From Reason.com —

On May 1, Maryland’s Prince George’s County Police Department (PGPD) smugly announced plans to live-tweet an upcoming prostitution sting. “We won’t tell you when or where, other than it’s somewhere in the county sometime next week,” the PGPD said. Well, that sometime was yesterday, though the PGPD ultimately decided not to live-tweet the sting. And making this into an all-around win, all the (critical) publicity the department’s plans received wound up deterring any potential prostitution clients from falling for the county’s trap.

Kind of delicious, no? Particularly considering the smarmy hubris the PGPD demonstrated in first announcing the plan, describing it as a “progressive” and “unprecedented” tactic in fighting “the world’s oldest profession.” The backlash to the PGPD’s announcement was swift andwidespread, however. Widespread enough, it seems, that no potential johns in PG County were stupid enough to take the police’s bait.

In a press release yesterday, the PGPD announced that it had “successfully” conducted the planned sting, albeit without the planned prostitweeting.

The event took place over several hours in the southern part of the county. On average, the unit arrests five to 10 johns during similar operations. Today, no johns were arrested.

Read more...