Prostitution

Midway through a 90-minute meeting yesterday, Lottie Carroll, a tenant of a West Baltimore housing development, heard a list of concessions from the building's management that she never thought possible. The community and laundry room at the Harvey Johnson Towers will remain open three extra hours until 11 p.m. Trash collection will be Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, a switch from Tuesday and Thursday. The security system is being upgraded to include all-night monitoring, and a new company could begin rodent abatement as early as next week.

In a two-day operation that ended last night, police arrested 16 men for solicitation and 15 women for prostitution in West Baltimore and impounded several cars belonging to customers.One of the men arrested Wednesday night solicited a female police officer for sex while riding a 10-speed bicycle, which also was impounded.Western District Sgts. James Kelly and Michael Caperoon said the arrests were made at Baltimore and Schroeder streets last night and at North and Pennsylvania avenues Wednesday.

A plan by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to clean up Baltimore's sex-for-money trade by publishing the names and pictures of men convicted of solicitation has been stymied by legal roadblocks and few guilty findings in court.The state balked at distributing mug shots, fearing it would violate the rights of those arrested. So few men were convicted that publishing the names was hardly worthwhile. Such a list compiled of cases dating to October would contain two names."The police are out there arresting and doing their job," said Clinton R. Coleman, the mayor's spokesman.

Police arrest 17 on prostitution charges along Pulaski HighwayBaltimore police reported that a vice operation conducted with Baltimore County police along Pulaski Highway last night resulted in 17 arrests on prostitution charges.Sgt. Brian Matulonis of the city's Northeast District said undercover officers posed as prostitutes and customers, arresting men and women. The eight arrested in the county were taken to the White Marsh precinct, and the nine apprehended in the city went to the Central Booking and Intake Center.

City Wide Coalition mayoral candidate A. Robert Kaufman said yesterday that if elected he would introduce a bill to create a red-light district for prostitution in Baltimore.Kaufman, 68, a perennial candidate and community activist, railed against the city's futile attempts to combat prostitution by repeatedly arresting prostitutes and their johns. In a statement that he issued yesterday outside the Central Booking and Intake Center on East Madison Street, Kaufman said making prostitution legal in a section of the city would also help reduce Baltimore's high rate of venereal disease.

HARBIN, China -- During the era of Mao Tse-tung, the Communist Party earned widespread praise for practically shutting down China's flourishing prostitution industry. But with today's freer economy, the sex trade's back, and some Chinese officials would rather tax it than fight it.Since last year, at least 14 cities have begun taxing China's "san pei girls," young women who earn large sums for accompanying men in nightclubs and karaoke bars. For a higher fee, many of the women will sleep with their customers.

County police arrested 10 men in Laurel on Thursday on charges of soliciting for prostitution or lewd acts during a sting operation in which detectives posed as prostitutes.Police said they began the operation at Route 198 and Whiskey Bottom Road at 6: 30 p.m. in response to complaints from residents about prostitution.Prostitutes have routinely been a nuisance to residents near the intersection, where police have run frequent sting operations.Those charged with solicitation for prostitution were: Charles R. Dupont, 64, of the first block of S. Gill St. in Laurel; Ernest Seawright, 34, of the 13000 block of Larohdale Road in Laurel; Dean R. Hawes, 35, of the 20000 block of Rainsboro Drive in Ashburn, Va.; Paul W. Marsh, 42, of the 4200 block of 47th St. in Bladensburg; Eric W. Antwi, 32, of the 8800 block of Flowerstock Row in Columbia; and Randal K. Calloway, 29, of the 3400 block of Andrew Court in Laurel.

IT SEEMS as though Howard County is never going to get rid of sleazy massage parlors. The problem goes back at least a decade. There were raids twice in 1992 to shut down massage parlors and spas that were fronts for prostitution rings.By 1994, the County Council was ready to pass what it thought was a tough law regulating massage parlors. But three years later, it said the law wasn't tough enough and enacted a stronger one.Two massage parlor operators have filed suit in federal court against the law, alleging its prohibition against most massages by members of the opposite sex is unconstitutional.

DUBI, Czech Republic -- Along the busy E-55 highway near the German border here, travelers are treated to an up-close view of Central Europe's largest sex bazaar: Pairs of women in varying stages of undress slowly gyrate in the windows of specially built storefronts. Out on the street, dozens more brave winter temperatures in ultra-mini-skirts and low-cut blouses."Prostitution is the biggest problem our town faces," says Dubi Mayor Ilona Smitkova. "They've ruined the quality of life in this town.

County police are looking for a man in his 20s suspected of exposing himself to a 15-year-old girl Friday afternoon and trying to get her to touch his genitals as she walked through woods in Millersville.Police said the girl was in the 200 block of Nathan Court just before 3 p.m. when a man approached her from behind and asked whether she wanted to touch him.When she turned around, she said, he was exposing himself. She swung her purse at him, police said.The girl said the man grabbed her arms, but she struggled and broke free.

