NYPD targeting gay men, pro Dommes

New York City police are being accused of targeting gay men for false and/or entrapment-based arrests for prostitution/solicitation in the city's sex shops. From The Advocate:

The Gay City News reports that at least 27 men were arrested for prostitution in eight porn shops in Manhattan in 2008. Since 2004 there have been 52 such arrests in eight difference businesses.

According to a statement by [Coalition to Stop the Arrests], the arrest is usually set up so that an attractive younger officer is sent out to approach middle-aged gay men. The officer allegedly entices the man to have sex. If the man agrees, the undercover officer says he wanted to pay the man for sexual favors, and then, before the man can accept or reject the transaction, he is surrounded by police to make an arrest.

Simultaneously, the city is being criticized for targeting the lawful work of professional dominatrices, twisting the prostitution laws to apply to non-sexually-explicit conduct. The only judicial decision on the subject, from 1994, held that NYC's prostitution law doesn't cover BDSM activities that don't involve actual genital contact. Yet in a recent meeting with reps from the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, a prosecutor said that the city interprets the law expansively, based not on a limited set of acts but on "what is arousing to the participants." So, if spanking turns you on, paying someone to spank youis prostitution. This is questionable as a matter of the definition of "sexual conduct," not to mention policy and constitutional concerns. NCSF is currently planning a campaign to protest this policy.

I'm guessing from all this that NYC has finally run out of real crime to fight. Or maybe Bloomberg is hoping to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and try to spin a reputation as The Man Who Ran Sex Out of NYC into a losing, but highly entertaining, presidential bid.