By admin Posted September 5th, Tweet. Photo by Paul Thompson. During a day-long prostitution sting on August 29, more than a dozen arrests were made by the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department. Later, officers turned their attention to Independence Avenue in the Historic Northeast, where a decoy undercover officer posed as a prostitute in order to catch solicitors.
Terry Owens for the bulk of the afternoon. What follows are real anecdotes from the operation, derived from conversations with not only KCPD officers, but also with many of those arrested during the sting. The operation was initiated near the intersection of 27th and Benton, when a prostitute with a felony warrant for Dangerous Drugs β along with two city warrants, for Disorderly Conduct and Prostitution β is identified by one of the 16 or so officers involved in the wide-ranging effort.
The arrest itself is swift, clinical. Whenever a plain-clothes officer invites a prostitute into his vehicle, there are multiple unmarked cars with eyes on the car. The drive itself never lasts long; Owens noted that the more time a target has with an undercover officer, the greater the opportunity for something to go wrong. In other words, anything can happen once suspicion leads the target to search for a way out.
With that in mind, the goal is typically to surround the vehicle shortly after a price for services is agreed to. In this first case, Owens and several other members of the team pounce within moments. The woman is promptly searched and loaded into a transport vehicle, allowing the operation to continue nearby, at 29th and Benton.
The second target expresses contrition and disappointment after her arrest. The woman is soft-spoken, but agrees to speak about the circumstances in her life that led her to the front of a squad car.
