Seattle police’s newest tactic against prostitution on Aurora Avenue

A veteran Seattle police detective pulled hard to the left, then whipped right in a deft maneuver to position his unmarked SUV behind the cab of a semitruck, absent its trailer, in the Lowe’s parking lot on Aurora Avenue North. A young woman wearing black, thigh-high boots and a lace dress that didn’t quite cover her bottom walked over to talk to the driver.

It was a scene that plays out over and over again on Seattle’s long-running, pimp-controlled track, where male drivers shop for and negotiate paid sex with girls and women who turn all the money they make over to pimps and traffickers. Once a deal is struck, a woman gets into a man’s vehicle, and they drive off to have sex on some dark side street.

As part of a new operation, detectives assigned to the Seattle Police Department’s human trafficking unit — previously known as the vice and high-risk victims unit — began photographing the interactions between sex buyers and sellers last month and attaching the pictures to letters that are then sent to the registered owners of vehicles used in the illicit encounters.

When filled out, the letters notify registered owners that their vehicle was observed by detectives engaging in “suspected illegal sexual exploitation activity, more commonly known as soliciting or patronizing a prostitute” and include the vehicle’s license plate number, make and model as well as the date, time and location of the interaction. In attached photos, the women’s faces and any exposed private body parts are blurred.

The tactic isn’t meant to replace older strategies. Seattle police are still enforcing laws against prostitution.

They still conduct sting operations to arrest sex buyers, build criminal cases against pimps and traffickers and investigate assaults, rapes and robberies committed against girls and women involved in the sex trade along the Aurora corridor, from North 85th to North 145th streets.

They’re also responding to the gun violence and drug dealing that inevitably go hand in hand with prostitution.

The letter campaign is one more strategy police are using to try to deter “the entrenched trafficking” on Aurora, said Natalie Walton-Anderson, chief of public safety in the mayor’s office. The approach is endorsed as a best practice by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, she said.

Dozens of other jurisdictions across the country send out similar letters, according to a tally by Seattle officials. Police in San Francisco started a letter campaign last year, as did authorities in San Jose, Calif., in 2019.

“The letters are meant to deter sex buyers by taking away their anonymity. … This is behavior they don’t want publicized,” Walton-Anderson said.

Sting operations require up to 30 officers to safely pull off, and investigations into the crimes of promoting prostitution and interstate trafficking are time and labor-intensive, she said. The letters sent to the registered owners of the vehicles act as a “force multiplier” at a time when police personnel are still stretched thin.

Not a victimless crime

The 21 letters that were mailed last month, launching the six-month pilot project, are aimed at disrupting demand, preventing future conduct and increasing awareness that sex buyers are contributing to the abuse and trauma experienced by the teenage girls and young women who are paid for sex.

“I think what pains me the most is seeing an increase in underaged girls that are up there on Aurora,” Walton-Anderson said. “If not for payment for sex, this would be child rape.”

While the letters make clear that sexual exploitation is a crime punishable by up to 90 days in jail, a fine of up to $7,000 and that police are allowed to impound vehicles used in the commission of sexual exploitation, the registered owners aren’t being accused of a crime and won’t face criminal charges. Instead, the purpose of the letters is “to serve as a warning” that someone operating their vehicle was engaged in suspected sexual exploitation.

“Sexual exploitation is not a victimless crime. Women and girls (and sometimes boys, men and transgender individuals) involved in the sex trade on Aurora Avenue North are almost always the victims of criminal trafficking,” the letter says. “They are typically controlled by pimps and are not free to leave. Engaging in sexual exploitation supports this abuse.”

After working with prostitution victims and survivors for the past two decades through local nonprofits, Audrey Baedke recently began offering communication and intimacy coaching to men, advertising on the same websites where sex buyers go to troll for dates.

She said a study conducted 10 or 15 years ago found the top deterrent for sex buyers wasn’t the possibility of jail time or fines, which can often be kept private — it was friends or family members finding out what they were doing.

“I personally think this is a highly effective route to take,” Baedke said of the letters being sent out by Seattle police, noting the strategy has been successful in other cities. “It outs men who don’t want to be outed.”

She hears from men that even though prostitution is illegal, “nobody really cares and there’s just this general sense that there’s not going to be any consequences or repercussions for purchasing sex.”

But if men driving cars registered to someone else know a letter could potentially be sent to their partners, family or employers about their conduct, that might change things.

“I think it will be effective to change the narrative that you can buy sex and not have any consequences for it,” Baedke said. “From talking with sex buyers, when they learn the majority of people selling sex aren’t doing so by choice, it does make it harder for them to rationalize that it’s OK.”

Dark work”

The detective who pulled up behind the semitruck in the Lowe’s parking lot last Thursday wasn’t taking photos that night. Instead, he spent a couple hours driving around the area, pointing out to a reporter the vehicles and behaviors he and the two other detectives assigned to the human trafficking unit aim to capture on the two nights a month they dedicate to the letter operation.

“I guarantee that (license) plate on there is registered to a company — it ain’t registered to someone’s house,” the detective said of the semi.

The Seattle Times agreed not to photograph or name the detective because he works undercover.

He tried to launch the letter initiative in 2022 but said it fizzled. After police Chief Shon Barnes took over leadership of the department at the start of the year, the detective tried again, reaching out to the mayor’s and city attorney’s offices to get it going.

“What we were trying to do is find another tool to help stem this flow of persons who are shopping for persons that are exploited,” he said.

After making a couple passes up and down Aurora to see where girls and women were loitering, the detective parked outside a garage facing west on the northeast corner of Aurora and North 97th Street. He watched as a woman wearing white earmuffs and a skintight white bodysuit got into the passenger seat of a black pickup that pulled up outside an insurance office across the street before driving off.

A few minutes later, a man in a gray car pulled in front of the detective’s SUV and was seen moving a cooler and suit jacket from the front seat, making space for a woman wearing sky-high red stilettos. He looked old enough to be her grandfather.

“It’s a young person’s game,” the detective said. “The amount of juveniles out here has always been a significant issue and it continues to be.”

The bulk of the detective’s time is spent on investigations, with proactive police work, like the letter initiative, adding to an already heavy workload. Investigations can begin with 911 calls or patrol responses, calls from hospitals when women are brought in after being assaulted or raped, calls from schools and Child Protective Services, and tips phoned in to local and national tip lines, he said.

“All of this is dark work. It is a dark world,” he said of the sexual exploitation and violence inherent in prostitution. “All we can do is understand that we don’t control stopping this from happening.

Instead, the unit’s detectives focus on helping victims to escape the sex trade and building strong cases to send to prosecutors.

“It’s kind of like winning the battle without worrying about the war that rages around us,” the detective said.