413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

all the connections between one pimp, whose profile they could access, and the women and girls that
worked for him. The police found that the pimps will often post pictures of their money, dope, and girls
together. Although making these connections through Facebook is a boon for any investigation, it is also
very time consuming and requires a lot of manpower.
In addition to local prostitution, many pimps travel a Southeast circuit on the I-75 corridor, I-95 corridor,
and I-20, which include cities in Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, North and South Carolina, and Virginia.
However, there is a bigger track that includes parts of the Northeast and Southwest: New York, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Miami, Dallas, Texas, and Las Vegas. Law enforcement described a
circuit that is primarily local, but extends up to Florida and sometimes Virginia:
Respondent: If you’re local, you’ll hit Atlanta, Macon, Augusta, Savannah, Columbus,
and then back up to Atlanta. They won’t really mess with Gainesville or anything else, but
those southern cities if they’re a little bit more regional, they’ll go down to Tampa,
Orlando, Miami, but a lot of people aren’t loitering in Miami, they’ll do the other cities
because there’s less police presence and then they’ll go up to Virginia.
Interviewer: Virginia Where in Virginia
Respondent: It’s different. They go up there because it’s better money. You got
everybody that works in the government, you’ve lawyers, politicians and everything else
who are willing to shell out a bit more money for a girl who isn’t from that area who’s
going to keep their mouth shut. (Atlanta Law Enforcement Official)
Pimps will also travel the circuits to reduce the likelihood that police will identify any juveniles working
for them:
The thing about the juvenile prostitution, when you talk about the track versus they’re
hiding them out in rooms. They’re not going to walk these girls where people can see
them and see that they’re underage because somebody’s going to call the police and tip
them you would think; so they’re going to go to Chattanooga for a couple days. My
opinion, what I’ve observed is they’re only staying a couple days because they don’t want
anybody to come get onto them. So a couple days in Chattanooga, then we go a couple
days in Birmingham, a couple days in Augusta, a couple days in Macon. They’re not going
to stay in one place for any length of time because that increases the chance of somebody
seeing the girls coming in and out and seen with this guy. (Atlanta Law Enforcement
Official)
Although pimps in Atlanta are not considered to be particularly organized or capable of running huge
criminal enterprises, some stakeholders found that they are business savvy:
You’re finding with some of the pimps, it’s not just one guy and six girls or a handful of
guys and 15 girls, they are communicating with people who are educated, have some
business sense … Some of the stuff I looked at I was like who the hell are these people
because they obviously know how to manage and run a business and they’re making tons
of money. Of course they’re buying cars and property, stuff like that. (Atlanta Law
Enforcement Official)
Although very few cases are investigated that involve men and boys who trade sex, a handful of
stakeholders acknowledged that there is demand for men and boys, but they were ill-equipped to deal
with cases of this nature:
You can go to Craigslist. It’s like 15:1 right now. Men are advertising on there for same sex
type stuff, but there are no facilities available and “Should we get a boy involved in this,”
“Where are we going to place him,” or stuff like that. Not that there’s that many for girls
either. But like I said, the focus right now is on girls because that’s where all the funding,
that’s where all the focus is at. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, I’m just saying, “Look
we can’t forget about there’s two sexes out here, let’s deal with all of it.” But it’s a start.
(Atlanta Law Enforcement Official)
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