413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

a good attitude, so do they. ‘Cause if you go in hollering ‘cause you get caught, they’re not going to be so
nice” (J7). Another individual who traded sex in Washington, DC for over twenty years explained:
Cops [are] still the same way with me. As long as you show them respect, they give you
respect. They give you a warning. They had a right to lock you up because they gave you a
warning … Cops gave you a warning to go home—but that’s all—they wouldn’t arrest. I’d
go right back the next day. It’s okay until you get a new warning! (L2)
At least one respondent felt that police interventions were helpful when she needed a rest from the work.
This is illustrated in the following interaction with a 41-year-old individual who traded sex:
Respondent: I worked seven days a week, until I fell out, ‘cause [the police] knew.
They’d seen me walking around the streets for days and they’d pick me up.
Interviewer: So the police would notice you getting run down [physically] and they
would arrest you as sort of a favor
Respondent: Yeah, that’s what they would do. (J3)
The same respondent described less positive interactions involving abuse and mistreatment:
[Police] were abusive, they were mean, they would call you names. If they were to see me
this day, they would treat me the same; they would see my record and still call me names.
Even though I’m clean and sober and got my shit together, they would still see me as shit.
(J3)
Transgender sex workers discussed similar instances. A trans-woman described the treatment she
received when arrested for sex work: “They verbally abused me. When I was arrested, my wig was
snatched off in the police car” (L7). A number of transgender women were upset that they were placed in
cells with men rather than women. This was the case for a 46-year-old transgender woman from
Washington, DC who stated, “I have been arrested, and they put me in a cell with men. The men wanted
to masturbate on me, threaten me, fight and beat me … When I tell the marshal or police that I’m a
woman … they put me in a male cell” (L1).
Changes in Law Enforcement Approaches to Sex Work
Sex workers’ encounters with law enforcement officers changed over time. When a 53-year-old individual
from Denver was asked to consider any changes she observed throughout the course of her career; she
stated, “The ways the cops deal with the girls … they talk and talk and talk and talk and then corral the
girls. If they know what you do, they’ll get you” (J6). Another noted that although she traded sex since the
1990s, she was first caught by an undercover law enforcement agent in 2006, and then again in 2008 and
in 2012 (M1).
Sex workers who worked between the 1970s and present day stated that law enforcement approaches to
sex work were not as aggressive in the earlier years of their careers. A 48-year-old from Denver who began
trading sex when she was 13 was asked to describe the market when she first started in her teenage years.
She responded, “Back then, it was cool. The police didn’t really give you no problems, as long as you’re not
killing nobody, hurting nobody, they don’t really care” (J5). Others, like an individual from Washington,
DC, stated that she did not encounter police raids in the early part of her career, in the 1980s.
Police crackdowns and undercover sting operations on street-based sex work picked up in the 1990s and
2000s. One respondent noted, “I can’t take the chance of undercovers pulling up on me. They’re
everywhere. The policy activity has increased” (L1). Others described the varying ways in which law
enforcement officers attempted to intervene in their work in these years; a 49-year-old from Denver
explained, “You would be walking down the street and they would call you names, harassing me … they’d
stop you for dumb reasons: jaywalking, stopping traffic” (J10). Some respondents noted that these types
of efforts increased as drug use grew on the streets; a 43-year-old from Washington, DC, who had been
trading sex since the mid-1980s, noted that when she first started sex work, “[there] were no police raids,
but today there are raids only because of the drugs” (L5).
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