“A female rubbing her breasts on an officer is not something we seek out.”

The above quotation comes from Julian Bernal, deputy chief of the Narcotics and Vice Division of the Dallas Police Department, after word got out about two officers who enjoyed their undercover assignments just a little too much.

The Observer featured the story about the May sting-operation-gone-wrong just last week, in an article entitled “Blue Balled.” Two vice officers from the Dallas Police Department are awaiting disciplinary action after receiving massages from women working in the Acapulco Spa off of Harry Hines and Northwest Highway.

Reporter Matt Pulle wrote, “According to prosecution reports, the women were allowed to rub their breasts on the officers’ backs, grab their penises and begin oral sex before the officers arrested them.” This quote highlights the physical reality between the officers and their potential collars: Vice needed the women to talk about having sex for money and to take money from the officers on site, but those officers went many steps further, letting the women put the men’s penises into their mouths before arresting them. As former city of Dallas attorney Robin Berry said, “Once the offer is made, you’ve made your case. There is no reason to get a hand job.”

So, it turns out The Daily Campus is not the only place you can read about prostitution in Dallas. Nor is it the only place where you can read about the abuse of power in prostitution in Dallas.

In political theory about prostitution, there are three camps: those for abolition, those for decriminalization and those for legalization.

Abolition is the repeal by law of paid sex. Decriminalization is the repeal of laws criminalizing paid sex.

Legalization is a middle ground: the employment of regulations to control paid sex. These controls may include registration, zoning and mandatory health examinations.

The United States’ approach is abolition, while the Netherlands’ is legalization. In the United States, a prostitute, her pimp and her customer are all committing a crime and could, in theory, be prosecuted. In the Netherlands, the only person in that three-way relationship who commits a crime is the pimp, as per the change in legislation of October 2000 that we wrote about in previous articles.

The problems with each of these approaches are manifold.

In the United States, though all three participants are committing a crime, it is almost always the prostitute who is arrested. The men who pay for sex are frequently not present or, if they are, they get off because it cannot be proven they would have engaged in the act. And prostitutes very rarely disclose their pimps’ identities, in order to stay out of physical danger.

In the Netherlands, despite what has been championed as a transparent and approachable situation, women who work under oppressive pimps and in unsafe conditions – not unlike those in the Acapulco Spa here in Dallas – are hidden away where police cannot find them or even know they exist.

Because the United States’ approach to prostitution is most common throughout the world, we are led to the question: What if prostitution were legalized and controlled here in the United States the same way it is in the Netherlands?

If prostitution were legal here in Dallas, those women in the Acapulco Spa would not be committing a crime just by selling sex for money.

The officers who gave into their desires would also not be committing a crime. That takes care of the prostitute and the customer. Where’s the pimp?

Stephen McPherson, a 37-year-old Frisco resident, owned Acapulco Spa and pressured the women to flip massages into sex acts in exchange for money.

McPherson’s tricks to keep an eye on his girls – surveillance cameras in every massage room – caught the two vice officers in the act, and those tricks are now keeping him from being punished.

“In August, a grand jury declined to indict McPherson, despite the mountain of evidence officers had accumulated,” Matt Pulle wrote. “Julian Bernal – explains it was hard to obtain an indictment while the internal affairs investigation was looking into the behavior of the arresting officers.”

Though McPherson’s case may be reopened, it is likely he will never serve time. If Dallas’ laws allowed prostitution in the same way as the Netherlands, these two officers’ actions would not be illegal – immoral is another question, and not one for the state to answer – and McPherson would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for compelling prostitution. McPherson would be tried as a trafficker.

However, if Dallas’ laws were like those in the Netherlands, the police may never have known about McPherson’s business in the first place. Would their ability to check out the situation have given them the information they needed to recognize trafficking?

There is evidence in the Netherlands that many of the women working the windows – standing right out in front of the public – are held against their will, despite the police’s ability to check up on them, under the legalized approach.

So, does either approach work at all? Is one any better than the other?

In our next and final article, we will discuss the non-legal side of the debate between legalization and decriminalization. We will investigate the importance of prostitutes’ personal experiences – choice, stigma, injustice, advantages, pleasure, and pain – which can never be fully understood in terms of the law. Do these personal issues change the answers to our questions?

Mallory Harwood and Heather Neale studied and researched prostitution in Amsterdam for five weeks under the Richter International Fellowship, sponsored by the University Honors Program.This series will run every Tuesday and Wednesday.