The City's Legalized Blackmail
A jury exposes the Seattle Police Department for shaking down women, proving that 'reform' administration was just a veneer.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Mary Clements, a prostitute, was acquitted by a jury in the municipal court yesterday of the charge of disorderly conduct. The trial brought out the facts that, although the reform administration has declared that Whitechapel has been abolished, the police department arrested between April 28 and May 1 seventy-nine dissolute women, each of whom forfeited $10 bail under the regulation which would commonly be called legal blackmail. A. D. Warner, who represented the defendant, brought out the facts that Miss Clements had been arrested April 28 and deposited her fine. May 1 Detective Philbrick arrested her again and she was booked as a disorderly person, but later the charge was changed to disorderly conduct, which so far as the evidence showed consisted in crying. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty after a few minutes' deliberation.
“The police department arrested between April 28 and May 1 seventy-nine dissolute women, each of whom forfeited $10 bail under the regulation which would commonly be called legal blackmail.”
This story reveals the long history of Seattle police using the criminalization of sex work as a revenue-generating tool. Even during periods of 'reform,' the harassment of the vulnerable remained a structural component of the city's policing model.
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