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AP wants prostitutes banned from DC bureau

Meagan Clark Contributor
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The Associated Press wants its Washington, D.C., bureau’s block designated a “prostitution free zone.”

In an email sent May 30, AP’s Global Security Manager Ed Tobias told his colleagues he had “been in touch with” local police about “the resurgence of the prostitution problem in front of our bureau,” and has asked that the 1100 block on 13th Street be prostitute-free.

“If designated as such, police officers would have an easier time making arrests for loitering,” Tobias wrote in the email.

Metropolitan Police Commander Jacob Kishter replied that “the prostitution free zones are under legal review so currently so they are not being used, but we can definitely do some undercover work in the area.”

Prostitution was once such a problem in D.C. that, in 1989, Washington police ordered 24 suspected prostitutes to march across the state line into Virginia. According to a Washington Post article from that year, D.C. police usually charged suspected prostitutes with disorderly conduct or soliciting for prostitution.

The city’s loitering law was declared unconstitutional in 1968 for violating the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable seizures.

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