely good law enforcement officers support this transparency. After all, nothing to hide is nothing to fear, as we've been told when rights are about to be violated. Trust is built through transparency and accountability. Law enforcement agencies have never been fans of either, which has directly resulted in the destroyed community relationships they show so little interest in fixing.

Legislation can start rebuilding the trust law enforcement agencies aren't willing to repair. It's perfectly understandable why they'd be opposed to these bills: they do have something to hide and lots to fear. But they're public agencies, funded by taxpayers and supposedly answerable to those they serve. They haven't been. Not by a long shot. But these new laws -- which go into effect at the beginning of next year -- will force agencies to begin addressing their more problematic employees. In the long run, it will work out better for everyone.

Filed Under: california, law enforcement, police, transparency

Texas Cops Seize Anti-GOP Sign From Homeowner's Lawn

from the whole-lot-of-stupid-everywhere-you-look dept

Stupid unconstitutional stuff is happening in Texas. "Again?" I hear you ask, irritated but not surprised. "Yes," I repeat. "In Texas, and involving local politicians and law enforcement." "Again?" I hear you say (again) and the circle of commentary life continues uninterrupted.

A resident of Hamilton, Texas, posted a political sign in her front yard composed of a white label board remix of political cartoonist Ann Telnaes' remix of the GOP logo.

Here's the original:

And here's the sign that was, until recently, in homeowner Marion Stanford's yard:

As one does in this age of social media telegraphy, outraged parties brought this to the attention of a local politician with a sizable following -- Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller -- who dumped his own petrol on the partisan bonfire by posting it to Facebook and calling it an example of "Democrat sleaze." He also claimed the picture was supposed to be "Judge Kavanaugh's young daughter" -- a claim made without supporting evidence but with the amplification of 738,000 Facebook followers.

Shortly thereafter, Marion Stanford began receiving threats. Unfortunately, this is the predictable part of the backlash. Stanford also received a visit from local law enforcement, which was a bit less predictable. But they weren't there about the threats. They were there about the sign, as the Dallas Morning News reports.

Tuesday evening, she said, police came to her house and said they had received complaints.

“Police told me to remove the sign or they would take it and would arrest me,” Stanford said. “So I let them take the sign.”

This claim has been denied by the city, which issued this statement via the city manager.

The city manager of Hamilton, which is about 100 miles southwest of Fort Worth, denied that police mentioned arrest or forcibly took the sign.

“It’s political season, and a citizen here placed a yard sign that featured a political animal taking an inappropriate position with a young child,” Pete Kampfer said. “A police member visited the owner’s home, and the owner asked the officer to take the sign.”

This denial is more than a little weird. First off, even if officers did not mention arrest, they said something that caused her to hand over the sign to them. The police had no business being there in the first place, so their presence is completely inexplicable… or is at least something the city manager isn't willing to explain.

Second, the whole sentence starting with "it's political season" makes zero sense. "Political season" or no, the sign was protected expression the government had no business interfering with. The addition of "taking an inappropriate position with a young child" suggests the city -- and possibly the police -- are no smarter than the idiot commenters on Sid Miller's page who claim the picture is pretty much child porn. It isn't and only someone hoping to see someone punished by the government for protected speech would make this claim. That group apparently includes the city manager.

This is lawsuit bait. Even if the police did not threaten arrest, officers did visit a citizen to discuss protected expression -- protected expression that ended up being removed by police officers and taken to the station. Whatever the chain of events, it makes everyone involved at the government level look bad. There was no reason to visit, much less take the sign. Even if the homeowner offered to give it up, officers shouldn't have been there to ask the question, much less take her up on her offer.

Filed Under: first amendment, free speech, gop, marion stanford, police, political signs, sid miller, texas

French Cop Arrested For Selling Sensitive Law Enforcement Info On The Dark Web

from the all-the-best-jobs-are-the-inside-ones dept

The problem with giving law enforcement access to so many databases full of personal info and so many tech tools to fight crime is that, inevitably, these will be abused. This isn't a law enforcement problem, per se. It's a people problem. When the job demands the best people but still needs to maintain minimum staffing levels, things like this happen:

A French police officer has been charged and arrested last week for selling confidential data on the dark web in exchange for Bitcoin.

[...]

French authorities also say the officer advertised a service to track the location of mobile devices based on a supplied phone number. He advertised the system as a way to track spouses or members of competing criminal gangs. Investigators believe Haurus was using the French police resources designed with the intention to track criminals for this service.

He also advertised a service that told buyers if they were tracked by French police and what information officers had on them.

The discovery of the officer's misconduct came to light after French police shut down a dark web market. That there was a cop selling cop stuff to criminals on the dark web is inevitable. If it wasn't this investigation, any of the dozens of others happening around the world would have uncovered a law enforcement officer doing bad things. Two of the federal agents involved in the Silk Road investigation ended up being charged with money laundering and wire fraud after they stole Bitcoin and issued fake subpoenas to further their own criminal ends.

