On the heels of a Midtown sting operation that yielded 15 arrests, Atlanta police are responding to complaints from a Midtown residents’ association with a month- long crackdown on prostitution in the area. The likely targets of the sting will be male and transgender sex workers, according to the Atlanta Police Department.
“Our basic concern with the Midtown area is the transgender individuals and the hustlers, the male prostitutes,” Atlanta Police Department Vice Squad Investigator Orrick Curry told a July 10 meeting of the Midtown Ponce Security Alliance held at Mary Mac’s Tea Room.
Along with uniformed and undercover units, Orrick said that the APD would step up its enforcement of prostitution and vagrancy laws throughout the Midtown area for the next 30 days — concentrating on the areas between Ponce De Leon Avenue and Piedmont Park.
But without broad social change, transgender sex workers will continue to work the streets simply to survive, said Dee Dee Chamblee, executive director of LaGender Inc., a transgender education and advocacy group.
“It don’t ever occur to them that this is a human being who needs to eat, and earn a living, and find a place to sleep,” she said.
Because transgender men and women who adopt a sexual identity other than their birth sex face discrimination at school and the workplace, for at least some, sex work is often perceived as the only viable way to earn money, Chamblee said.
“When you do have the qualifications to get a job, you are not judged on the qualifications, you are judged on your appearance and that’s the end,” she said.
Curry told the MPSA that the effort to remove sex workers from Midtown’s residential neighborhoods will only apply a “band-aid” to the problem.
“It’s like a revolving door,” Curry said.
The problem persists, according to Curry, because current penalties and due process of law allow defendants to be released from jail by posting bond or serving short sentences. The maximum penalty for the charge of solicitation for illicit sex acts, a misdemeanor in Georgia, is 180 days in jail, he said.
MPSA President Peggy Denby said that Midtown residents who confront people they believe to be sex workers have faced retaliation and violence.
“It’s an awful problem. It’s been awful for the last 30 years,” she said.
The residents and the police described a scenario of harassment and vandalism from the sex workers that included finding evidence of public urination and the threat of violence as a byproduct of interfering with the illegal commercial trade.
“One thing we want you to know is when you’re dealing with transgender and male prostitutes, they are very strong. Most of them don’t want to go to jail and they will fight to the end,” Orrick warned the crowd, and urged concerned residents against direct confrontation with the sex workers.
Chamblee noted that prostitution is dangerous also to those involved in the trade, saying she has heard of participants as young as 13 who have contracted HIV. She advised residents who are troubled by the presence of sex workers in their neighborhoods to present an alternative.
“Have any of them offered any of the people jobs that are working over there?” she asked.
