Salt Lake City prostitutes may be out of sight, but they're not out of the minds of law enforcement officials.
Under the glare of attention, many prostitutes left the Salt Lake area for places more friendly to them. Others have kept a low profile until the attention fades."The heat helped for a little while," said South Salt Lake police detective Joe Bennett. After Sheriff Aaron Kennard vowed to create space to house both prostitutes and their customers, the problem that had seemed to be out of control appeared to get better.
Despite the appearance, or more accurately, the disappearance of the problem, police warn that without the promised sanctions, prostitutes will come back to Salt Lake City.
"It's absolutely amazing how the word spreads," said Salt Lake Police Capt. Bill Shelton. "If we don't carry out our promises, we'll have a huge problem next summer."
Bennett said it's already getting worse now that public attention is elsewhere. For weeks, vice officers saw mostly local prostitutes, and most of them were keeping a low profile.
But now, Bennett said they're seeing a resurgence in the number of "circuit" or traveling prostitutes working Salt Lake streets.
The problem has been and still is a lack of jail space. Prostitutes aren't the only ones who can't be booked into jail because it's too crowded - drunken drivers and most misdemeanants aren't booked most of the time either.
Kennard toyed with the idea of converting a warehouse into a jail, but in the end opted to remodel the now-vacant 10th floor of the Metro Hall of Justice into female jail space.
Jail cells underneath the 3rd Circuit Court building were also going to be used in an effort create more jail beds.
Those plans are still on track but a little behind schedule. The underground cells are holding cells and will be used for jail inmates waiting for court hearings. Each cell holds between five and 10 inmates for not more than a normal work day.
The 10th floor remodel is taking a bit longer than officials hoped. Sheriff's officials say it should be open for business the first of next year.
It will house between 30 and 45 women, probably only those sentenced to serve a jail term in an effort to cut down on traffic to and from the building's top floor, said Salt Lake County Sheriff's Sgt. Jim Potter.
Potter agreed the problem seemed to drop out of sight for a while but added it now appears to be resurfacing.
"I don't think it's a problem that's going to go away until we're able to hit (the prostitution) business harder," Potter said. That hit comes in the form of possible jail time for committing the class A misdemeanor.
In the interim, Shelton said Salt Lake officers have instituted a number of unorthodox methods of enforcement in hopes of keeping a handle on the problem. Those include taking prostitutes to the police station to run more extensive background checks on the women, who rarely carry identification.
"It's very labor intensive," Shelton said of the efforts to enforce the law without the "potentiality of being locked up."
Bennett added, "We're not going to be able to do much until we get more jail space."