“You put me on that registry, and my life is over.” said one consensual sex worker who spoke out against a bill that would create a registry of pimps and johns. When a bill receives opposition from those it is supposed to “protect”, you know there’s something wrong.
Yesterday, when the bill (sponsored by Lauren Book, of course), passed the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, it was not without opposition.
The sexual exploitation of women and children is unquestionably something that needs to be stopped. Nobody will argue with that premise. But the idea of creating a registry of people who use the services of prostitutes is a bad one. Like the sex offender registry, it’ll do nothing to stop “the oldest profession” and will catch in it’s net mostly poor schlubs who hire an escort (or a cop pretending to be an escort) and not people actually imprisoning children to work as sex slaves.
In addition to the useless registry, the bill proposes to train hotel workers “on how to recognize and report human trafficking to law enforcement” and also fine Hotel operators $1000 a day for not participating. Right! So now you’ll have housekeepers calling the cops on dads who take their kids on vacation because they are suddenly “trained” investigators of human trafficking. Oh, and this “training” would be run by none other than the Department of Children and Families! So now DCF will have one more thing to add to the pile of things they can’t do competently.
Maybe instead of wasting money on training bellhops to be SVU detectives and making the line of shame at the registration office even longer, we can invest the money into actual law enforcement?
It has not yet been decided whether the registry would be made public or private. If it passes, I certainly hope it’s made public, along with a DUI registry, domestic violence registry and animal abuser registry. This way we can try to get on all of them! I know it’ll do nothing to prevent crime, but hopefully it’ll drive down the search results under our names so we have a chance to get a job!
We encourage our members to call their legislators and tell them what they think of Senate Bill 540/ House Bill 851. You can find your legislator here: https://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/
You can watch the video here:
http://flsenate.gov/media/VideoPlayer?EventID=2443575804_2019021175
This bill, when it becomes law, will essentially deputize hotel and motel workers. I fully expect every registered citizen who stays at a hotel or motel to be reported as sex traffickers, even if they are alone.
There is a much more dangerous bill that has just been introduced that would essentially prevent registered citizens from being self-employed and from working almost everywhere, HB 985:
http://flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2019/00985
A person who has been convicted of a violation of s. 794.011, s. 800.04, s. 827.071, s. 847.0135(5), or s. 847.0145, in which the victim of the offense was less than 16 years of age, may not perform any unsupervised remunerated or voluntary work at any dwelling unit, premises, school, child care facility, park, or playground.
(2) “Dwelling unit” means:
(a) A structure or part of a structure that is rented for use as a home, residence, or sleeping place by one person or by two or more persons who maintain a common household.
(b) A mobile home rented by a tenant.
(c) A structure or part of a structure that is furnished, with or without rent, as an incident of employment for use as a home, residence, or sleeping place by one or more persons.
5) “Premises” means a dwelling unit and the structure of which it is a part and a mobile home lot and the appurtenant facilities and grounds, areas, facilities, and property held out for the use of tenants generally.
Wonder how many in the legislature and governor’s office would end up on such a registry if enacted and uniformly enforced (a pipe dream in and of itself, I know). Or foreign dignitaries. Or professional athletes.
Why not add those who visit strip clubs? Never been to Miami, but most TV stereotypes it as a big sexpot. It seems every other building in Tampa is a strip club. Surely, some prostitution happens in them.
Citizens of the People’s Republic of Florida, bow down to your masters.
Yep, even a guy like Robert Kraft, owner of the Patriots, may now end up on such a registry after his Jupiter, Florida arrest (wonder if he had just been to Mar-a-Lago about that time).
I can image the all the wrongful lawsuits happen against Hotel and Motel owners. How about the right to privacy? Gonna train employees when yet Law Enforcement who are trained and those in power are corrupt. I feel for you in Florida that it is time to March on Tallahassee and have her removed from office. There gotta be some law that Lauren is breaking that using her office as Vigilante platform
When is it ever going to end? Probably never!! It just keeps getting worse as each day passes by. As has been stated many times before about the registry, where is the prevention of crime when it isn’t the ones on the registry committing the crimes. the technical violations, something forgotten or overlooked and you can be imprisoned for possibly the rest of your life. Those are the only crimes that are committed by registrants. It is a sad state of affairs.
Soon on top of trying to live now everyone will have to soon be on some kind of registery like being a certain age to register to vote registery for military draft get real senator lauren stand up to your dad and sheriff grady there other real important laws to pass and spend taxpayer money we live in usa u standing for united all together not florida of its own
What a crazy world we live in, what will they think of next? All the arms law wants is to drum up a way to make more money, collect more brownie points and, when I stop to think about it, I believe that the drive to destroy lives is beyond explanation.