Officers respond to residents’ complaints
0:00am Fri Jan 01, 2010
Officers were given permission to search a flat suspected of being used as a brothel. - 231209MAT1-18
Police have acted to close a suspected brothel after receiving complaints from nearby residents.
Local officers and others from the Nottinghamshire Police sexual exploitation unit visited Flat 2 Barrows Gate, off Emmendingen Way, Newark. The flat was rented.
An officer from the unit said: “The landlord will be contacted but is unaware of the purpose of this flat’s use.”
The tactic used — pioneered by the Metropolitan Police — is called a Kontiki visit.
A search warrant is not obtained. Police arrive unannounced and ask to be admitted, otherwise they will return with a warrant.
The object is to warn brothel operators that if they don’t cease their operation they will be prosecuted.
At the Newark address a woman, in her 40s, let the police in.
Another woman in her early 30s admitted that she had been paid for sex.
She told officers she had no convictions for soliciting but had been in prison two years ago and was struggling to find work as a result.
Police said the two-bed flat was arranged as a brothel.
To the left of a central hallway was a client waiting area.
Cards advertised the business as Oasis of Newark.
A back bedroom was used as a staffroom.
A chip-and-pin machine was on the premises.
A handwritten list contained seven women’s first names and figures believed to be their earnings. There were seven boxes of lingerie.
All the windows were covered by tarpaulin on the inside.
Police took pictures in the flat to use as possible evidence in the future.
The woman who opened the door told police she was a former prostitute who had set up a brothel as a means of “keeping her girls safe from the streets.”
The operation, led by local beat officer Pc Sarah Murdoch, was the first the sexual exploitation unit had carried out working in partnership with any of Nottinghamshire’s four policing divisions. It usually works independently.
In her briefing, Pc Murdoch said: “Men from all walks of life are said to visit the address and the average visit lasts 40 minutes.
“The blinds are always down and good-looking women arrive driving sports cars.
“Neighbours are fed up with men ringing the wrong buzzers by mistake.
“This is like a warning. If we have cause to return in the next six months it will be with a warrant and it will be with a view to prosecute.”
In clarifying the law, an officer from the sexual exploitation unit said if one girl was working at the address on her own then no criminal offence was being committed.
If there was more than one or if there was a madam or security as well, then a criminal offence was being committed.
He said: “We are satisfied that with the lists, book-keeping, card machine etc, this is a brothel.
“We would have made arrests only if there were under-18s working here, if anybody was working here against their will or there was evidence that the brothel was part of a serious or organised crime racket and there was none of that.”
The officer said the brothel charged £50 for half an hour, £35 of which went to the girl and the rest to the house.
“We are not naive enough to think that this is the end of it. She will open again somewhere else but we have achieved in two hours what it would have cost thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money to prosecute through the courts,” he said.
“We have her out of this area, just as the residents wanted.”
