In an online investigation that unfolded in one day, undercover Gilroy Police arrested six alleged prostitutes at a local motel last weekend.
On March 8 around 11:30 p.m., officers met up with the women at a motel on Monterey Road near U.S. 101 after arranging to pay for sexual encounters.
“These are not typical street walker prostitutes. Because of the Internet, we knew that they were working in Gilroy and servicing clients here,” said Gilroy Police Sgt. Joseph Deras.
The investigation began and ended quickly: After trolling a few websites the morning of their sting, the GPD Anti-Crime Team sent out several undercover agents to meet and arrest the suspected prostitutes later that day.
The suspects are Lisa Hart, 23 of San Jose; Sydney Rodgers, 46 of San Jose; Quanisha Thomas, 18 of Oakland; Aaliyah Islam, 24 of Vallejo; Mallory Osta, 21 of Beverly Hills; and Chunmel Zhang, 38 of San Gabriel.
Deras said that Islam had a warrant out for her arrest for the same charge, and that another woman in the bunch has a history of this type of arrest.
All six of them were cited with misdemeanors and released from custody.
Some say that prostitution is a victimless crime. Deras disagrees.
“We’re not just trying to target the women. They can end up being crime victims in this type of work,” Deras said. “Victims of assault and burglary and such. And public health is also a concern.”
But while prostitution comes with a truckload of concerns, Deras described it as a “nuisance” in the scheme of the other things the Anti-Crime Team deals with.
“Higher priority crimes, crimes of violence, leaves us less time to address this,” he said.
And the arrest of six prostitutes didn’t shock the Anti-Crime Team or lead them to believe that prostitution is a growing problem in Gilroy.
“It’s just always there and of course we discourage it,” Deras said. “But if we went out and did the exact same thing next weekend we would meet or beat those numbers. But our caseload dictates when we can do that.”
Police would not release the name of the motel and said that motel management knew nothing of the investigation or arrests.
