"In [CITY], it tends to be more of a cowboy situation ... Usually they'll assign it to a sergeant, he takes his crew out -- as you would expect, there tend to be fewer female cops than males, so they get tapped from anywhere in the district."

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"Sorry, Sheriff. We know you have a city to run, but these fishnets aren't gonna wear themselves."

Our source Jane pointed out that "female officers will get tapped to do this nonsense before they've even done a day on patrol." She noted that "there wasn't much explaining. You're asked to do it ... but they don't have many females and you kinda feel like you're expected to take one for the team."

Some male cops actively pretend to be Johns, soliciting prostitutes so as to bust them. Our source John looked, in his own words, "like a cop," so his job was to hang around undercover lady cops and swoop in to make the bust when they caught a would-be customer. Neither of our sources reported receiving much training for this job. As Jane told us, "It's 'adapt and overcome.' You don't get a lot of training on how to act like a prostitute."

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"These are what we call 'functional props.'"

But while there's not much training you can do for the job of "standing around and waiting for someone to pay to f**k you," there IS a lot of preparation involved in setting up a prostitution sting ...

At this point during the interview, our source Jane piped up, "Try doing it as a girl!" She elaborated: "I always try to wear a jacket -- even a short-sleeve jacket -- so I can conceal a weapon. I know other females who would not wear weapons ... but I'm paranoid. You always need a badge. I'd tuck that into a shirt; the jacket conceals that. You can't look like you're trying too hard."

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"Excuse me while I slip into something more authoritative."

So there you go, shady Cracked readers who pick up hookers on darkened street corners: Stay the f**k away from anyone wearing a jacket during the summer. And, we guess, avoid paying for sex during the winter. Maybe your dick can hibernate for a bit.

It's common for cops to work in the same cities they grew up in. This is normally a good thing -- it means they've got a connection to the place they work, and hopefully some insight into daily life there. But for female cops who wind up fake-hooking, it can lead to some awkward encounters. As Jane related, "I actually grew up in [City] ... each district is broken down into sections. They put me in Section 5. I grew up in Section 5. I told them this wasn't a good idea -- I'd lived there my entire life ..."

Naturally, they didn't listen, and Jane was deployed in full hooker regalia to her home streets, because there's no way that could go terribly wrong. "We go to the area, I get out, not even there five minutes when someone recognized me and asked how the academy was going."

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"You know, the academy ... for police ... to become a cop ... Wait, where are you going!?"

That blew her cover for the day, but it wasn't as bad as what happened to a colleague: "I was with this particular girl, at a bus stop getting Johns. A car stops, and we think it's someone [trying to hire them] ... a woman gets out and starts yelling at [the other cop] stuff like, 'This isn't the way!' Just yelling at her. And it turns out this is someone she went to high school with, crying 'Let me help you, come with me.' Meanwhile, she's trying to show her badge and be like 'I'm working here' ... Her friend was slightly embarrassed, and drove off. That was my first day."

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And the last day that woman ever considered attending her school's 10-year reunion.

Of course, every neighborhood isn't a hotbed of street-level prostitution. With prostitution stings, as with real estate ...

Race is also an important factor in this kind of work. "A Caucasian lady doing that in inner-city [CITY] won't have a whole lot of luck," John said. "That's not to say they don't exist -- I saw a Korean prostitute who called herself 'China.' She was out there a good six months before her family scooped her up or ... something horrid."

Unfortunately, "something horrid" is just as likely as any potentially happier ending. There's not much empirical data on the career trajectory of street-level prostitutes, but what data we have suggests most of these women are subject to around a dozen violent assaults each year. Mind you, that's out of hundreds and hundreds of 'tricks,' because ...

Prostitution is so common in major cities that the average hooker can go as many as 450 tricks without being busted once. There's really not much danger, particularly on the "hiring prostitutes" end of things, so Johns usually aren't all that paranoid. Here's Jane: "We didn't need much in the way of tactics; it was just walking on the corner. People would pull up and ask how much."

In fact, she recalled accidentally passing for a prostitute well before she ever started working as a cop: "I grew up in the inner city ... you know how teenagers dress provocatively? I was on E Avenue as a teenager, we were literally just waiting for a bus, and cars would ask how much. People are bold because they can be."

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Nowadays, those guys are still asking "how much," but this time it's to the judge setting bail.

Our source John pointed out that his anonymous city earned the moniker "p***y City" -- at least, according to one cab driver they busted.

"He was arrested up for picking up one of the 'fauxstitutes,' and was one of the many cabbies that seem to engage in that activity during their downtime. He worked elsewhere, but said he and his cohorts would frequently come into the city for this purpose, since it was so easy. Well, usually, at least."

And on the other side of the equation, when male cops go out posing as Johns to bust prostitutes, "there's this gambit. You have cops in the back of a school send one guy out in a car to pick [prostitutes]. They get in a car with the guy, and he drives into a cluster of policemen, and they're all under arrest. The all-time record had to be this guy ... he was very good at picking up prostitutes, maybe he had some outside interest ... he was successful in gathering five prostitutes in the same car, all different ones from different places, getting them all in his car and, OH, it did not go well ... One of them noticed some flex cuffs in the back. It was like a clown car pile-out, with them yelling 'Five-o! Five-o!'"

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They normally don't leave a car that quick unless the John asks if it's cool if they pay by check.

Those eagle-eyed prostitutes escaped. John and his fellow officers weren't about to go out and chase them because, "If we went chasing and came over the radio yelling 'foot pursuit!' to the rest of the district for something like that, we'd be laughingstocks."

Of course, it's worth pointing out that prostitutes are nine times more likely to be murdered than other women. There's no real way to know how many of those 911 calls chalked up as "failures to pay" are women reporting legitimate abuse.

And there's also no way to predict what sort of dudes will go out on the street in search of paid sex. Jane told us, "My first John was an old, old, OLD guy -- at least 70. It didn't make sense. He looked like a grandfather." And John added, "There's no MO for a John. We saw every age range, ethnicity, level of wealth ... One of the ladies was picked up by a teenage Jewish boy on [the Sabbath] ... they had to notify his dad, but Dad can't drive because of religious obligations, so he had to call a taxi to pick his son up."

Ryan McVay/Photodisc/Getty Images
If it was the same cabbie our sources arrested earlier, his advice to the young John
would ensure the Circle Of Strange continues uninterrupted for a little bit longer.

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