By Hamed Aleaziz
San Francisco Chronicle
OAKLAND, Calif. — Bay Area johns have a new worry: finding their mug shots and charges posted online for all to see.
It’s a cyber scarlet letter with a punch, as 11 men found out in Richmond after they encountered undercover officers who posed as prostitutes Thursday afternoon while wearing hidden microphones along busy 23rd Street.
The officers snapped the men’s mug shots while booking them in the field, then posted the photos Friday to the police force’s Facebook page.
“We intend to use social media to highlight those individuals who engage in this exploitive, risky and unlawful conduct,” the post explained.
While john-shaming isn’t a new strategy, it has gained momentum in the Bay Area as police seek to fight prostitution and human trafficking. Oakland started a website in June titled “Enough” to shame both johns and pimps after they have been arrested and charged.
But the move has caught the attention of defense attorneys and some legal experts, who worry that defendants — who may ultimately be deemed innocent — could see their reputations disparaged along the way.
One of the men arrested Thursday in Richmond, 47-year-old Giovanni Avila of San Francisco, said Friday that he is innocent.
He said he was driving to get tacos when two women smiled and waved at him and his friend. He said he and the women talked about sex, but that he was just messing around.
“I really had no intention of hooking up with a prostitute,” he said.
Avila said the publicizing of the mug shots is unfair.
“They may catch some guys that do that every day, but then again, they might catch another guy that was not planning on doing that and never has done that before,” he said. “I think it’s an invasion of privacy. That could hurt some people’s lives and way of living.”
Police officials in Oakland and Richmond said they hope the online posts will act as a deterrent, cutting down the customer base that drives prostitution, while showing residents that police are working hard on the problem.
‘The Embarrassment Card’
“It’s a way of using the embarrassment card,” said police Lt. Kevin Wiley, who helped create Oakland’s website. “It can attack an individual’s reputation. They are engaging in crimes that are beneath the surface, off the radar, a dirty little secret, (and) we expose that secret.
“It’s not an innocent act,” Wiley said. “No more of that good-old-boy mind-set.”
The Oakland website, inspired by a similar program in Fresno, states that individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The plan is to update it with new photos of alleged johns and pimps about every two weeks.
In Richmond, police plan to use Facebook and Twitter to post mug shots and arrest information for alleged johns caught in stings like the one on Thursday.
“People need to learn from others’ mistakes,” said Richmond police Capt. Mark Gagan. “They need to get wrapped around the reality that picking up prostitutes could have your photo on Facebook in three hours, having to explain to everyone what you are doing.”
Both departments said they will take down the photos of alleged johns if charges are dropped or defeated.
But some defense lawyers and other opponents of john-shaming said that, by then, the damage is done. Being exposed so publicly can be a bigger punishment than a conviction for soliciting a prostitute, which rarely results in jail time.
“My major concern is that they are posting pictures of persons who have just been arrested and charged, not convicted. There could certainly be some innocent persons in the group,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former federal prosecutor.
Potential For Stigma
“The disclaimer that these individuals are ‘presumed innocent’ may not be enough to prevent these individuals from being unfairly stigmatized,” she said.
Shaming is a powerful force on social media, as one Bay Area man learned in June. After he allegedly picked up a prostitute in Oakland two months earlier, the man’s name and photo were posted on the city’s “Enough” Web page.
Soon, the news spread. Someone who found the alleged john’s Facebook page festooned it with information about the bust and scolded: “You have a baby ... shameful being arrested for prostitution.”
John-shaming has been around for a while, in a variety of forms.
Ed Koch’s ‘John Hour’
In the late 1970s, New York City Mayor Ed Koch once did a “John Hour” on public radio, reading the names of convicts over the air, recalled Michael Shively, a senior associate at public policy firm Abt Associates.
The Massachusetts firm has done research for the government on prostitution and sex trafficking for the past decade.
Many police departments, including Richmond and Oakland, have sent “Dear John” letters to addresses registered to cars that frequent locations known for prostitution. Some cities have publicized alleged johns on billboards.
But letters and even signs are different than a page on a website or a post on Facebook, which can be more lasting, said San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi.
“What happens when charges are dismissed or acquitted? Will their mug shots live on in a Google cache for years, only to be discovered by neighbors, employers and family members years later?” he asked.
“Once information is made available on the Internet, it is captured and recaptured, so it is never erasable.
“Even if they’re not guilty,” Adachi said, “they are sentenced to a lifetime of embarrassment.”
Levenson said some research indicates that shaming criminals can backfire. “Rather than encouraging offenders to change their ways,” she said, “offenders become angrier and engage in even more criminal behavior.”
Shively said john-shaming has not been scientifically studied to see if it lowers rates of prostitution. But he said evidence suggests the tactic is potent.
“When police are asked what johns are most concerned about when first arrested, it’s rarely ‘What will the fine be?’ ” he said.
Instead, he said, men busted for hiring prostitutes are concerned about whether their wife, girlfriend or employer will find out — or if they’ll be exposed online or in the newspaper.
“This is the anecdotal evidence,” he said, “and it squares with the research on how social censure can deter crime.”
Copyright 2014 the San Francisco Chronicle