The Girlfriend Experience ** ( 2 STARS) The "back story" to the production of The Girlfriend Experience is more fascinating than the film itself. When they were working together on Ocean's Thirteen, director Steven Soderbergh told screenwriters David Levien and Brian Koppelman he didn't notice any hookers in their Las Vegas hotel bar. Levien said they were hard to peg because top-of-the-line prostitutes now offer the girlfriend experience. "It's the new thing," he explained. "[Y]ou're supposed to believe that they're there not just for the money, but because they want to be there."

A woman testified yesterday that a Harford County sheriff's deputy pushed her down a set of stairs after she had performed sexual acts at a bachelor party he was attending. Jeffery Gerres, 29, of Rising Sun, a member of the sheriff's office's violent street crimes unit, is charged with assaulting 47-year old Denise Lillian Rothwell, who alleged that Gerres knocked her down a set of stairs from behind. He also faces charges of allowing a person into a building for prostitution. Rothwell, who has been charged with prostitution twice before, testified in Baltimore District Court that she was approached Sept.

Baltimore police said they recently closed a "well-organized house of prostitution" in Upper Fells Point and a related residence in Butchers Hill, a community of well-kept rowhouses and close-knit residents. City prosecutors say it is apparently a case of human trafficking, involving Mexican women who arrived in Durham, N.C., and were transported to Baltimore to work as prostitutes. The rare city-level case, which moved this week to Baltimore Circuit Court, exposes a flourishing underground world of human sex trafficking that is often overlooked in a city with daily exposure to more conspicuous crimes such as robbery and gun violence, said Assistant State's Attorney Joyce Lombardi.

For the young women who dance in bars and clubs on The Block, Baltimore's adult entertainment district, life is a few days or weeks of cheap thrills, then years of drug addiction, abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, emotional torment and early death. Few newcomers realize the future that awaits them. As The Sun's Jonathan Bor reported last week in an article about the health risks faced by prostitutes, their odds of escaping it are vanishingly small. Mr. Bor's story focused on city public health workers' efforts to help dancers on The Block avoid HIV infection by giving them free condoms and clean needles.

Police have identified a woman whose body was found partially clothed near New Psalmist Baptist Church in Southwest Baltimore this month. Brenda Hatfield, 45, is one of several women found strangled in the past few months. Her body was discovered July 8 in the 4500 block of Old Frederick Road, police said. In addition to strangulation, police spokesman Troy Harris said yesterday that blunt force trauma was another cause of Hatfield's death. A sister of the victim said that despite a recent report in the Baltimore Examiner that Hatfield may have been involved in prostitution, her sister was not a prostitute.

State grant targets city prostitution The city state's attorney's office has been awarded a $71,000 state grant to hire a licensed social worker to help women charged in prostitution cases, the prosecutor's office announced. State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy said a common complaint at community meetings is how to deal with nuisance crimes, such as prostitutes who linger in front of homes and leave drug syringes and condoms littering residential streets. "There is no question that this type of crime has a direct and daily impact on our city's quality of life," Jessamy said in a statement.

Seven charged with prostitution offenses Six men and a woman were arrested in a pair of prostitution busts in Maryland City, Anne Arundel County police said. The stings on June 5 and June 6, which followed citizen complaints of prostitution in the area of Route 198 and Red Clay Road, had undercover officers pose as prostitutes and johns. The following men were charged with solicitation for prostitution: John J. Mullikin, 39, of Bowie; Jason A. Simmons, 32, of the 7600 block of E. Arbory Court in Laurel; Russell F. Brown Jr, 52, of the 8000 block of Long Branch Terrace in Glen Burnie; Robert Anthony Robinson, 28, of the 3300 block of Yellow Flower Road in Laurel; Richard D. Hackett, 37, of the 8700 block of Contee Road in Laurel; and Eric F. Sherman, 61, of the 9100 block of Gross Ave. in Laurel.

Anne Arundel County police have charged a 22-year-old West River woman with prostitution - and say charges are pending against her husband, who is accused of facilitating some of her rendezvous. Elizabeth Jeffers of the 5700 block of Muddy Creek Road was charged with engaging and soliciting prostitution after police say she advertised an escort service on Craigslist.org, which police said she operated with the help of her husband. A vice detective answered a posting on the Web site, where Jeffers reportedly used the name Ann. Officials say she instructed the detective to come to her home, where she offered him an erotic massage followed by a sex act of his choice for $170.

Why harass adults for sex transactions? Steve Chapman has it exactly right in his column about prostitution ("The real scandal is that it's illegal," Opinion Commentary, March 17). There would definitely be no space left in the country's jails if the anti-prostitution laws based on puritanism and hypocrisy were enforced against all practitioners of the sex trade (buyers and sellers alike). But why should they be? Why should adult, consenting buyers and sellers of sex be harassed in this way by an overly controlling, Big Brother government?

As the Eliot Spitzer-prostitution scandal followed a now-familiar script this week - hastily called news conference, terse apology to family and the public, stricken wife at his side - and ultimately culminated in his resignation yesterday, a nation inured to this kind of public drama had only one question left unanswered. What do you have to do to earn $5,500 an hour, the highest figure charged for the Emperor's Club women? And do you have to wear anything special? After podium appearances by the powerful to answer charges of gay sex, not-quite sex with interns and airport bathroom sex, we all know more than we need to know about the intimate lives of public officials - except that one important fact: Is it worth it?