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Sheriff Sues Craiglist For Prostitution Ads
Amerika writes "Craigslist is 'the single largest source of prostitution in the nation,' according to Cook County, Illinois Sheriff Thomas Dart. He has announced that he's filing a lawsuit against the popular classifieds site. Craigslist says it's determined to prevent criminal activity." NewYorkCountryLawyer adds a link to the 28-page complaint (PDF), which "alleges that Craigslist maintains 21 classifications of sex-for-hire, coded as 'w4m,' 'm4m,' 'm4w,' etc." and that it has facilitated child prostitution and kidnapping and human trafficking.
Sheriff Dart has taken a stance against mortgage companies that are evicting renter's from homes that property owners are allowing to go into eviction. Sheriff Dart says, "Too many renters are being evicted for landlords' problems".
FreeBSD bounties
As this is a civil case, doesn't one need standing to file a suit? As I understand it, that means that the individual bringing the suit has to ask for a remedy the court can provide, which would be redress of damage. Party A can't sue B for what B did to C because A was not harmed, and therefore has no standing. In what way has craigslist damaged the sherrif, and what damages is he asking the court to redress, exactly?
Where I live, prostitution is a normal, regulated service industry.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Indeed. The Sheriff is correct that craigslist is carrying ads that any reasonable person would conclude are for prostitution. For sure.
The question is, what are the Sheriff's real motivations? Law-enforcement crackdowns on prostitution are spotty at best, so why this, why now?
The primary motivation against prostitution comes from females, who loathe it like all businesspeople loathe competition. These days success in business comes easiest to those who seize the law to ban their competition, and women-in-general have done exactly this.
To put it another way: the presence of legal prostitutes will increase what your female partner is willing to do in bed.
Given this, all male attacks on prostitution must be some attempt to curry favor with females. Or they've got a bad case of the Jesus.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Instead of letting the renters do that, or even working a deal with non leasing home owners who are behind, for months leading up to the crash almost one in every five radio commercials I heard in DeKalb IL were about people getting awesome deals on repossessed homes, with super low monthly rates.
/boggle
But if those low rates were offered to the old occupants, I bet they would not have had to move out...
Even from a greed standpoint, that kind of crap didn't seem to make sense to me. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to cut the original owners the deal, instead of repossessing and reselling at the lower monthly rates? And paying for advertising about the low rates?
I found my stolen car on there, and had the local Fox affiliate cover it, so I shouldn't complaining.
No BS, check the link from my homepage if you don't want to believe it.
Go CraigsList!
Actually, I've known some too, on a friendly, not professional basis. It's an interesting business to learn about, but not the safest out there.
I believe the terminology varies by area, as do some of the terms. In the end it's all the same. Guy is lonely, and wants to spend time with a pretty girl. Guy leaves some money in a conspicuous place. Adult things happen. Guy leaves happy. Girl leaves happy and a little richer.
My apologies, as I'm used to referencing proper professionals (versus street walkers) as escorts. No offense is intended.
Myself, I see no problem with it. I don't believe it should be against the law.
When I was in Toronto, I was in for a bit of a culture shock when I talked to some people there. Massage parlors, incall, outcall, and even "full service" strip clubs are perfectly acceptable. Toronto does not allow "street walkers". The general idea is, it's going to happen, like it or not. Be courteous. Anything that happens in the privacy of your [home|hotel|etc] between two consenting adults is exactly that.
I was addressing it from the law enforcement side. The majority of areas in the US have laws against it, and those are enforced. If they want to enforce it, there are much easier ways to enforce it, than to shut down one of the easiest places to make a visible statement. So you've picked up all the obvious street walkers, so they don't walk the streets. The next most visible is Craigslist, or any of many numerous print advertisements that list providers of these services. There will always be some web site that carries advertisements. Hell, searching Google is the most obvious.
**WARNING** Links NSFW! I'm writing most of this for those who are completely naive. Hey, lots of people don't know the business. I just happen to talk to a lot of people, and escorts have been some of them.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=chicago+escort
or even searching for the full deal
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=chicago+escort+gfe
Sorry, there are only over 300,000 pages for the "GirlFriend Experience" in Chicago.
Ok, so there are about 350 postings today on http://chicago.craigslist.org/ers, and anyone who has a clue knows a decent percentage of these are duplicates, fake pictures (wrong girl shows up) or trouble (thug comes, takes your money, and laughs on the way out the door). Some are legit.
If they legalized it, a lot of the problems would go away. Right now, if a thug instead of the shown pretty girl shows up and robs you, you can't do much about it. Try calling the police and say "I was trying to pay for an escort, but some guy came and robbed me instead!". That's a spontaneous confession, and enough to land you in jail at least for the night. Talk about adding insult to injury. If it's perfectly legal, the same phone call would get the cops to your door, and hopefully get your money back and land the thug in jail. There is a whole list of other reasons that it should be legalized, that's only one minor example.
As I've been told many times before, it doesn't matter if it's an escort, a girlfriend, or a wife, you're always paying for sex. At least with an escort, you know the terms of what you're paying for. You will pay $x for $y hours. When the night is done, she'll leave (or you'll leave, depending on who's place it is), and you won't ever have to talk to her again unless you want to. With a girlfriend, you'll buy dinner, flowers, pay for movies, whatever, and then sex in the end isn't guaranteed. And once you're married, the guarantee is that you'll pay for the rest of your life, and sex may happen occasionally if you're lucky. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.