Police Openly Resisting Legislation that Will Ban Cops from Having Legal Sex with Prostitutes
Twin bills in Alaska seek to criminalize police sexual contact with prostitutes — but the legislations highlight an epidemic of officer coercive sex and sexual assault going largely ignored by the corporate press.
By Claire Bernish
TheFreeThoughtProject.com
June 17, 2017
Alaskan police are still fighting twin bills winding their way through state legislature — because the proposed legislation would make sexual contact with sex workers illegal.
Anchorage Police Deputy Chief Sean Case traveled to Juneau earlier this year to plead the need for officers to be able to touch sex workers during an investigation, or their cover — and, thus, the case — would be blown.
House Bill 112 and Senate Bill 73, Case claims, ‘are offensive to law enforcement officers and unnecessary because myriad laws and regulations already govern such conduct.’
HB 112 states, in part, “An offender commits the crime of sexual assault in the third degree if the offender … while acting as a peace officer in the state, engages in sexual penetration with a person with reckless disregard that the person is … the victim, witness, or perpetrator of a crime under investigation by the offender.”
“If we make that act (of touching) a misdemeanor we have absolutely no way of getting involved in that type of arrest,” Case told the Alaska Dispatch News.
Under the premise officers have only limited physical contact with prostitutes — such as touching a woman’s breast upon request when posing as a john — Case and his ilk around the nation feel stripping cops of that ability would be detrimental.
In actuality, however, an epidemic of police violence extends tragically into the world of sex work — officer rapes of prostitutes are far from uncommon. Indeed, sex workers will ‘cop-check’ a potential john — requesting contact they know to be illegal in order to determine if the person is an undercover officer, who would at least theoretically not break the law.
But officers frequently do have extensive sexual contact — up to, and including, sexual intercourse — with targets of prostitution investigations.
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