LTC 079-2004 Prostitution Update CITY OF MIAMI BEACH
Office of the City Manager
Letter to Commission No.
To: Mayor David Dermer and Date: April 7, 2004
Members of the City Commission
From:
Subject:
Jorge M. Gonzalez\
City Manager
PROSTITUTION UPDATE
This Letter to the City Commission is to provide an update on the status of the Police
Department's efforts against prostitution in the City of Miami Beach.
Prostitution continues to be a plague on the streets of Miami Beach. In recent years an
attempt was made to address this situation by instituting the Prostitution Mapping program.
However, mapping program is only offered as a condition of probation and has resulted in
very few prostitutes being enrolled in the program.
The first sixty days of this year had 182 prostitution arrests with Saturday night, 2~28/04, a
joint prostitution detail making 54 misdemeanor arrests and 4 felony arrests. 34 of the
arrests were for soliciting prostitution and 4 known pimps were arrestedi The remaining
arrests were for obstructing traffic for solicitation of prostitution and various crimes. Another
prostitution detail was conducted on Friday night, 3/27/04 with Assistant State Attorneys
participating. This resulted in 27 arrests for prostitution.
Despite the high number of prostitutes being arrested, the problem continues. In an effort to
devise methods to combat this epidemic, a meeting was held on March 4, 2004 with the
State Attorney, Judge Slom, Commissioner Mat'ti Bower, City of Miami Commissioners, local
business owners and representatives from the Miami Beach, Miami, and Miami-Dade Police
Departments. Proposed solutions from this meeting include:
· Making the Mapping Program mandatory.
· Advising the State Attorney of the prostitute's criminal history at the bond hearing.
· Charging prostitutes as a felony if they have three or more prostitution arrests.
This group met again on April 1st with county judges. The judges were presented with the
prior histories of the most frequently arrested prostitutes. Many prostituteS had been in and
out of Miami-Dade County jail between 40 and 140 times. The mapping program was
reviewed with the judges and stiffer sentences were requested. Since this meeting, the
bond amounts issued to prostitutes have been much higher. Some of the Assistant State
Attorneys have also ridden with MBPD officers during the prostitution details and are now
much more familiar with the situation. Communication between the State Attorney's Office
and the Police Department has also improved greatly.
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