Again, it's a people problem -- one that's present anywhere people are given power and access not present in most jobs. The problem is government agencies, in particular, tend not to hold their own employees accountable and work hard to thwart their oversight. The more brazen examples of government malfeasance are enabled by the dozens of smaller infractions that go unpunished until they're the subject of a lawsuit or government investigation.

More to the point, this is exactly why no government agency -- not to mention the private companies involved -- should be allowed to utilize encryption backdoors, as the EFF's Director of Cybersecurity, Eva Galperin, pointed out on Twitter. It's not just about the hundreds of malicious hackers who will see an inviting, new attack vector. It's that no one -- public or private sector -- can be completely trusted to never expose or misuse these avenues of access. And since that's a fact of life, sometimes the best solution is to remove the temptation.

Filed Under: backdoors, dark web, encryption, france, police, police database

Lawsuit Settlement Looking To Kill Philadelphia's Severely Abused Forfeiture Program

from the no-more-'$40-in-drugs-gets-cops-a-new-house'-crap dept

The Institute for Justice has secured a big win in Philadelphia. The city's asset forfeiture program is being torn down and rebuilt as the result of IJ litigation.

In documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania today, city officials agreed to a set of reforms that will end the perverse financial incentives under which law enforcement keeps and uses forfeiture revenue, fundamentally reform procedures for seizing and forfeiting property, and establish a $3 million fund to compensate innocent people whose property was wrongly confiscated.

The city's program was infamous for things like seizing a house because one resident (not the owner) sold cops $40 worth of drugs. Another case featuring the IJ's legal assistance sought the return of another home seized after a $140 drug purchase. In the first instance, prosecutors dropped the case and returned the property after the litigation received national attention. In the latter, the state's Supreme Court found the seizure of the house unwarranted and unjustifiable -- a harsh punishment that far outstripped the seriousness of the crime.

The proposed settlement [PDF] would drastically alter Philly's forfeiture laws and policies. Importantly, it would strip the financial incentive for seizures by redirecting forfeiture funds towards drug rehab programs and away from the law enforcement agencies that have directly profited from this program for years.

It also would make tiny forfeitures -- the ones least likely to be disputed -- a historical relic. Seizures of less than $1,000 would either need to be tied to an arrest or used as evidence in criminal cases. Cash seizures of less than $250 would be completely forbidden. This is important because data shows the median cash seizure by Philly law enforcement is $178.

More due process is being introduced into the forfeiture process as well. If citizens can show a need for the seized property, they may be able to retain possession of it throughout the forfeiture proceedings. Property owners would -- for the first time -- be allowed to file requests for continuances if unable to make scheduled court dates. It also fully shifts the burden of proof to prosecutors, making them prove owners knew about illegal use of their property.

If the entire settlement is approved, the perverse incentives that have turned a potentially-useful crime fighting tool into a crime of opportunity will be removed and replaced with a set of deterrents that will steer law enforcement towards seizures supported by prosecutions and convictions, rather than by conclusory statements about theoretical illegal activity.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, philadelphia, police
Companies: institute for justice

Body Cam Company Files Patent For Built-In Facial Recognition Tech

from the papers,-please-v.-2.0 dept

Police body cameras are the savior that failed to materialize. Accountability was the end goal, but obstacles were immediately erected by internal policies, cop-friendly legislation, and existing public records carve-outs for anything "investigation"-related.

Making things worse are the officers themselves. When excessive force or other unconstitutional tactics are deployed, body cams seem to malfunction at an alarming rate. And that's only if officers can be bothered to turn them on at all. Body cams have served up a bunch of exonerating footage and delivered evidence to prosecutors, but have done little to make law enforcement more accountable.

This trend isn't in any danger of reversing. Body cam manufacturers are seeking to expand their offerings, but the focus appears to be on giving law enforcement the extras it wants, rather than what the public is actually seeking. A good summary of recent body cam developments by Sidney Fussell at The Atlantic contains a discussion a new patent application by body cam manufacturer Digital Ally.

While the patent application contains some nice "triggering" effects that may result in more captured footage of questionable incidents, it also contains something that would turn passive recordings into active surveillance.

In mid-September, Digital Ally, a cloud-storage and video-imaging company, announced a series of patents for cameras that would automatically be triggered by various stimuli, not just an officer pressing record. Theoretically, these would end the problem of both re-creation and cameras inexplicably failing to record use-of-force scenarios.

Some of the “triggering events” in Digital Ally’s patents are for crisis response, in the event of a car crash or a gun being pulled from its holster. But some of the auto-triggers would cause the cameras to record simply as police move through public spaces. As described in one patent, an officer could set his body camera to actively search for anyone with an active warrant. Using face recognition, the camera would scan the faces of the public, then compare that against a database of wanted people. (The process could work similarly for a missing person.) If there’s a match, the camera would begin to record automatically.

