Dear Johns: For Shame

It was launched with great fanfare last spring -- Operation Shame, a campaign to discourage the "johns" who drive Oakland, Calif.'s late-night streets to pick up prostitutes. At the heart of the campaign was a plan to arrest the johns (a slang term for men who solicit prostitutes) and then display their mugshot photos on prominent 10 feet by 22 feet billboards.

"We're going to shame the out-of-towners and locals who drive to our neighborhood to look for prostitutes," Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente told reporters at the time. Much of the prostitution problem was centered in the Fruitvale section of De La Fuente's 6th Council District, along the International Boulevard business thoroughfare that cuts through the southeastern end of Oakland.

A spokesperson for the Oakland Police Department, Sgt. Rob Stewart, said that the majority of the johns come from outside of Oakland.

The idea behind Operation Shame was that potential johns, seeing the faces of fellow solicitors on billboards, would figure that the potential of having their night-time wanderings come to the very public attention of spouses, relatives, neighbors or employers was not worth the risk. The operation was a project of De La Fuente's office, with the Oakland Police Department cooperating by providing the arrest booking photos.

Eight months later, the billboards have long since disappeared from International Boulevard but the prostitutes have not. On Redbook, an internet chat station that provides a forum for johns, the Oakland street pickings this month seemed as good as they have ever been.

Under the topic "International SW [streetwalking] Action is building up again," one poster recently wrote, "Man I drove down … International on weds wow from 25th to 46th street wall to wall youngsters hot ones black/Latina's/whites didn't see any Asians. Also today around noon one asain around 18th & international, and then a real hot latina in camo/army clothes out for fun."

"I did a sight seeing tour yesterday from downtown oakland …" another poster replied in agreement. "just guessing because i didn't count -- but there had to be at least 50 ladies out in the sunshine in [Oakland] alone."

A drive down International Boulevard at any time of day or night confirms their observation that Oakland's prostitute quarter is as busy as it ever was -- young, well-dressed women in short skirts or shorts still work the pickup areas they commonly call "the stroll," walking nonchalantly from block to block, congregating on corners, catching the eyes of men in slowly passing cars, hustling to jump in when passenger doors fly open.

So what happened?

While five of the billboards did go up last spring -- locations donated by communications giant Clear Channel -- the effectiveness of the shame campaign was undercut at the very beginning by a small constitutional issue apparently overlooked initially by Oakland officials: the concept of innocent until proven guilty. The city had planned to put the faces of arrested johns on the billboards, but constitutional rights advocates quickly pointed out that this opened up the city to potential high-figure lawsuits from any billboarded men who were later exonerated at trial.

"That someone can be punished without being convicted is a violation of our civil liberties," San Francisco magazine quoted John Crew, an attorney in the ACLU's San Francisco office. "People could equate arrest with guilt."

So instead of identifiable pictures on the billboards, the city eventually opted to use the photos of four men recently arrested for solicitation, but with their faces so blurred as to be unidentifiable. "How much clearer do we have to make it?" the billboards proclaimed. "Don't 'john' in Oakland."