According to this article in the Pioneer Press, Burnsville has upped its enforcement of prostitution within the city limits, presumably to clean up the hotels so that they can attract out of state vacationers and those coming for the Republican National Convention.
As many of you know, I have been closely following the Dakota County Criminal Complaints and archive them in text format which makes them easy to read and more importantly, search. After reading the article about how Burnsville has stepped up enforcement, I wanted to see just how many criminal complaints had shown up from Burnsville since I started watching back in January of 2008 compared with other municipalities in Dakota County.
After all of this stepped up enforcement, Burnsville has only had two criminal complaints filed since January of 2008 while Eagan has three. You can check out Burnsville’s complaints (PDF warning) here and here. You can view Eagan’s here, here, and here. To be fair to Burnsville, Eagan’s three complaints all stem from the same crime while Burnsville had to go out and beat the bushes twice to get their two collars. As you can tell from those complaints and the article linked above, both Burnsville and Eagan are using CraigsList postings to track down prostitutes and bring them, their pimps and related individuals to justice.
The PiPress article quotes some arrest stats from Burnsville’s enhanced prostitution enforcement:
Prostitution stings: 9
Males arrested for soliciting prostitution: 34
Females arrested for prostitution: 15
Male arrested for prostitution: 1
Males arrested for promotion of prostitution: 2
Total arrests: 52
While I’m not seeing anything close to those numbers since January, perhaps they don’t show up there or they haven’t gotten that far along? In the article Burnsville Police Chief Bob Hawkins was paraphrased as saying, “he hopes the prostitution stings will eventually send the message that Burnsville is a city cracking down on prostitutes, johns and pimps.” Personally, while 52 total arrests is great I’m sure it isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. If anything, they are just going to get smarter and stay the hell off CraigsList.
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May 1st, 2008 at 8:50 am
The lone male arrested for prostitution makes me wonder if it was for same-sex prostitution of if it was a mimbo situation — like Deuce Bigalow.