Prostitution flies under the radar in Northwest Arkansas, attracting attention mostly when someone complains or related crimes catch a prosecutor’s eye. Police and prosecutors say a small but steady presence of the crime has always been found in the area, but a growing trend of online advertising makes the practice easier to track and monitor.
Monitoring activity is as simple as checking certain websites to see if the number of listings is up or down, said Lt. Derek Hudson of the Springdale Police Department’s Crime Suppression Unit.
“I don’t think we’ll ever be able to completely eliminate it, but with a little proactive work, we can put a pretty good clamp on it and try to keep it out of our city and the region as much as possible,” Hudson said.
Little formal research has been done on the community effects of prostitution, but there’s evidence it has some impact, said Bentonville Police Chief Jon Simpson.
“It’s worth focusing on because prostitution does more to degrade a community and encourage other crimes than many would expect,” he said. “At the very least, it’s bringing in some unsavory types who are setting up shop in the same hotels that visitors to the area are using.”
Who Are They?
Prostitutes generally fit a certain profile, although motivation and other factors seem to differ, according to police.
“They’re young, female and they’re in bad financial shape,” Simpson said. “They’re mostly doing it to survive, whether that means they’ve turned to it to make rent or a car payment, or for drug-related costs. Some of them have other means of support, but it’s generally low-paid.”
That profile fits prostitutes and other sex workers nationwide, said Cyndee Clay, executive director of Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that provides assistance to sex workers.
“For many of these women, they see their bodies as the last resource they can sell to raise the money they need, whether it’s to support a drug habit or to put food on the table for their kids,” Clay said.
Some old-school versions of prostitution — individual women hanging around truck stops, massage parlors offering sexual services and local operations that hide among legitimate escort services — still exist in Northwest Arkansas.
Those who answered calls to more than two dozen phone numbers listed on backpage.com’s escorts section and in local phone books under escort service headings all declined to be interviewed for this report.
Both prostitutes and their clients tend to be a mix of locals and out-of-towners, area law enforcement officials said. All but five of the 29 advertisements for Northwest Arkansas listed on backpage.com over four days in mid-October claimed to be from other places, only traveling through the area for a few days. Telephone numbers listed on the ads were mostly nonregional, with area codes indicating major metropolitan areas throughout the Midwest and mid-South. Only eight of the 29 ads reviewed in the four-day period included phone numbers with 479 area codes.
The majority of prostitutes appear to work alone, despite several arrests involving organized rings in recent years, said Lt. Jaime Fields, who heads the criminal investigation division at the Fayetteville Police Department.
Bentonville police were already watching a certain hotel room for possible prostitution in 2009 when Christopher Foster got in a fight with a woman, forcing her into his pickup over a pay dispute. The woman, when interviewed by police, told them Foster ran a ring of up to half a dozen prostitutes, arranging clients and rooms and taking a cut of the proceeds.
Foster was charged with promoting prostitution, aggravated assault and false imprisonment. Prosecutors leaned harder on the felony aggravated assault charge, which carried a stiffer sentence, said Stuart Curley, the deputy prosecutor who handled the case. Foster pleaded guilty to the assault charge. The prostitution charge was dropped as part of the plea agreement.
“The Foster incident made us think that maybe organized rings were more popular than we’d thought, but it appears to have been a relatively isolated incident,” Simpson said. “We do sometimes find the ladies have ties to one another, through friendships and such, but I think all the area agencies agree a lot of these girls are working alone.”
Prostitution rings operating under the guise of escort services often send a male driver out with women for protection and transportation, Hudson said.
“Being an escort is perfectly legal, and there are legitimate businesses out there. Having a guy along, or at least nearby and available, makes sense from safety and security standpoints,” Hudson said. “If it’s prostitution, though, the driver can be charged too, as can whoever took the phone call and set up the appointment, or anyone who’s aiding the girl.”
High-Tech Hookup
The growth sector of the business is found from online advertisements, where prostitutes post pictures and contact information to set up meetings in homes or hotel rooms. Area officers often look at backpage.com, a site known to accept ads for sexual services, Hudson said.
The website looks similar to Craigslist, a popular online classified advertising site. Both allow private parties and businesses to post everything from cars and real estate to job openings or pets for sale.
The “adult” section at backpage is where prostitutes post offers, officers said. Loose regulation of the site prompted 45 state attorneys general, including Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, to file a formal complaint with the website and parent company Village Voice Media, citing “ongoing failure to effectively limit prostitution and sexual trafficking activity on its website.”
“Pretty much everything we’ve ever worked on in the realm of prostitution has had an online component,” Simpson said. “We’ve never seen the streetwalker types in Bentonville, or anywhere in Northwest Arkansas to my knowledge. With the Internet so readily available, it seems to be the preferred method to market those services.”
Online advertising has made it easier for prostitutes to freelance rather than operate under someone else’s supervision, Clay said.
Backpage takes the problem seriously, said Carl Ferrer, vice president of sales and marketing.
