A callous insensitivity

During the infamous 20/20 taping, Brian Ross and his staff made it a point to record the Garapan street hustling scene. In the course of this slanted “investigation,” the ABC “news” people had an exchange with Saipan’s finest, the Marianas High School graduates, which, as you will soon see, didn’t go off so well.

BRIAN ROSS (VO: . . . in short order, uniformed officers showed up to stop our taping.

POLICE OFFICER: You better turn off that camera right now.

BRIAN ROSS: (on camera) Why is that? . . . My question is why are you ignoring the prostitution that is just around the corner here? And why are you stopping our camera crews?

POLICE OFFICER Why are you so concerned about us making arrests on the prostitutes?

BRIAN ROSS: Aren’t you concerned about the prostitutes?

POLICE OFFICER: We are concerned about it, of course.

In the first place, it is a mistake to attempt to stop these people from taping; so long as they are not trespassing, violating private property rights, or breaking any laws, let them tape. Never deny the facts, yet, at the same time, never let these accusers forget that they carry the burden of proof; we are innocent until proven guilty.

In this case 20/20 makes the CNMI government look patently evil for appearing to callously allow prostitution to flourish, as if our local law enforcement could easily eradicate the world’s oldest profession over night. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The bad situation, of course, is still made even worse by the DPS’ perennial inability to communicate intelligently and effectively (no doubt a great reflection of the abysmal failure of our Public School System). What the officer should have said was, “Look, we have had prostitution busts before; it is not easy to successfully prosecute such cases, because they require a great deal of proof.”

Prostitutes simply cannot be rounded up and deported in true Singapore style. This is not a dictatorship. We fall under the American system of government, where prostitutes and other criminals have certain due process rights.

The DPS officer, for example, might have brought up one of the last prostitution arrests: the Linda House Karaoke case, formerly defended by attorney David A. Wiseman, a possible future judge. As I recall, the state was not making very much headway against the competent Law Office of David A. Wiseman.

The point is that our critics constantly place us in a no-win situation. If we take drastic measures to eradicate prostitution, we may be accused of violating civil rights and imposing a ruthless, dictatorial police state. The ACLU may sue.

This type of hypocritical double standard takes place in many other areas as well. The US Department of Interior, to cite yet another example, complains about alien workers spreading diseases and over-taxing our already vulnerable medical infrastructure. Yet, when we take steps to screen and repatriate HIV positive alien workers, we are caught in yet another trap: more civil rights abuses, more lawsuits, more adverse publicity.

You can never win with these type of people.

Strictly a personal view. Charles Reyes Jr. is a regular columnist of Saipan Tribune. Mr. Reyes may be reached at charlesraves@hotmail.com