Sex acts could be discussed, Officer Aric Barker testified, but “they weren’t to receive anything other than a massage.”
They sent in an undercover officer to solicit a sex act - but he was told no sexual touching could happen, according to preliminary hearing testimony. They talked to men who admitted they had paid for sex acts. The nonprofit also urges police to focus on investigating a criminal network as a whole, instead of prosecuting individual workers on low-level prostitution charges.īountiful police took that general approach in 2016, when they targeted a woman who owned a massage business there - and also owned the Midvale shop where the Unified officer would be touched two years later.īountiful officers set up security cameras at a nearby company to document who was coming in and out of her business. The nonprofit says the best way for officials to deal with these companies is by gathering evidence to revoke their business licenses. It estimates that they rake in a combined $2.5 billion a year. Polaris Project, a national nonprofit that focuses on human trafficking, estimates there are more than 9,000 massage businesses nationwide whose workers also engage in sex acts. “You, in fact, committed the crime and then arrested the other person for that crime.” A different focus “There is no bone in my body that says that is the right thing to do,” said Chris Burbank, a former Salt Lake City police chief who now works with the Center of Policing Equity.
They say it also ignores that many of these employees are doing sex work because they have been trafficked. Some experts say tactics like this are outdated, inappropriate and, often, not necessary to prove a criminal case in Utah. It’s necessary, they say, to show that the employees are engaged in sex acts because it can be difficult to communicate with workers who do not speak fluent English. Unified police officials say this was not unusual about half of their undercover operations targeting so-called massage parlors involve the masseuse touching an officer’s genitals before an arrest is made.