The LuLac Edition #2039, April 28th, 2012

Our "Interview" logo. 

 INTERVIEW 

With the recent flap over the Secret Service partying as they advanced the President’s visit in Columbia, as well as new stories circulating about the military and prostitutes, I tracked down a fellow that is a retired police officer who gave me some insight into this type of behavior. 
Q: You worked all cases but you spent two years in vice, right? 
A: Yes. Richmond, Virginia, early 80s. 
Q: They say prostitution is a victimless crime. Is it? 
A: Under the surface, certainly not. Women and in some cases men are reduced to selling their own intimate experiences. It gets so degrading as well as almost desensitizing that it takes a lot of their soul away. I run into some of the young girls who are now old girls and they have a certain sadness about them. When I see a few of the regulars I arrested, I get this sheepish look from them. So it stays with you. But on the surface, when we have bigger fish to fry in the criminal world, you tend to let vice slide down the priority list. 
Q: Then why have vice at all? Why not do what Nevada does and have everybody just rock and roll to their heart’s delight?
A: You need vice for protection. Protection of the patrons, the workers and the community. The community suffers because they lose their neighborhoods. Traffic gets screwed up, more petty crime and vandalism happens because you have more strangers in an area that is home to the 98% doing the right thing. The patrons are going to do what they’re going to do but you don’t want them hurt physically. You don’t want them ripped off either because then you got a frustrated person who didn’t get what they were looking for and was out the diaper money for the baby at home. So you might have an incident that escalates. Then you have the worker herself that looks at her job as a clerk in a grocery store would. Pay me, I’ll give you this. Don’t pay me, I’m going to do anything I can to get that money. Because money is part of my dignity, whatever dignity a poor soul can have selling their bodies. 
Q: What did you think of the Secret Service guy or guys who refused to pay? 
A: One stupid bastard if you ask me. Look at all the hell that he reigned down upon himself. I guarantee, (and I think you wrote this last week) if that guy paid, kept the little lady happy, this thing would have never, ever seen the light of day. 
Q: How about the military guys that allegedly threw the prostitute out of the car? 
A: In my estimation, as a former law enforcement officer, they are bigger criminals than the sex worker. They intended violent behavior. Why’d  they do that? 
Q: From the news reports I read, they didn’t want to pay the woman. 
A: Stupid bastards. I don’t condone prostitution, never did, never will but a deal, even an illegal one, is a deal. And while it isn’t right, a reneged deal leads to a more violent crime. Any cop will tell you they’d rather see a clean drug deal, a clean transaction go down where one sells, one buys, everybody pays than some flub in it. Then you got the wild wild west. 
Q: Do you think the punishment fit the crime for the agents and the military involved? 
A: Well, I’d bust them right down to nothing if it were me. But you know, they will bear a greater burden in the years ahead. They’ll look back on their lives, as well all tend to do now and think how truly stupid they were. Every man has regrets, a kiss not stolen, a road not taken, a dream never fulfilled. But no one wants to think they did anything so stupid and so unavoidable that it changed their life. That’s a mental punishment.