Seattle Looks to ‘Red Flag’ Laws Instead of Arrests to Combat Sex Trafficking

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some Seattle residents who are so fed up with prostitution, drug deals, and shootings in their neighborhood that they ended up erecting barricades to try to keep violent criminals at bay. The city has since removed those homemade roadblocks and installed ineffective chicanes that slow down traffic but don’t actually prevent anyone from driving on the side streets. 

Seattle officials say they’ve also increased police patrols along Aurora Avenue, and are planning on permanently closing access to neighborhood side streets, though no timeline has been announced. At a neighborhood meeting full of ticked-off residents last week, some mid-level officials showed up to offer vague promises of relief… and to explain why arrests have been relatively sparse. 

Neither the mayor nor the city attorney showed up for the meeting, but city attorney criminal division chief, Jenna Robert was on hand to try to mollify residents. 

Robert said new criminal charges against sex buyers are still a priority. But they haven’t filed any of those sexual exploitation cases so far this year. Evans said that’s because successful investigations rely on undercover operations that police are too understaffed to do for these misdemeanor cases.

“It’s extremely resource-intensive for officers that are already limited right now and not something that’s been recently done,” Evans said.

SPD spokesperson Sgt. Patrick Michaud confirmed that misdemeanor charges against sex buyers aren’t the main focus of current enforcement.

“While our staffing shortage has been well documented, we do continue to conduct operations, but the focus tends to be on trafficking more than purchasing because the resolution tends to have a lasting impact,” Michaud said.

Trafficking investigations go to the King County Prosecutor’s Office which pursues felony charges related to human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children. King County has filed dozens of these cases annually and prosecutors say 80 % of them tend to have some connection to the Aurora neighborhood.

Evans said the city attorney’s office is pursuing strategies that don’t rely on hard-to-obtain criminal convictions. That could include trying to close more nuisance properties on Aurora that are linked to trafficking, continuing an emphasis the city took last year against a motel and strip club. She’s also seeking funding for a prosecutor to file extreme risk protection orders against sex traffickers, to take away their firearms.

This is Seattle we’re talking about, so stupid policies aren’t exactly new or unusual. This, however, is the first attempt I’ve ever seen to combat sex trafficking through the use of a “red flag” law, and I’m still not sure how Evans thinks that’s going to work. In order to convince a judge that a pimp’s profession makes them a danger to themselves or others because of a tendency to defend turf with a gun, a prosecutor is going to have to offer evidence that a person is, in fact, a pimp. And if prosecutors can do that, why wouldn’t they go after them for sex trafficking instead? 

How many of these suspected sex traffickers are legal gun owners anyway? I can’t imagine the number is all that high, and even if they lose the ability to legally possess a gun for a year or so, something tells me that most of them aren’t going to have to look too hard to find a gun on the black market. 

I understand that Seattle PD is struggling to fill hundreds of vacant positions, and that is having an effect on policing. Still, if they’re putting more officers on Aurora Avenue, I don’t know why officials aren’t trying to go after johns as well as the pimps who are turning the area into an open-air brothel. It sounds like the city attorney doesn’t think it’s worth pursuing misdemeanor cases, though I doubt she feels the same about enforcing misdemeanor gun control laws. 

I’d invite the local media out to do ride-alongs as police bust up attempts to purchase sexual favors so they can highlight the faces and names of those arrested on those misdemeanor charges. No one wants to have their face on the evening news in connection with picking up a prostitute, and that would likely curb demand, at least to some degree. 

That alone won’t solve the problem, but I’d argue it would have a much bigger impact than trying to use the state’s Extreme Risk Protection Order to take guns away from sex traffickers. The city attorney’s plan is utterly ridiculous, but if its implemented in Seattle we probably won’t have to wait long to see other progressive cities do the same. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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