The streetwalker was in fact a policewoman, one of two working Pier St in the first test of new laws allowing undercover officers to trap men looking for prostitutes. Worse was to come. Under a shame-them approach to stamping out streetwalking in Western Australia, chief magistrate Steven Heath refused to suppress Brown's name, or to impose a spent conviction, under which no record would be kept of the crime.
The same went for the 15 other men rounded up by the two officers and charged under the state's tough Street Prostitution Act. Not even construction supervisor Raymond Budge, who needed a conviction-free record to work on mining projects overseas, nor Corey Watson, who claimed to have stopped to merely talk to a woman he thought he recognised, were spared.
The two undercover officers, working in an operation codenamed Bounty, were testing new provisions of the law introduced in August last year in a bid to keep prostitution off the streets in WA. Even before that, the police were busy. Last year they warned they would telephone the wives, employers and families of men caught frequenting illegal suburban brothels. A crackdown then saw officers knocking on prostitute's doors and asking clients what they were doing there, and a number of calls to Perth companies to let managers know what their employees had been up to in the company car.
The changes to the Street Prostitution Act, which prohibits prostitutes even displaying themselves from doors or windows, were a further bid to rid inner Perth of a flourishing streetwalking industry.
While some brothels are legal, an earlier policy of containment that kept illicit prostitution under control has largely collapsed, leading to demands for new controls. Police have now responded with new sting operations targeting would-be clients to choke off supply and run streetwalkers out of business.
