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Hookers Vigilantes Gone Wild!
Like any Good Samaritan with a video camera, Brian Bates likes to videotape men having sex with prostitutes and post the results on his website. It’s a hobby of his that has garnered him the title, “The Video Vigilante (via The Legal Reader).” For quite a few years, in fact, prosecutors and police officers were a big fan of the Oklahoma City resident; Bates even made a decent living by appearing on tabloid television shows. Hell, Bates got such a big kick out of filming hookers, he even let his wife tag along occasionally.
But, like any McCarthyistic camera-wielding hooker-hater, Bates eventually got himself into trouble, allegedly becoming a victim of his own spoils. Indeed, police have arrested Bates for paying prostitutes to take their customers where he could easily video tape them; after all, dark alleys do not provide the best lighting. Accordingly, Bates is facing up to 140 years in prison and his wife has been charged with aiding and abetting prostitution.
Bates, for his part, counters that the police have a vendetta against him. He says that the city has a beef with him because he taped two police officers beating an unarmed black man. When the city prosecutor refused to charge the officers, Bates criticized the District Attorney. And now that the DA is up for re-election, Bates says that he’s just trying to shut him up.
I’ve actually checked out the site (www.johntv.com), and I’ll admit that there is nothing particularly lewd or lascivious about it. But beyond the obvious profit motive (which he denies), one has to wonder if his zealotry hasn’t gotten the better of him. Spend a few minutes on his website, and you might even start to feel sympathy for the prostitutes — maybe instead of using these women for his “Gotcha” moments, he might consider calling attention to the factors that led these women to sell their bodies for money. As it is, the dude’s actions are tantamount to taping “Bum Fights” to expose problems with homelessness. It’s not vigilantism; it’s exploitation.
