I heard about this on Tumblr. Apparently they're also confiscating them from women of color because they're more likely to be suspected of sex work. So, racism, cissexism, and sex-negative patriarchal bullshit. Wheeeeeeee.
It's more than mere profiling or anti-sex sentiment (which would be bad enough). It's just as much the fault of the culture of law enforcement management (such as systems like
CompStat, etc.). Cops in many jurisdictions have quotas to make for everything from arrests, to traffic tickets, to even questioning people on the street.
Naturally, beat cops don't want to be accused of slacking off, and police chiefs and commissioners want to look good for both elected officials and the media. So you end up with more police harassment and intimidation, even if it actually causes more problems than it solves, and then you have police chiefs telling people "look, it's working, crime is down", even if it is just a matter of changing the way incidents are recorded and reported.
The final result is A) more tension between police and the community, B) more tension between rank-and-file police officers (and the union reps who bargain for them) and management (i.e. chiefs/commissioners/elected officials), and C) whatever unintended consequences flow from A and B.
TL;DR--the fish stinks from the head, as my grandmother used to say.
