“Bottom line is, there were much better things that the vice. bureau should have been engaged in, namely sex trafficking and sexual exploitation,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Cmdr. “We really refocused our efforts on those other crimes where we have a victim.” Merrill Ladenheim, who heads the agency’s human trafficking task force.
LAPD officials say they have made a point of carrying out undercover operations less frequently in recent years.
In 2007, the agency revamped its lewd conduct policy to tell officers that stings should be used only “as a last resort.”īut when alternative tactics fail, the department has no choice but to deploy decoy officers, said Capt. While lewd conduct complaints have dropped dramatically in recent years, Neiman said stings have been used to shut down persistent hotspots for gay cruising and lewd acts 11 times since 2014.Ĭomplaints often come from people concerned about sex acts in public places, namely libraries and residential streets, where children could stumble upon people engaged in a lewd act, Neiman said. The use of undercover cops to target gay men in Southern California stretches back to the early 20th century, when gay sex was illegal, said Lillian Faderman, a historian and author of “Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians.” “You still have to enforce the law when you get complaints,” he said.