Officers of an agency regularly tasked with cleaning up prostitution and all sorts of humanly vices from their jurisdiction were caught with their pants down (quite literally) soliciting services from a sex worker, with the agency later conveniently claiming that they were undercover.
The Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) in Tangerang conducted a raid on cheap hotels and boarding houses over the weekend, catching about a dozen sex workers and their clients. Among those clients were two Satpol PP officers, who were reportedly in a room with a sex worker they booked online. They were also reportedly butt-naked and were in possession of contraceptives at the time of the raid.
Though undercover stings are outside their purview (that’s the job of the actual police), Tangerang Satpol PP Protocol and Communications Chief Buceu Gartina said the two officers were doing just that when they were caught.
“I clarify that it’s not true that my officers were involved in online prostitution,” he said.
“They were just ensuring that the woman was a sex worker. Otherwise it’s difficult to obtain evidence to prove online prostitution.”
Buceu did not explain why the officers were naked with the sex worker, when just getting her in the room would have been evidence enough. There was also no explanation why, if this was indeed an undercover operation, two officers were needed to solicit sex work from her when one theoretically would have sufficed.
An undercover sting also goes against Satpol PP’s tendency to conduct morality raids and rounding up people without the need for irrefutable evidence in the past.
Yet it seems the agency is sticking with the undercover line, with no reports of sanctions for the two officers. The fate of the sex worker has not been disclosed either, though it’s standard procedure for prostitutes to be sent to social services for rehabilitation, given that conducting sex work is technically not illegal in Indonesia.
