Someone should ask Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart about his priorities.
He’s got the manpower and resources to invest in a months-long investigation that has culminated in a handful of arrests for simple prostitution and soliciting prostitution while forty-five people have been shot and thirteen people have been murdered in the first three days of September in Chicago, the largest city in Dart’s jurisdiction.
In case you think the last three days are an aberration, this past week, Chicago’s criminals have racked up 68 shootings and 17 homicides. It’s almost as if Chicago were the nation’s largest open-air shooting range.
Getting back to Tom Dart. He’s featured prominently in a Time Magazine feature story on a nationwide campaign by law enforcement agencies to crack down on prostitution listings at “Backpage.com”.
(Time – warning video autoplays) – A coalition of dozens of law enforcement agencies arrested more than 1,000 pimps and sex buyers in a summer-long series of prostitution stings.
The months-long annual sting, now known as the National Johns Suppression Initiative, was led by Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County, Il. A total of 39 law enforcement agencies across 18 states arrested 961 men trying to buy sex and 71 pimps or traffickers, more than in any of his previous stings.
About two-fifths of the arrests stemmed from online prostitution ads, and 98% of those ads were placed on Backpage.com, according to a press release from the sheriff’s office. In the four years since the annual sting began, more than 4,000 sex buyers and traffickers have been arrested (it used to be called the National Day of Johns).
Hopefully other jurisdictions have a better sense of priorities. Let’s see: invest manpower and resources in cracking down on hookers and johns, or invest manpower and resources in solving shootings and homicides in your jurisdiction? Especially when local law enforcement is solving only about 20% of homicides.
Which criminal activity would you choose to crack down on?
Tom Dart has made his decision clear: He is chasing internet prostitution cases. Meanwhile, his constituents are literally dying all around him from criminal violence.
It’s all about priorities. Obviously.
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