The 2015 Super Bowl is coming to Phoenix, and if you believe the rhetoric from the self-righteous religious-advocacy groups, so are swarms of underage hookers looking to cash in on the testosterone surrounding the big game.
No matter whom you believe, the Phoenix Police Department will be ready for the mythical hookers -- but authorities aren't too concerned about it just yet.
"We'll worry about [droves of underage hookers looking to cash in on the Super Bowl] in 2014," Phoenix Sergeant Trent Crump tells New Times.
The myth of Super Bowl cities being havens for hookers during the weeks leading up to the game was proven false by the Dallas Observer -- New Times' sister paper -- a few weeks after the Green Bay Packers beat up on the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV in Dallas, and the 100,000-plus hookers -- 38,000 of which were billed as underage -- Christian right groups promised would invade the Big D never showed up.
In reality, authorities in Dallas netted a total of 105 prostitution arrests metrowide during Super Bowl weekend, the majority of whom were "local talent" well-known by the cops. Only two of the hookers arrested were underage -- and they were both from Texas.
Check out the Observer story here.
In some of our own research of the Super Bowl/hooker-invasion myth, Crump told us last year that when the Super Bowl was in Glendale in 2008, his department didn't see the dramatic increase in prostitution arrests promised by the religious right. In fact, only 117 people were arrested Valley-wide during local law enforcement's big Super Bowl hooker crackdown, none of whom were underage or related to human trafficking.
Other mythical issues local authorities may encounter in the months leading up to the 2015 Super Bowl include presumed increases in Sasquatch attacks and unicorn spearings.
