Dear Fellow Illegal Activity Participants:
Yesterday the Austin Statesman put up a story “Increased enforcement against human trafficking planned during F1”
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/c...king-pl/nS6d8/
“At a regular meeting of the Austin Public Safety Commission this week, (Austin Police Commander) Baker said the human trafficking unit will focus its operations on preventing forced prostitution and on identifying and assisting minors exploited through the commercial sex trade. The department also will implement an advertisement campaign on Capitol Metro buses to educate residents on how to detect and report possible sex trafficking cases.”
The news that APD has a “human trafficking unit” is interesting. One wonder how its objectives and tactics differ from those of old fashioned “Vice Squad”. The story says , “Human trafficking investigators in Austin work about 15 trafficking cases a year where children have been sexually exploited through the commercial sex trade...” before going on to focus on last year’s Super Bowl Game in D/FW/
“In preparation for the 2011 game in Arlington, 17 local, state and federal agencies in North Texas participated in a joint effort to tackle security concerns, including an expected surge in sex trafficking and prostitution of children. The North Texas Trafficking Task Force
initiative resulted in 133 arrests; eight were human trafficking cases, four involved minors, and the majority of the rest were related to prostitution.”
That is not very encouraging as far as laser-like focus on “human trafficking” as opposed to “busting whores” like usual. The relevant point is that APD has not in the recent past seemed to have allocated much energy to attacking sex work that is not taking place on the street to the detriment of the involved neighborhoods. We do not want to see them start to do so.
The point is that the anti-sex work people, who, IMHO, are also general purpose anti-sex people, increasingly are attempting to invoke the specter of “human trafficking” as an excuse to attack any and all commercial sex. That is, they are attempting to conflate all sex work with “trafficking”. Many reasonable people who would agree that what “consenting adults do in private” is not the government’s business are so troubled by the idea of “trafficking” that they are apt to endorse anything billed as an attack on such “trafficking” without looking at the details, including the anti-sex and anti-any and all sex work fervor of the people pushing this.
Those appear to include an unholy alliance of the ultra religious and feminist extremists who operate from the unstated premise is that men should keep their filthy sexuality to themselves or amongst themselves. That is not an attack on feminism is general, btw, since all women who do not hate themselves for not being men are necessarily practical feminists. Reasonable feminists concede that women have the right to negotiate the kind of relationship they want to have with men, difficult as it may be to get a mutually beneficial arrangement going for more than an hour or two. Extremists are not willing to trust other women to seek their own best interest and want to write the extremist’s preferences into law and policy. Without admitting what they are doing, of course.
As to what to do about it: in the short run paying attention and being careful during Race Weekend is about the only option. In the longer run sifting through the City’s website for the the Public Safety Commission
http://austintexas.gov/cityclerk/boa...tings/41_1.htm
and the APD would be a place to start. The patience of Job is a requirement for that. Anyone willing to attend some of the meetings will need an ass of iron as well since they cover everything from dog bites to wildfires.
From the Statesman: APD prepares for the Race Weekend
