The arrests of five women in a Joplin police sting operation April 13 equaled the total number of suspects charged with prostitution in the city the past three years.
Yet, police have been reluctant to term the operation a crackdown. The way Lt. Brian Lewis of the Joplin Police Department explained matters, it was more simply a case of detecting undesirable activity and doing something about it.
“They were advertising their services for Joplin on the Internet,” Lewis said.
He said the local quality of life is at stake with such issues.
“If we’re to provide a safe and healthy environment for our residents and businesses and visitors, then we’re going to address criminal activity as we see it occurring,” he said.
Lewis said the sting operation also may prove an effective deterrent to any spread of prostitution in the city.
While Joplin has a colorful past as a mining town, where prostitution was once an integral segment of the local economy, the offense has not been particularly rampant nor the focus of much police concern in recent years. The Joplin Police Department made zero arrests for the crime in 2011 and 2010. There were five arrests in 2009.
Of the women arrested April 13, two were from Springfield, another from Oklahoma. Two were Joplin residents. Four were between the ages of 20 and 23. One was 31.
Lewis said they were arrested as they showed up at the vacant house on 11th Street, either based on phone conversations they’d had with detectives posing as potential clients or conversations they had with the detectives once they arrived at the address.
He said detectives arranged “dates” with at least three of the women during calls placed to numbers advertised on the Internet. Two showed up with a second woman in their company.
Lewis said there was not a particular escort service involved. He said they were advertising on a website with listings similar to craigslist that specifically mentioned their availability to Joplin residents.
“If it’s that easily accessible, you know people are going to take advantage of it,” Lewis said.
He said the Joplin Police Department is going to do what it can to try to prevent such services from gaining a foothold in the city.
Six this year
The April 13 sting — conducted by a handful of detectives at a house on West 11th Street — brought the number of arrests this year to six.
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Joplin police nab five women for prostitution in sting
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