QC policemen wrong, prostitution still a crime

This relates to Erika Sauler’s July 14 front-page report titled “‘Jocards’ prey on philanderers in Quezon City.”

Writing about women reportedly preying on men looking for “stolen pleasures in the Kamuning area,” Sauler wrote that “the police used to round up the women and detain them for vagrancy to stop their modus operandi. But the police apparently can no longer do that because vagrancy has been decriminalized.”

On the contrary, Article 202 of the Revised Penal Code, which punishes the crime of prostitution and vagrancy, has not been repealed. Prostitution has not been decriminalized. This should mean trouble not just for the women “peddlers” or their  philandering male “clients,” but much more so for Quezon City cops who—by Sauler’s report—are aware of the nightly wrongdoing but refrain from doing something about it.

By tolerating this nocturnal “trade,” any officer of the law becomes complicit with the offenders and could be charged with negligence and tolerance punishable with prision correccional and suspension in Article 208 of the same penal code.

—JO IMBONG, senior counsel,

St. Thomas More Law Society,

[email protected]