Law Shielding Michigan Cops In Sex With Prostitutes On Way Out

LANSING, MI — An odd Michigan law that allows undercover police officers to have sex with prostitutes in the course of an investigation may be on the way out. The state Senate Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to ax the provision in a bill, which now goes to the full chamber for consideration.

Michigan is the only U.S. state that looks the other way if police have sex with prostitutes during sex trafficking investigations. Michigan has one of the highest sex-trafficking rates in the country, according to data from the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. The exemption for police compounds the problem because prostitutes often are victims of the sex trade, experts say.

The law granting police immunity from prosecution for soliciting or a similar crime wasn’t used much, if it all, but advocacy groups working to stem human trafficking were irked that it remained on Michigan’s books while other states phased out immunity clauses. Hawaii was one of the last to ax its law in 2014 over concern that police were abusing it.

The Michigan bill’s sponsor, Sen. Judy Emmons, a Sheridan Republican, said it’s time for Michigan to shed its “dubious distinction” as the last holdout among states shielding police from sex charges.

“This is as succinctly written as anyone could make it,” Emmons told the Detroit Free Press. “ It eliminates the opportunity for those in undercover law enforcement to engage in sexual intercourse with someone they’re investigating.”

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Sen. Rick Jones, a Grand Ledge Republican and former county sheriff who now chairs the Senate panel, said “no modern-day police department would ever allow this.”

University of Michigan law professor Bridgette Carr, who works with the university's Human Trafficking clinic, has said that national debate over Hawaii’s vote three years ago put Michigan’s exemption on her radar. She tried unsuccessfully to get the law turned back, but without success. Michigan lawmakers added the exemption to the penal code in 1931.

“The reason the law is structured the way it is is because of the way the prostitution laws are written,” Carr told Michigan Radio in February. “So for law enforcement to have any power to investigate with immunity, they got all the power. And no one thought to go back and carve out a prohibition against sexual intercourse.”

Carr said her research showed the exemption isn’t widely used by cops and prosecutors, but some question why changing the law is necessary.

“What I do know from my own clients is that people who either say they are cops, who are cops or who are impersonating cops, know about this exemption and threaten my clients with it sometimes,” she told Michigan Radio. “It’s not rampant, but it happens. And I think it says something about us as a community that we would allow this type of exemption for law enforcement, whether it’s used very often or not.”

Emmons thinks it would be difficult for anyone to argue against her proposed bill, even though legislators must have “thought there was a need” for it decades ago, she told the Free Press.

The proposed legislation, SB 275, is part of the Legislature’s effort to protect human trafficking victims. Rep. Gary Glenn, a Midland Republican, is sponsoring a similar in the Michigan House of Representatives, where it hasn’t yet had a hearing.

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images News/Getty Images