San Jose: New police portal lets residents quietly report suspected ‘johns’

SAN JOSE — Looking to drive down prostitution and human trafficking in the city’s “most vulnerable neighborhoods,” the San Jose Police Department has launched an online portal that lets residents quietly report people they suspect of soliciting sex work near their homes and businesses.

The “Report John Program” takes inspiration from ReportJohn.org, a community-initiated website that started in Oakland and is now used in several Bay Area cities.

“What I’ve seen is neighborhoods feeling helpless,” police Chief Eddie Garcia said. “This gives a frustrated community another tool.”

San Jose City Councilwoman Sylvia Arenas, who with her four female council colleagues recently called for more public resources to combat a rise in sexual assaults in the city over the past decade, said the focus of the new program helps balance what has historically been uneven enforcement of prostitution issues.

“Many arrested for prostitution are the same women we’re trying to help free themselves from coercion and trafficking,” she said, calling the new program “a major step toward holding accountable the men who create the demand for these criminal operations.”

The new police portal, which can be found on the SJPD website, offers a speedy way to report people they suspect of solicitation, through submitting physical descriptions, license plate numbers, and photos. Police do warn would-be tipsters against directly intervening, and suggest they observe discreetly from a distance.

Detectives are then supposed to assess the submissions and determine which ones warrant investigation. One of the outcomes can be a “public safety announcement” letter being sent to owners of cars described in the citizen reports. The letter would notify the owner that their vehicle was seen in an area known for prostitution, and extol the harms of solicitation.

“The visibility letters let them know about human trafficking,” said Sharan Dhanoa, director of strategic development for South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking. “We want people to know that if you’re purchasing, you may be contributing to the exploitation of a survivor.”

Those assessments are at the heart of the opposition against initiatives like the Report John Program, which critics say pose a host of civil rights questions, punishes poor communities, and pushes sex workers further underground, decreasing their safety.

Tara Burns, a sex worker activist based in Alaska, added that the men targeted by these initiatives are actually ideally placed to report human trafficking. She cited a personal encounter with a woman being trafficked whose customer was the person who reported the crime, albeit anonymously.

“If you want to address trafficking, you reach out to the people who are encountering trafficking victims,” Burns said. “But there is moral discomfort over people having sex they’re not comfortable with.”

Dhanoa is mindful of this broader debate. But she and Garcia note that the point of the Report John Program is to address residents and communities facing safety and quality-of-life issues stemming from commercial sex activity.

“It’s important to focus on the harms to the community,” she said. “We have kids in neighborhoods seeing this. A mother told us she was propositioned, and that her 15-year-old daughter has been propositioned. Another mother said she was chased down by someone.”

Burns asserts that more effective solutions have come in the form of laws that protect sex workers from being prosecuted for prostitution-related crimes if they are reporting serious or violent felonies like rape, which she says have dramatically increased reports of trafficking cases. California just passed a similar law this summer.

“Imagine if they let customers report too,” she said.

Dhanoa is confident that there are enough safeguards in place to ensure that the reporting programs aren’t abused or used to defame or embarrass people. Besides the layer of detectives assessing the validity of a solicitation tip, the PSA letters include a phone number for someone to call if they believe they have been errantly reported.

“It’s not an attack on sex work,” she said. “We’re trying to raise awareness and open up dialogue on how we treat this issue and how we only criminalize one side.”

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