On Sept. 29, 2004, Metro Police officer Steve Ray listened in on two people having sex. One was a confidential informant under his close supervision, the other, a suspected prostitute at the Executive Club, an adult business on downtown's fringes. For more than three years, Metro vice officers have been using paid confidential informants (CIs) to meet with prostitutes and document illegal activity. Typically, the CI will flirt with the prostitute and head to a private room. Once the woman agrees to provide oral sex, masturbation or intercourse for cash, the CI, equipped with a hidden recording device, will devise an excuse to leave. Sometimes, an officer listening in will call him on his cell phone, providing the CI with the perfect pretext for excusing himself before the two engage in illegal sexual activity.
But for whatever reason, Ray never gave his CI a handy excuse to leave the Executive Club. And his CI wasn't exactly quick to take leave with his own alibi. According to a transcript of the CI's many sordid activities, embedded in dozens of court papers filed against the Executive Club, the CI had a spirited sexual encounter that night with a black woman who called herself "Tasty." Within minutes of meeting, she agreed to provide a "V.I.P." for $100, then asked for another $20 to rent a room. The CI then asked the woman if she was "gonna play with that thing," and she agreed.
In dozens of similar encounters, the CI in such a situation leaves the business before anything happens, given that he's already accumulated the evidence he needs. But in this case, the CI allowed the woman to perform what the police rather clinically call manual masturbation. In fact, he encouraged her, telling the woman to "rub that dick, baby. Go girl!... Stroke that dick, baby." Soon, the CI's beeper goes off, but he doesn't answer it. "Fuck it," he tells the woman, who prolongs the act as he continues to encourage her. Then, she asks him, "You want me to do extra?"
"Hell, yeah," he replies. She then resumes the sex act, much to what the transcript makes explicitly clear is his delight.
So why didn't the CI stop before any illegal sexual activity occurred? And why did he then agree for her to "do extra?"
With the full knowledge of the Metro Legal Department, the police department has used confidential informants to help build public nuisance cases against nearly 40 adult businesses since 2001. Nearly all of these establishments have closed their doors, to the great applause of city leaders, business owners and residents. But police experts say that the use of CIs in this manner is risky and unusual, if not flat-out wrong. And even though most of the time the CIs don't engage in sex acts with prostitutes, the Scene reviewed many affidavits in which the informants make clear that they did receive oral sex, hand jobs and other sexual favors in exchange for cash. (These informants are paid for their services and almost always have a police record themselves.)
Assistant Police Chief Steve Anderson, who oversees police investigations, defends the practice, saying that many of these adult business proprietors are quick to spot undercover officers. They coach their employees to avoid incriminating language and conduct before sex. Sometimes, they'll speak in coded phrases that they might later claim were misinterpreted. Finally, to establish a pattern of illegal activity, the same CI might need to return to an establishment, and it helps if he has some sort of credibility with the people who run the place. That's why it's necessary, on occasion, for CIs to complete the sex act, Anderson says.
"A premature departure from the business would alert management that an investigation is in progress and impede the course of the investigation," he says. "While the informants are encouraged to limit their activities once inside the designated area, at that point they are beyond the direct control of the police department and must make their own decisions on a case-by-case basis."
Still, in many of the cases the Scene reviewed, Metro vice officers were directly supervising CIs engaging in sexual acts with prostitutes—long after a pattern of prostitution had been established. In September 2003, Metro vice officer Thomas Rollins began sending CIs equipped with hidden recording devices to Tiara's, on Eighth Avenue South, a once-thriving thoroughfare of sleazy adult businesses. On the first supervised trip, the CI rubbed his hands on a dancer's breast and vagina after paying $30 for a private dance. He then paid her an additional $10 for a hand job. On a second and third trip, the CI continued to engage in the same sorts of sexual activities in exchange for cash. By the fourth visit, the establishment had changed its name to the New Club Mirage, but everything else was the same. In this instance, a CI paid a woman known as "Black Sis" for manual masturbation.
Then, on Feb. 19, 2004, with Rollins listening in from another location, the CI again met up with "Black Sis." This was the fifth time Rollins has dispatched a confidential informant to the same establishment. In this visit, for $100, Black Sis removed all of her clothing, gave the CI a hand job and performed oral sex. They then had vaginal intercourse. That concluded vice's investigation of the Eighth Avenue business.
Commenting about the CI's trip to the Mirage, police department spokesperson Don Aaron says that not all visits can be carefully orchestrated. "There are times when the woman is very fast in beginning sexual contact with these informants," he says. "In some situations, the CIs are able to artfully stop the act in progress. In other situations, they cannot."
Police experts contacted by the Scene were surprised that the Metro Police Department would allow confidential informants to engage in sexual acts with prostitutes. "I think when the CI actually engages in a sex act, that's wrong," says Edward Mamet, a former captain of detectives for the New York City Police Department who has 40 years' experience. "If I were the chief, I'd be against that. I don't think this level of crime demands this level of compromise."
Mamet says that relying on CIs for investigative work is fraught with potential problems and should be used with great discretion. "There's a great risk using CIs for anything because you don't know what their motives are," he says. "It could be money, revenge or just getting off on their actions. If you don't control them tightly, you could have major problems."
He adds, though, that while he's not comfortable with Metro's use of CIs, he's not willing to say that it should be totally banned.
Other experts are even more critical.
"I would ban the practice," says Charles Key, a former operations commanding officer with the Baltimore Police Department. "I would not have a police-controlled informant engaging in sexual acts with a prostitute. You can't have an agent of the police violating the law."
"If the CIs are engaging in a sexual act, that's not proper," adds John Sullivan, a former chief of detectives for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. "It's a risky practice for a police department, there's no doubt about it."
But both the Metro Police Department and Metro Legal Department insist that the use of CIs, even in this manner, is the only way to fight prostitution. "I don't see how you can show that a business is engaged in prostitution without using CIs," says Metro Legal Director Karl Dean, who adds that Metro's use of informants has never been successfully challenged in court. "Some businesses will ask a person to disrobe entirely before conducting any transaction."
But, as Key points out, the police department has been successful having cases prosecuted without resorting to such methods. "For the majority of their cases, they don't do it," Key says. "So why do they need to do it at all?"