As Fussell points out, the tech isn't ready yet. Processing power is still an issue. Facial recognition software needs to perform a lot of complex calculations quickly to provide near-instant feedback, and it's unlikely Digital Ally has found a way to cram that into a body cam yet. Moving the processing to the cloud solves space management problems, but would require far faster connections than are ordinarily available to portable devices.

But it won't be this way forever. And that has a lot of privacy implications, even when the footage is gathered in public spaces. Law enforcement doesn't have the right to demand you identify yourself in most situations, but inserting facial recognition tech in body cams strips away a small protection against government power citizens currently possess. The software will provide officers with personal information even when there's no reason for officers to have it. All of this is problematic even before you get to the issue of false positives and the havoc they can wreak.

It's almost inevitable facial recognition tech will be deployed by law enforcement. The DHS is already aiming cameras at passengers flying into the country to search for criminal suspects and others it wants to subject to additional screening. Any public place that routinely hosts large gatherings of people will be next in line for biometric scanning. And once the tech catches up with the dream, body cams will ID pedestrians by the hundreds, even when cops aren't actively searching for subjects or suspects.

No matter how it's pitched in the future, it's important to remember law enforcement isn't somehow "owed" every tech advance that comes its way. Supporters will say facial recognition tech makes both officers and the public safer. This may be true, but so do all sorts of privacy/Constitutional violations. Our rights protect us from the government. And that includes the right to go about your business without being asked by officers to identify yourself. Removing this right via technical wizardry and making it a passive experience for all involved doesn't make it any less of a violation.

Filed Under: body cameras, face recognition, patents, police, privacy
Companies: digital ally

Six Months Later, People Are Finally Realizing That FOSTA Actually Is Putting Lives At Risk

from the we-kinda-warned-you dept

Before FOSTA became law, plenty of experts in the space tried to warn everyone that a bill that was frequently promoted as being necessary to help "save the lives" of vulnerable women involved in sex trafficking, would actually put more lives at risk. And we've already had some evidence to support that this prediction was entirely accurate. Various law enforcement officials have been complaining that it's now more difficult to catch sex traffickers.

And, now the Associated Press has a big article looking at the impact of FOSTA and it's not pretty. The closing down of various online forums for sex workers has driven more sex workers into the street, where their lives are at significantly higher risk:

Law enforcement in San Antonio arrested 296 people for prostitution between March 21, when the Sex Trafficking Act passed Congress, and Aug. 14, according to a public records request — a 58 percent increase from the same span the year before, when police made 187 arrests.

Phoenix police said they experienced a surge in street-prostitution arrests in 2018 but did not provide figures. In Houston, levels have remained constant, but more 14- to 17-year-olds have been working outdoors since May, said James Dale, a police captain.

Police in Sacramento, California, noted three street-prostitution arrests between March 21, 2017, and mid-August of that year. During the same period in 2018, they recorded 15.

The stories from women who have shifted from using the internet to the streets are pretty harrowing:

Kara Alexander, who lives in Florida, advertised her services on Backpage, Craigslist and other sites before April. When media companies closed down sections hosting adult services ads, she said, she started working on the streets.

In May, she said, a client raped her and poured alcohol in her body in an attempt to destroy evidence. Alexander, 29, said she had faced violence while working online, but never on this scale.

“It’s a different kind of danger,” she said.

A sex worker who goes by Quinn and didn’t want her real name used because she feared arrest and other repercussions said that in the age of the trafficking act, she hasn’t been able to rack up enough jobs. Near the end of April, she started selling herself outdoors in Boston for the first time since she was a teenager, she said.

“There’s no backup plan for people like us,” said Quinn, who said she was raped and beaten in August but could not afford treatment.

There are more stories and information in the full AP piece.

And, again, none of this should be a surprise. Before FOSTA became law, we (and many others) pointed to a recent study that showed how adult ads on Craigslist "reduced the female homicide rate by 17.4%" when it was available. And, to put some context on that number, that's the overall female homicide rate, not just "the female homicide rate of sex workers." Forcing more women into the street is, literally, leading to people dying.

And it is infuriating that this was done by Representatives like Ann Wagner and Mimi Walters who insisted they were doing it to save women's lives, when the reality is that they have only served to put more women in potentially mortal danger.

The AP article also highlights another point that we had mentioned previously: FOSTA is enabling much more trafficking by empowering pimps, while online sites allowed sex workers to avoid needing to use pimps:

Alexander said a friend of hers was attacked by pimps who were incensed she was working without them, and Quinn said pimps have become much more aggressive now that they see a market.

It would be nice if some reporters actually ask Representatives like Ann Wagner and Mimi Walters, or Senators like Rob Portman and Richard Blumenthal how they feel about the fact that the bad law that they pushed for, claiming it was necessary to save young women, has now created a situation where those women are placed in significantly more danger? In the business world, if you push for a proposal, once it's implemented, people check to see whether what you claimed would happen would -- and if it didn't, you're often asked to explain why not. It's incredible that Congress can pass a law insisting it will do one thing, and when it does the exact opposite, no one seems to care.

Filed Under: fosta, law enforcement, police, sex workers