Friday, March 25, 2005

One more arrest

A couple of days ago it was reported that the police arrested the owner of a local (and popular) restaurant on charges that he trafficked in women. (The restaurant is near downtown. We pass it all the time.) That is much like the arrests I already reported in the last post. This guy sold women too. They have found 39 of them.

I have followed this trafficking situation here somewhat and know that there wasn’t much headway being made. This looks like headway to me.

The thing that is also interesting about this arrest is that it was reported Interpol was there with the officers. Interpol is not an international police force, contrary to what Hollywood might lead people to believe. It is a clearinghouse for information mostly. (They do consulting too, I know, but that doesn’t change their status at all.) I can assure you that this guy is not resting in an Interpol jail at this moment. He is breathing in the air of a Ukrainian jail.

But Interpol being there means that the arrest was meant to be transparent from the start. These things might not have been transparent before because of the possibility of corruption—the guy might just negotiate his way out of the mess at the scene and we don’t want any witnesses, of course. Interpol being there means that there would be no business like that there.

And the guy apparently thought he might be able to do something because he offered 180,000 to the officers to let him go. There were no takers. Heartening.

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