Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart applauds Craigslist decision
Count Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart among the law enforcement officials applauding Saturday's decision by Craigslist to shut down its "adult services" section, which Dart has long claimed promoted prostitution.
"I hope they finally realized they had to do something to stop their website from being used to destroy the lives of so many abused young girls and women," Dart said Saturday.
"But I'm not entirely optimistic given our experiences with them," Dart said.
His office filed a federal lawsuit against the electronic message board 18 months ago, which Dart called "the largest source of prostitution in America."
At the time, he based that claim on surveys of customers who claimed to have used Craigslist to find prostitutes.
Of the 500 prostitution arrests the sheriff's department made in the last year, about one-third resulted from Craigslist ads, according to the department.
For three years, the Cook County sheriff's office has urged Craigslist officials to "do the right thing," even as they insisted they did nothing wrong, Dart said.
That Craigslist recognized its "adult services" section aided in the exploitation of young women is a good thing, Dart said.
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<li><a href="/story/?id=406007">Craigslist strikes adult services under pressure</a></li>
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