Most people who comment on daily newspaper websites are are pretty darn conservative. Bear that in mind when you read the comments thread on this Seattle Times "Blotter" blog post about a prostitution bust in Mill Creek. A bunch of cops sat in a hotel room all day last Friday ordering up and busting escorts off Craigslist. Here's a representative sampling of the reactions of Seattle Times readers to news:

Was everybody who was busted of legal age? Then why are we wasting time, money and effort on this? Legalize it, tax it and get the police to work on VIOLENT CRIME! I could give a rat's @$$ if two adults are servicing each other.... or if one of them is being paid for it. Prohibition does not work.

Have they found the guys that broke into my house yet?

The Gov whats to raise our taxes but our public servants continue to waste millions of dollars on things like this!!!! The police are suppose to serve and protect....who were they protecting or serving??????

There were 63 unsolved homicides in Snohomish County as of October of last year. That's one unsolved homicide per 10,851 citizens. King County's 550 unsolved homicides equates to one unsolved homicide per 3,410 citizens.

Beats doing actual police work, I feel so much safer now.

Daily papers report on prostitution stings the same way they report on marijuana-grow-op busts: with the stupid fucking credulous hackery cranked all the way up. They never ask if all these expensive police stings and the arrests and prosecutions of escorts and johns actually accomplishes anything—they never question the efficacy of the what the authorities are doing with our money—and they never speak to anyone on the other side of the issue. The Blotter's write up of the busts in Mill Creek is just a quick and dirty and brief blog post, I realize, not an investigative report. But how many times have daily papers embedded reporters with vice squads and written long, glowing reports about all the damn fine police work that goes into busting a couple of dozen prostitutes and johns? Stories like, oh, this one?

When it comes to sex and drugs and vice squads and thrilling undercover stings, daily papers can be relied on to glorify police work without questioning its usefulness. And always without seeking the opinion of anyone willing to point out what a costly waste of time all of this is or—God forbid—without speaking to to anyone willing to advocate for the rights of sex workers. And certainly no one is ever allowed to make the case for legalizing prostitution. The police get a pat on the back and the paper insists that it's only reflecting "the values of the community," blah blah blah, because the "community" is assumed to be unanimously anti-sex, anti-lap-dance, anti-strip-club, anti-sex-worker, anti-johns, etc., etc., and mindlessly pro-law-enforcement. Their own commenters prove them wrong: their own readers recognize that prostitution—when it involves two consenting adults in private—is a victimless crime and that going after hookers and johns who aren't hanging out on street corners depressing anyone's property values is waste of scarce police resources.

But some people think prostitution stings—like those magical grow-op busts—really do make a difference:

Raids began last weekend and continued through the week.... The crackdown by Seattle and King County police and federal agents has put a huge hit on suspected organized prostitution. This was an effective operation. Those charged remain to be convicted, but a Seattle police official estimated the raids shut down 85 percent of Seattle escort services fronting for prostitution. Organized prostitution is tough to control. This cooperative effort serves notice that it may be equally tough to operate.

That's from a Seattle Times editorial published after a big prostitution sting in 1992. Needless to say, organized and disorganized prostitution continued to flourish in the Seattle area in the years and months between 1992's "shut down" of organized prostitution and last Friday's Craigslist busts in Mill Creek.