Following the lead of some other cities, Dallas police now have a Website on which they post photographs of men arrested for prostitution, in a gallery labeled "indecency related offenses."
The gallery also features women arrested for prostitution, but it's the images of the men that are getting the attention. Police say the images will come down if and when the suspects are acquitted or charges are dropped.
"For as long as anyone can remember, prostitutes have always been the ones that people focus on," assistant city attorney Tammy Palomino told reporters. "We're trying to do something a little different to combat it. Putting the focus on the customer, hopefully we'll reduce the numbers."
Eleven men arrested in June and 40 arrested in May were posted on the site this week, charged with prostitution, public lewdness, and indecent exposure. Along with their photographs are names, dates of birth, dates of arrest, and residential locations. Police say the site has received plenty of traffic since it premiered June 7, with a reported 4,100 hits on day one and 7,000 hits in the following 24-hours.
"We've had at least two females calling the office wanting to know how to get on the Website because somebody told them their spouse was on there," Dallas police lieutenant Joe Dagen told reporters. "We're hoping that people will be afraid that their picture will show up."
Palomino said 2,000 prostitution-related arrests were made by Dallas police last year, prompting her to research what other cities did, at which point the photo strategy struck.
Denver, St. Paul (Minnesota), and Raleigh (North Carolina) also have similar Web pages. Denver's is known as Johns TV and now features only men convicted on prostitution-related charges, showing nine men, seven of whose photographs are posted.
Raleigh's is called Prostitution Dragnet, and features those arrested and charged, showing eight men arrested on prostitution-related charges since April. St. Paul's Prostitution Prevention page shows photographs of 11 men arrested since March, three of whom have been convicted since. St. Paul's page, however, makes a point of stressing that those merely arrested are considered innocent until proven guilty.
