Driving Out Prostitution, With a Law to Seize Cars
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On a back street in Connecticut’s largest city, potential customers are gazing out the windows of their cars, trying to decide whether to make a deal for sex with the women standing provocatively on opposite corners. It doesn’t take long for the driver of a long, silver vehicle to offer one woman $10 for sex. But within seconds, vice unit police officers, sitting in unmarked cars a short distance away, descend on the scene to arrest the man and confiscate his car. The suspect had little chance of knowing that the person he offered the money to was a police decoy wearing a one-way radio so vice unit colleagues could listen. And he had little chance of knowing that he might never get his car back. Along with a half dozen others, the man was among the first arrested in Bridgeport under a new state law that went into effect Oct. 1 allowing the police to seize vehicles from people who patronize prostitutes from their cars. A similar law last year — based on one that has been used in Portland, Ore., since 1989 — was ruled unconstitutional a short time later by a Hartford Superior Court judge because cars were being seized prior to convictions. Changes to Law More : query.nytimes.com |