So, browsing through the Whistleblower Blog of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, I happened upon an entry discussing the Minnesota Revenue Department’s new practice of publicizing the names of establishments that have failed to pay their sales taxes… now this didn’t bother me as much as a reference to the Chicago Police Dept’s practice of posting names AND pictures of “prostitution patrons” arrested within the last 30 days.
Hold on–ARRESTED? Sure, there’s a disclaimer that says “These individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.” In tiny italics. Yeah, right. I’m sure that CPD is really concerned about the rights of these individuals. In a quick check, I did a google search for a couple names on the list (note: I chose less common ones because I didn’t want to spend 20 minutes looking through pages of results), and the CPD page came up as one of the top hits in both instances. 30 days of being branded. For a crime of which one has not even been convicted. I’d venture to guess that the only reason that this has not been challenged in a court of law is that anyone who has been on this list that possesses the resources to hire a lawyer probably wants to eliminate the possibility that more people find out about it.
On a tangent, the other thing that disturbed me is the disproportionate number of minorities. Of course this isn’t surprising either, but we all know that white people buy sex too (thanks Eliot Spitzer!), and that so few arrested are in Chicago’s majority race is just another red flag that this program is fatally flawed.
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