Tuesday, August 6, 2013. New York City – Sounds ironic, but it’s true. The New York City Health Department gives millions of free condoms to stem the spread of diseases and to help preventing unwanted pregnancies, but NYPD officers confiscate those same condoms and arrest people possessing them.
New York City has the nation’s largest HIV/ AIDS population. And although condoms are not 100% safe, NYC runs a campaign promoting the use of condom to prevent the spread of STDs and to stop unwanted pregnancies, however condoms are criminalized by the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
Clara Sierra was leaving a club after a nice night out when cops stopped her and accused her of being a prostitute. They assumed she was a sex worker because they found two condoms inside her bra. She spent 10 days in jail.
Xiona Geovane was on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, cops accused her and a friend of prostitution. Officers arrested them after finding condoms in her friend’s purse. They both spent the weekend in jail.
Johanna Vasquez, who is transgender, was stopped by NYPD officers several years ago as she walked along Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. The discovery of a single condom in her possession landed her in jail for a year, due in part to her immigration status.
If sex workers and others know that possession of condoms may prove to be the difference between a nasty encounter with law enforcement that ends in arrest and prosecution, people are likely to be fearful of carrying and using condoms.
A 2010 study by the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that a full 57% of sex workers had had their condoms taken away by the NYPD. An officer told a woman, “if you don’t have this (a condom), you won’t have sex.” Another officer allegedly told a sex worker in Brooklyn “No, these are for healthy people; hope you get killed tonight.”
The policy effectively discourages condom usage by sex workers and non-sex-workers alike, and that puts them and their sex partners, and their sex partners’ sex partners at risk. Apparently, officers think confiscating condoms will discourage having sex, however people will have raw sex if they know the police will harass and arrest them for having them.
Mitchyll Mora, a worker at Streetwise and Safe said, “A variety of LGBT youth, especially people of color, are assumed by the police to have deviant behavior. Or police see young transgender people and think they’re sexually deviant, and they’re profiled and stopped,” Mora added. “I’ve worked with women who identify as butch who are stopped by the police and the cops will see their condoms and say, ‘What do you need condoms for? You’re dykes.’ It’s a lot about profiling.”
A Human Rights Watch report released last July documented how sex workers and others, particularly transgender women, face arrest by the NYPD for possession of condoms. For undocumented immigrants, the arrest can mean detention and deportation from the United States.
In February, Nassau County police stopped confiscating condoms. “It was very important to me to also extend the ban to traffickers,” said Kathleen M. Rice, the Nassau County district attorney. Without it, she said, “traffickers will refuse to hand out condoms to their workers and in fact prohibit their use,” putting the victims of trafficking at risk of getting HIV and other deseases.
In May, the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes sent a letter to Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, said his office would not use possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution or loitering for the purpose of prostitution.
Mr. Hynes said, “the collection and vouchering of condoms as evidence by members of your department” in such cases in Brooklyn “should immediately cease.”
The Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said “We do not rule out their evidentiary value when going after pimps and sex traffickers. If there is a bowlful of condoms in a massage parlor, we want our officers to be able to seize them as evidence against the trafficker.”
Activists in New York City say, Mr. Hynes’s policy shift, is welcome, but it is not enough.
On Friday, June 20, 2013, the New York State Assembly passed A2736, known as the “No Condoms as Evidence” bill, sponsored by Queens Assembly Member Barbara Clark.
“Today’s action by the New York State Assembly brings us one step closer to making history as the first state in the country to enact legislation that prohibits police and prosecutors from confiscating and introducing condoms as evidence of intent to engage in prostitution-related offenses. We want to extend our sincere thanks to Assembly Member Barbara Clark and Speaker Sheldon Silver for showing leadership in putting public health first. We call on New York State Senators who care about public health, sex trafficking, stop and frisk, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and human and civil rights to follow suit after the session break,” said Andrea Ritchie on behalf of the No Condoms as Evidence Coalition, made up of over 70 organizations advocating for the bill’s passage.
District Attorneys can take action to stop the use of condoms as evidence in criminal and civil trials. Politicians in Albany, the capital of New York State can pass a law banning the use of condoms as evidence for prostitution-related offenses. Bloomberg, NYC Mayor can order the NYPD to stop confiscating condoms and harassing, arresting people possessing them, today.
There is no law against carrying condoms in New York City.
Learn more about sex workers, the Exotic Dancers Alliance and the St. James Infirmary in California, the Sex Workers Project in New York City and Transgender Latinas/women in NYC ( Make the Road New York, AIDS Center of Queens County and Hispanic AIDS Forum ).
No Condoms as Evidence of Prostitution PSA (video)
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