Texas Cops Fired for ‘Inappropriate’ Sexual Contact With Massage Workers
Eleven Texas police officers have been disciplined for misconduct related to prostitution stings at massage parlors. Some of the officers are accused of inappropriate physical conduct with alleged sex workers during the stings, while others are accused of failing to stop or report this misconduct. Thirteen officers were investigated, and three wound up fired as a result.
“The investigation started after the Denton County District Attorney’s Office brought to my attention some concerning aspects of 23 prostitution cases that our department had filed with his office,” Lewisville Police Department (LPD) Chief Brook Rollins wrote in a statement. The cases involved 28 suspects and 32 criminal charges.
The district attorney (D.A.) declined to prosecute any of them.
Is this a case of a reform-minded D.A. declining to prosecute victimless crimes? Alas, no, that doesn’t seem to be what’s going on here. It’s more likely that the D.A. just realized these cases wouldn’t cut it because of the police misconduct they involved.
Police Chief Initiates Investigations
“LPD obtained the list of cases from the DA, and we immediately began an administrative review of the declined cases. During the review of these cases, it was apparent that possible misconduct was occurring,” according to Rollins, who was just appointed to the position of chief earlier this year.
Rollins opened an internal affairs investigation and also referred the cases for possible criminal investigation. (That’s what we like to see!) As of November 1, no criminal charges were filed. But a “substantial” internal investigation “concluded that there had been inappropriate contact” between officers and alleged sex workers, Rollins wrote.
In the end, 11 of the 13 officers under investigation were disciplined. Not all 11 are accused of engaging in sexual misconduct. Some are accused of having violated department protocols through “ineffective supervision or communication that facilitated those incidents.”
Rollins is vague about what went down, but reading between the lines it seems that officers engaged in sexual activity with massage workers, which is against LPD protocol. “Once probable cause has been established for a prostitution arrest, any further physical contact is deemed inappropriate,” according to Rollins.
As a result of the internal affairs investigation, three Lewisville officers were fired, one was demoted, and seven were suspended without pay. Additionally, “two employees were given counseling entries, which is not a form of discipline,” Rollins noted.
An All-Too-Common ScenarioÂ
What went down in Lewisville points to one of the many reasons why undercover prostitution stings by police officers are so wrong: They put police in a position to easily mistreat and assault sex workers.
Police are not universally prohibited from engaging in sexual conduct with suspected sex workers in order to arrest them, a situation that is in itself something in need of fixing. But a lot of departments do forbid undercover cops from such sexual activity. They’re supposed to elicit an offer of sexual services for money and then make an arrest.
All too often, however, we hear about pol
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