I have three basic reactions to the news Monday that a federal grand jury in Tennessee indicted a slew of folks in the Twin Cities for allegedly running a prostitution ring that coerced girls as young as 12 into selling their bodies for money and other goodies like iPods and marijuana joints.
Here they are in a nutshell: Saddened but hardly surprised. Second, local feds should be a bit embarrassed that Tennessee is prosecuting this case. And last but not least, there are some bigoted sick puppies among the local Minnesota Nice populace. And the younger the flesh in the insatiable trade, the better. Minnesota for decades has been a major juvenile prostitution pipeline to the rest of the nation.
It still is, from the inner-city neighborhoods to the most impoverished rural areas of the state. In this case, three gangs, their members of Somali descent, manipulated, groomed and coerced girls to have sex with men for money and other property. The Saintly City was a hotbed for prostitution in the mid- to late s.
The Twin Cities area also served as a haven for Prohibition Era gangsters and crime rings that peddled booze and sex. Many paid off cops for protection, as long as they did not blow away Grandma during a drive-by or bank heist.
The ring peddled scores of pubescent teens and women up to their 50s in 24 states and several provinces of Canada. This alleged modern-day slave ring was based in Minneapolis, like the Evans family enterprise. But the Evans case was prosecuted in St. Louis, not here. Local FBI and federal prosecutors at that time did not aggressively pursue it. A determined cop in St. Loo, paired off with an equally passionate former Minneapolis cop, built the case and persuaded the feds in Missouri to go after it.
