VANESSA CARLISLE
When Norma Jean Almodovar wrote and posted “Undercover Agents” on her personal website ten years ago, it was not only common practice for cops to have sex with sex workers who were under suspicion or in custody, it was tacitly assumed to be legal, because there were very few state laws prohibiting the practice. In the intervening time, both civil and criminal cases have emerged to challenge this practice. In 2014, despite police efforts to protect their ability to have sex with suspects during prostitution investigations, the Honolulu department had to bow to political pressure and concede that it was an abuse of power, if not institutionalized rape. By 2017, the state of Michigan was the last to create legislation making sex with people suspected of prostitution or solicitation a no-no. In other words, the policy change for which Almodovar seemed to have been calling has in large part come to pass.
An irony: while policy changes that prevent cops from having sex with suspected prostitutes/victims of trafficking seem to protect sex workers from rape by the police, the continued criminalization of sex work coupled with anti-trafficking rhetoric and claims of victimhood across the board actually keep sex workers shrouded in confusion—just the place where they are most vulnerable.
What hasn’t changed in a decade is the fact of police corruption. The case of Celeste Guap is one example: in 2017 she was able to name nearly thirty officers in multiple departments in California’s Bay Area who were either participating in, or knew about, sexual contact among police and sex workers. When Alaska’s violent policing tactics in human trafficking and prostitution cases were revealed in Tara Burns’s 2012 research study, lawmakers scrambled to create new policies. After a three-year investigation, seven New York City cops were indicted in 2018 for running a “prostitution ring”—the very thing they were supposed to be preventing.
One reason Almodovar’s frustration is so intense in “Undercover Agents” is that she has seen the cycle repeat itself ad nauseum since the 1970s. Her writing seeks to illuminate the ways in which the criminalization of sex work allows—perhaps even requires—law enforcement to twist the narrative and propagandize the dangers of sex work to keep the money flowing toward their investigations. This creates circumstances ripe for corruption, violence, and even trafficking by the police themselves—in other words, police create much of the danger sex workers face. Almodovar doesn’t have time for policy changes that do anything less than fully decriminalize sex work, and she knows law enforcement sees the sex industries as cash cows.
When revisiting her writing from ten years ago, readers should keep in mind that, despite legislative changes, the basic structure for the sting operations Almodovar described in 2009 has not just stayed intact—it has been expanded via federal monies, legislation like FOSTA-SESTA, increased cooperation among law enforcement organizations, and AI technology. “Reverse stings,” in which women cops pose as sex workers, and online surveillance of both workers and clients, are both more common now.
Sex workers are still subject to predatory police tactics, cast as either criminals or victims depending on the needs of law enforcement coffers, and the public is silent: presumed to be too ignorant, too sexually squeamish, or truly supportive of efforts to rescue victims in a “NIMBY” sort of way. And the rescue of trafficking victims is no more effective now than it was then—often involving deportation, detainment, forced rehabilitation or diversion programs, sometimes a backpack with a pair of flip-flops and a handwritten note saying, “I believe you can learn to love yourself.” What’s changed is that anti-trafficking efforts now have the full support of federal law and more grant money than ever before.
Almodovar scoffs at the notion that women making more money in an hour than police officers make in a day is exploitation, but she also knows both the gravity of the stigma and the difficulties street-based sex workers face. She worked both for the Los Angeles Police Department and later, disillusioned and gorgeously sassy, as an escort. She did time in prison and then devoted her life to the pursuit of freedom from stigma and oppression for sex workers. Do not be distracted by her dark humor or use of words like “skanky,” “hooker,” or “ho”; for Almodovar, decriminalization is deadly serious. Her life’s work has been to help and support sex workers from diverse corners of the industry and the world.
In “Undercover Agents,” Almodovar’s use of “victim” as a stand-in for “prostitute/sex worker” does double duty. First, it exposes the fallacy that all sex workers are de facto victims of trafficking via the exchange of sexual service for money. But perhaps even more importantly, it addresses the ways in which sex workers are experiencing real victimization due to criminalization by the police. Notice how “victim” works throughout Almodovar’s scenarios—where it rings true or false, but especially where it appears simply unfit, because it indicates an overly-simplistic understanding of the complexity of lived experience in sex work. Almodovar takes an already twisted narrative and twists it up again, revealing how little sex worker experience is valued in the rush to make arrests.