Crackdown Update

Well it's been 2 weeks since the election and 3 weeks since the last raid. And as I suspected, there's been nothing since then. Now that the dust has settled and local political jobs are safe for another couple years, the cops will go back to handing out parking tickets and eating donuts.

I hope.

Anyway, I checked in with my girlfriend who runs her business out in the burbs. Those raids 3 weeks ago scared the shit out of all her girls and it took a while to get everyone comfortable enough to come back to work. Luckily they seem to have escaped any unwanted attention. However, she now tells me that a local town is drafting a new ordinance targeting massage parlors.

It works like this... Basically it's requiring all the girls to be licensed and prove citizenship (which is just a rehashing of state law anyway). This citizenship bit obviously targets the AMPs. It also limits the hours of operation so any unlucky guys who absolutely positively need a massage at 1am will have to cross the border to Jersey (which I guess is fine if you don't mind your masseuse having 6 inch nails and being the color orange).

Normally, rules like this wouldn't affect places like The Business since our hiring paperwork is clean and our hours are not suspicious. BUT this new law will require the town to personally inspect each parlor for compliance. THAT is the clincher. It's really a golden key to get you unlimited access to any suspected parlor. I'll bet you money right now that most of the parlors around here wouldn't even be able to pass the cleanliness inspection, let alone the citizenship tests.

Needless to say, my friend is worried that these new laws will work their way to neighboring towns, including hers. I'm not too worried about it since this is probably just some bullshit publicity stunt leftover from the election. The town authorities probably had to write the law to fulfill all those campaign promises they made a month ago. At least with a police raid all you have to do is waste the cops time for a couple of days until you get your name in the papers for being tough on crime.

I had a similar discussion with a customer recently. He said my theory on crackdowns before an election was BS because there was a nationwide bust of a gang-run prostitution ring just AFTER the election. So why would the feds wait a few days to do their raids if it's so good for politics?

That's because if you're a local mayor/police chief/councilman/etc., the LAST thing you want is the feds stepping in and basically embarassing your local cops by doing their job for them. An FBI raid just shows that you have no control over crime in your town.

And how do I know all this you ask? Well, you gotta talk about something when your customer is a lawyer or a cop (or even a local politician!).

CJ