America's Most Dangerous City Makes Life More Dangerous for Johns, Prostitutes

Flint city officials have engineered a new social media campaign aimed at scaring johns and prostitutes away from one of the nation’s most dangerous small cities.

They’re borrowing from similar initiatives in Fresno, CA, and Dayton, OH, two cities that created websites to display the names and photos of suspects who have been arrested and charged with prostitution crimes.

Flint officials are raising the stakes and plan to use the search-friendly and well-trafficked Facebook platform, The Flint Journal/MLive reports. On Monday, Flint Police Chief James Tolbert said photos of prostitutes and those who solicit them will be posted on the police department’s Facebook page as a deterrent.

“When we look at ways in which to curb this type of activity, being a visible presence and simply making the arrests isn’t enough of a deterrent,” Tolbert said. “What we believe will be effective is the notification to the public which may have other repercussions for offenders who are engaged in a crime that is secretive by nature.”

The social media campaign is the latest in Flint’s ongoing war against prostitution. It builds on an apparently citizen-administered Facebook page set up in 2011 to encourage residents who witness solicitation to snap photos of suspected johns’ license plate numbers and other suspicious activity, and then post them on the page.

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Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton, a member of Attorney General Bill Schuette’s anti-human trafficking task force, said a more comprehensive approach is needed. The task force is seeking tougher charges for soliciting prostitutes, currently a misdemeanor offense. The task force is recommending solicitation be made a five-year felony.

Prostitutes are often victims themselves, Leyton said, and have may been forced into the livelihood by drug dealers or may beheld by organized human trafficking operations.

“No woman chooses to become a prostitute just because,” Leyton said.

In August 2013, two women and a man who had reportedly been held at a Burton motel and forced into prostitution for three days to repay their heroin debts escaped, setting off an investigation that resulted in human trafficking, prostitution and related charges against a 24-year-old Flint man, 37-year-old Detroit woman and her 18-year-old son, NBC News reported.

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