“Backpage.com is committed to preventing those who are intent on misusing the site for illegal purposes. We have implemented a series of new safety enhancements over the past year to better protect our communities and will continue to further increase our safety practices,” Ferrer said in an emailed statement.
Charges And Stings
When prostitution does hit the radar screens of local law enforcement, it’s almost always based on tips or complaints, Fields said.
“Sometimes it’s a call about high traffic in and out of a particular house or hotel room that comes from neighbors or hotel management,” Fields said. “Other times, it’s a request to check on someone’s welfare, particularly children. Our callers may or may not suspect these things are prostitution-related, but often they indicate to us that they have that suspicion.”
In one case, a man who was unhappy about his service called to ask for a police officer to come out to his home and force a prostitute to refund his money, said Lowell Police Chief Joe Landers.
“That one was pretty clear-cut,” Landers said. “We actually thought the guy was nuts at first, but the officer found the situation was exactly what he described. He didn’t think she was any good, and he wanted his money back.”
The three most common charges — soliciting a prostitute, prostitution and promoting prostitution — are all misdemeanors, or minor crimes. The practice only rises to a felony when force is used or minors are involved.
Even a misdemeanor arrest for prostitution can cause major problems for women later on, Clay said.
“You wouldn’t believe the number of women who have been turned down for a job, or lost a job, because a prostitution charge showed up in their background check,” she said. “There’s a stigma attached to it that you don’t see with other minor charges.”
Often, prostitution and other crimes are related.
“The biggest majority of prostitution is dope-driven,” said Gary Ricker, Greenland police chief.
Hudson said drug investigations often uncover prostitution, or vice versa.
“Sometimes it spins off a drug arrest where we get some information. Other times, somebody arrested for prostitution charges has a drug problem, and we can try to track the suppliers,” he said.
Landers said prostitution operations and arrests have provided information that helped to solve burglaries and thefts. He always adds a prostitution charge, even if there are more serious crimes in play.
“It’s leverage for the prosecutors, and that’s a big help to them,” Landers said. “I’m sure it makes it look to some people like Lowell has more prostitution than other cities around, but I don’t think that’s the case.”
In Greenland, where prostitution calls are rare, most come from the Tobo’s Truck Stop along Interstate 540, but getting a charge to stick can be tricky, Ricker said.
“A trucker is more than willing to call in and report that he’s been solicited in the parking lot, but if you ask him to fill out a formal complaint, that means he has to be back here to appear in court in two or three months. They’re long gone by then, and just don’t want the hassle,” Ricker said. “If we arrest a girl, it’s going to be on outstanding warrants or drug possession or something, but probably not prostitution.”
An assistant manager at Tobo’s, who declined to give her name, said Friday that employees have seen no evidence of prostitution on the property.
Bigger Cases
Bentonville police also think prostitution may have been involved in a murder earlier this year. Huong Truong shot Minh Trinh on her front porch after he knocked on her front door repeatedly. Trinh had gone to the house after seeing an online advertisement for massage services, according to a probable cause affidavit. Truong admitted to police officers that she sometimes performed sexual services for clients she liked, and that she accepted money above the cost of the massage if it was offered, according to the affidavit. Trinh’s reason for being at Truong’s residence wasn’t determined, according to the affidavit.
Truong was charged with murder. The case is still pending.
In Washington County, police and prosecutors suspected prostitution was involved in a murder, but the prostitution angle was never pursued, said Matt Durrett chief deputy prosecutor. In a 2003 case, traveling salesman Clarence Spear ordered a stripper to perform at his Springdale hotel room, paying $200 for an hour, according to court documents.
“At that rate, we figure there was more than dancing going on, but couldn’t prove it,” Durrett said.
When the owner of the stripper service found out the $200 was counterfeit, she and a friend located Spear and kidnapped him at gunpoint. His body was found outside West Fork, where he’d been stabbed repeatedly and shot in the head. Both the service owner and her male companion were convicted of murder.
“That’s the only case I can think of in my 13 years here that involved prostitution. We’ve never had a pure felony-level prostitution case in that time,” Durrett said.
In 2007, several police agencies were investigating a series of escort services throughout Northwest Arkansas and southwest Missouri for prostitution and possible sex trafficking of minors. In addition to local and state police units, the U.S. Marshals and the Internal Revenue Service were also brought in, with the idea of tracking the financial transactions between the companies, prostitutes and clients.
Eventually, federal marshals arrested James Mitchell and Jason and Tiffney Fedele on seven federal counts, including coercion, enticement, aiding and abetting prostitution, conspiracy, money laundering and use of an interstate commerce facility to facilitate unlawful activity. All three pleaded guilty to several federal charges and are serving prison sentences.
“In short, we went after the money instead of the activity,” said Conner Eldridge, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas. “It’s often very effective to go after the proceeds of the crime rather than the crime itself, and it was a good way to prosecute Mr. Mitchell and his associates.”
“We always look at a variety of ways to prosecute, and this was the most advantageous way to go in the Mitchell case. Whenever criminal activity crosses state lines, it brings the possibility of federal charges into play on top of the state charges.”