3 Men Accused Of Buying Sex Suing Police For Defamation

BELLEVUE, WA - Three men arrested in a 2016 prostitution sting in Bellevue are suing King County and Bellevue police for defamation, claiming officials exaggerated their crimes to satisfy a private foundation that provided a grant for the investigation.

In January 2016, Bellevue police and the King County County Sheriff's office arrested 14 men, accusing them of frequenting brothels in Bellevue. The men were also accused of running a website to rate and review their experiences with women at Eastside brothels. They referred to themselves as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and held regular meetups at local restaurants, according to police.

The plaintiffs, Keith Emmanuel, Richard Homchick, and Charles Peters, claim they were only charged with second-degree promoting prostitution during the sweep, called "Operation No Impunity." However, during press conferences and other public appearances, Bellevue Chief Steve Mylett, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, and former sheriff John Urquhart made statements that made it seem like the three men had engaged in crimes like rape and human trafficking, according to the suit.

Those statements were made, the suit alleges, to satisfy Demand Abolition, a Cambridge, Mass., foundation that had given the county a grant to investigate prostitution and arrest johns. Demand Abolition gave the prosecutor's office a $50,000 grant in 2014, according to the suit, and has continued to give grants each year since.

"Defendants have deliberately conflated that prostitution charge with human trafficking and sex slavery as part of a concerted plan to secure private funding by generating publicity and manipulating media coverage of the arrests," the suit claims.

To keep the grant, the prosecutor's office had to meet performance targets, according to the suit: increasing the arrests of johns by 50 percent, and reducing demand for prostitution by 20 percent over two years.

Police said that "Operation No Impunity" shut down two prostitution review websites with over 20,000 members. The "League" members allegedly bought sex from South Korean women who were brought to the U.S. to work as prostitutes to pay off mob debts, police have said.

Since the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" bust in 2016, Bellevue and King County have continued to work together to arrest johns. Over 100 men were arrested last September for patronizing local brothels. However, 61 of those arrests have been dismissed because police recorded some of the men without consent.

Read the whole lawsuit here:

Caption: Bellevue police at work on "Operation On Demand" in 2017. Bellevue police and the King County Sheriff's Office arrested over 100 men in September for soliciting prostitutionn. Sixty-one of those men had their charges dismissed in December because they were audio recorded without their consent.

Photo courtesy Bellevue police