Shakopee, MN (SafeCITY) - Ivan and Luba Lavrusik, a 27-year-old Shakopee couple, were jailed after they allegedly ran a prostitution service out of their home, where their three-year-old child resides.
According to the Scott County Sheriff's Office, Mr. Lavrusik reportedly "pimped" out his wife via websites and advertising under the name "Katerina," charging her clients $380 for her sexual services. Mrs. Lavrusik would take the johns into their bedroom, while Mr. Lavrusik watched their child in another room.
Neighbors began to notice people coming in and out of the couple's home and called authorities, who began investigating the Lavrusiks. An undercover officer was able to book an appointment with "Katerina," and the couple was arrested.
Detectives searched the couple's home and found $180,000 in cash in the safe, as well as guns and steroids. Investigators believe the couple has been running their operation for about a year and a half.
Mr. Lavrusik admitted to detectives that the allegations were true and that he was very selective about their clientele, gathering information on their name, age, weight, occupation, and references. The couple believes their actions are justified due to "hard times."
Ironically, Mr Lavrusik dreams of becoming a cop and has called authorities on his neighbors about 80 times since 2005 over loud mufflers and dogs running around unleashed.
The Lavrusiks were booked into jail and charged with prostitution and child endangerment. They are scheduled to appear at Scott County court June 7th.
The couple was also arrested last year in Las Vegas on similar charges.
If cops have this much time on their hands, I suggest layoffs to save the taxpayers some dollars to help pay for their mortgages.
ReplyDeleteA study published in the Hastings Law Journal in 1987 is perhaps the most reliable estimate of the cost of prostitution enforcement on major cities. Author Julie Pearl observed:
"his study focuses on sixteen of the nation's largest cities, in which only 28% of reported violent crimes result in arrest. On average, police in these cities made as many arrests for prostitution as for all violent offenses. Last year, police in Boston, Cleveland, and Houston arrested twice as many people for prostitution as they did for all homicides, rapes, robberies, and assaults combined, while perpetrators evaded arrest for 90% of these violent crimes. Cleveland officers spent eighteen hours — the equivalent of two workdays — on prostitution duty for every violent offense failing to yield an arrest."
The average cost per hooker bust was almost $2,000 — and "the average big-city police department spent 213 man-hours a day enforcing prostitution laws." Pearl estimated that 16 large American cities spent over $120 million to suppress prostitution in 1985. In 1993, one Los Angeles government official estimated that prostitution enforcement was costing Los Angeles alone over $100 million a year.
The most high-profile prostitution prosecution in recent years was the Heidi Fleiss case out of Los Angeles. Fleiss organized call girls for wealthy customers. Fleiss's hookers made up to $10,000 a day and none complained about how she treated them. Lawyer Thomas Tanana detailed the Los Angeles police campaign against Fleiss in 1995 in the Orange County Register:
"While people were getting murdered, mugged, and raped in other parts of Los Angeles, 20 to 30 members of the LA metro vice squad safely perched themselves high atop the spacious penthouse of a Beverly Hills hotel for weeks conducting endless preparatory 'strategic meetings,' installing and testing hidden video cameras behind special see-through mirrors in adjoining suites, bugging rooms with recording devices, chatting with young call girls about sex, and watching racy movies — all at taxpayers' expense."
At the key moment — after several call girls had arrived and had stripped naked — the signal for the raid occurred and 20 to 30 cops stormed into the penthouse suite. Luckily, none of the women had concealed weapons, so no law enforcement officers were injured.
Locking up prostitutes and their customers is especially irrational at a time when more than 20 states are under court orders to reduce prison overcrowding. Gerald Arenberg, executive director of the National Association of the Chiefs of Police, has come out in favor of legalizing prostitution. Dennis Martin, president of the same association, declared that prostitution-law enforcement is "much too time-consuming, and police forces are short-staffed." Maryland Judge Darryl Russell observed, "We have to explore other alternatives to solving this problem because this eats up a lot of manpower of the police. We're just putting out brush fires while the forest is blazing."
National surveys have shown that 94 percent of citizens believe that police do not respond quickly enough to calls for help — and the endless pursuit of prostitution is one factor that slows down many police departments from responding to other victims. In 1994, Edward Delatorre, police commander of New York City's 43rd Precinct, said of Operation Losing Proposition, a big crackdown on prostitutes and their customers in the Bronx, that his policy was to "make this an issue as important as any issue can be." Yet, while prostitutes cluttering up a street can be a damn nuisance, the average New Yorker is probably far more irritated and injured by the city's sky-high rate of car theft — not to mention its high murder rate.