The emerging tensions between police forces on how to police prostitution

“The failure of West Yorkshire Police and other forces to fully adopt the 2011 guidance is indicative of a fundamental difference of opinion, perhaps even tensions, among senior police officers from different forces about how to police prostitution…. These tensions are now spilling out in to the mainstream media. In a Guardian article from January 2014 about the murder of Mariana Popa, two of Britain’s most senior police chiefs (both ACPO members) – Chris Armitt, assistant chief constable of Merseyside police and the national police lead on prostitution in England and Wales, and Martin Hewitt, deputy assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard and the lead for adult sexual offences at the Association of Chief Police Officers – denounced the police approach to prostitution as a mess and said that operations to tackle the trade are “counterproductive” and likely to put the lives of women at risk.”