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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > September > 19
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Editorial: As sex crimes change, so must area police
Prostitution has changed in the Internet age. Law enforcement, too, has to change to combat it.
But the efforts of local police departments to catch Internet sex criminals — ranging from prostitutes and johns to child sex offenders — begs for more regional cooperation. Too many police departments are addressing the problem on their own, making the region’s approach a patchwork, haphazard effort.
That’s not to say those police departments are doing a bad job. Quite the contrary. Online sting operations are catching bad guys and bad girls and providing disincentives for sex industry operators to set up shop in the Dayton area.
But many of the criminals they catch are not from here. Often they are actually from out of town, or even out of state, enticed by the idea of meeting up with a prostitute, a john or an underage girl who is really an undercover officer. A regional effort might be better able to bring together law enforcement officers who know how to target stings to the local sex trade.
Some of the sting operations have great track records of success. Xenia’s child protection unit gained a national reputation for its pioneering work combating sexual predators.
In the last couple of years, there has been an explosion of online prostitution, fed by solicitors and potential clients meeting up through online classified Web sites, especially the popular and free Craigslist, where you can buy and sell almost anything. The problem has become a national issue, with law enforcement groups pressuring Craigslist last year into changing its practices to make it tougher for the sex industry to use that forum.
This effort has had only a modest effect. Locally, police report that Craigslist has changed the sex trade, moving sexual deal-making from the street corner to the Internet, and moving prostitution rapidly to suburban hotels and homes.
Naturally, police departments have reacted as the sex trade moved to their communities. In a Sept. 11 story, officers discussed sting operations in suburban communities like Troy, Kettering, Miamisburg and Warren County’s Deerfield Twp. In most cases, these were individual operations run by local police or task forces.
Suppose all these efforts to combat sex crimes — both involving adults and children — were combined across several counties. One team of officers could patrol the Web, focusing on hot spots around the Dayton area. The shared effort could reduce costs, while expanding law enforcement’s net into even more communities. It’s also likely such an effort would be easier to fund by spreading the cost and burden over many departments, not just the few that can put resources toward it.
Perhaps regional task forces could be set up across the state to deal with these crimes. Internet-based crimes have evolved quickly. Police have done their best to respond to what they see as new threats. That’s the right instinct. What’s needed now is a more coherent, planned response.
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