The Seattle Westlake Park Street Urchins: The Seattle Police Pinched Westlake Park Pimps

Thursday, October 4, 2012

The Seattle Police Pinched Westlake Park Pimps

According to the Associated Press news story at the link below, the Westlake Park pimps were busy this past summer. The August 29, 2012 story at the link below describes how a group of undercover Seattle Police officers performed a prostitution sting at Westlake Park and consequently arrested two of that infested area's pimps. According to the news story, two of the Seattle Police officers posed as seventeen (17) year old girls. Two men there, apparently pimps, tried to recruit the undercover officers into prostitution with promises of renting them hotel rooms. In exchange, the suspected pimps were going to teach them how to haggle with johns over services and prices. The Seattle Police arrested the two men, Michael Deshawn Gaines and Bruce Jerome Brooks, for attempted commercial sexual abuse of a minor. Under Washington statute RCW 9.68A.100, commercial sexual abuse of a minor is a Class B felony, the second worst type of crime within the Washington state criminal statutes. The county prosecutor’s office has charged both men and both remain in jail, unable to post very high bail. The prosecution of Brooks is King County Superior Court case number 12-1-04673-1. The prosecution of Gaines is King County Superior Court case number 12-1-04674-0.

This is the real Westlake Park.

These are the real arrests and prosecutions.

These are just a few examples of the multitude of criminal elements that infest Westlake Park and the surrounding area to its west. Whether it is some of the urchins menacing and harassing passers by or selling marijuana, pimps trying to recruit prostitutes, convicted drug dealers like Troy Hunter committing assault and attempted robbery, the arrests and convictions of the people the Seattle Police are able to catch in the midst of the nearly continuous, ongoing crimes in Westlake Park, provide an irrefutable truth.

Seattle Police Arrests Westlake Park Pimps

Pimping Attempt Turns Sour ...

Westlake Park Street Urchins

Seattle's Westlake Park has been overrun by street urchins who menace, threaten, and harass, people walking by the area. Some of them cross the line into criminal menacing, in violation of Seattle Municipal Code, and Washington State statute. One of these miscreants went even further, and actually attacked one of the people taking the photographs that appear here, committing assault and attempted robbery of the photographer's camera in the process. That assailant and would be robber was immediately arrested by SPD officers on the scene. He was jailed, charged, quickly convicted, and sentenced to a jail term.

Another of these miscreants, who goes by the nickname "Trash", is the character pictured in the title bar who is "flipping the bird". He has also committed criminal menacing against of the photographers who has gather pictures for use here. Other members of their group have behaved similarly, including one named Zennger Tiras, and another who appears in some of the photographs here wearing a "Sanchez" football jersey.

These miscreants have become an infestation at Westlake Park, making this public space all but unusable by the rest of Seattle's citizens. The Seattle Police seem to largely tolerate them. The police only appear to arrest any them or see them criminally charged when one of them commits an overt criminal act directly within their presence.

The sort of scourge theses miscreants represents, is a part of the major problems Seattle has with its downtown core. The use of the term - street urchins - to describe them is precisely accurate, at the same time that it is superbly descriptive. On this site, there is plenty of information about them, photographic evidence of their activities, and reflections on the problems they create.