U.S. Judge’s Plan To Combat Prostitution

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31764, 22 August 1968, Page 8

U.S. Judge’s Plan To Combat Prostitution

,(N.Z PA.-Reuter—Copyright)

SAN FRANCISCO, August 20.

A senior Judge tonight advocated the use of mini-skirted policewomen draped in leather coats to help clean up San Francisco’s rampant prostitution problem.

Glamorous .policewomen should act as decoys to catch the prostitutes’ customers the presiding municipal judge, Judge Fitzgerald Ames, told San Francisco’s grand jury. He said the large-scale arrests of male customers would be just as effective in resolving the city’s vice problem as the arrest of the prostitutes themselves.

The judge proposed that

the undercover policewoman would flaunt herself on a lighted street corner, smile as a man made a proposition to her for money, Uien whip out a police revolver and badge-of-office from her handbag, and make the arrest. Bu f a police spokesman seemed apprehensive about the plan. ‘‘Most of our policewomen are middle-aged and not swinging types,” he said. “We’ll have to think about this.”

The jury, a non-judicial inquiry body whose findings are often implemented, had called on Judge Ames to explain the leniency of sentences against the city’s prostitutes. He argued that police evidence was usually too weak.