The grainy footage lasts only 13 seconds: A young woman wearing open-toe sandals climbs into a minivan, flips her hair, and the vehicle drives away.
It doesn't reveal much, but Winnipeg police are hoping this kind of video, posted on a new website launched yesterday, will scare away the men who pick up prostitutes on residential streets.
The tactic is similar to the efforts of community groups in several cities where licence plate numbers and photographs of prostitutes and their suspected customers are regularly posted on the Internet, but Winnipeg officers say they're the first in Canada to distribute police surveillance film of red-light "strolls."
"Our goal is to discourage the customers," said Winnipeg police Constable Shelly Glover. "We're trying to indicate, 'Listen, we're out there videotaping.' "
Their website address is http://www.winnipeg.ca/police/moralsunit/operation_snapshot.htm.
Police acknowledge that not everyone depicted in the clips is a sex-trade worker or a customer, and the videos have been altered to conceal faces and licence plates.
But Trudy Turner, executive director of community group West End Biz, Inc., said her group purchased a digital video camera and lent it to the police morals unit, hoping that the images, and the publicity they generate, will frighten men seeking sex.
"I don't think these grainy, unprofessional videos are going to do much by themselves," Ms. Turner said. "But it's going to tell the johns they're being watched. And they'll know that somewhere out there, there's a high-quality copy without their licence plate blurred out."
Wives might also notice familiar vehicles on the website, Ms. Turner added: "If some businessman gets a call from his wife, saying, 'Hey honey, that's our car,' you know he won't be cruising our streets any more."
Rev. Harry Lehotsky, an urban activist, has been running a similar site for several years, recording licence plates and details about prostitution in downtown Winnipeg. His website address is www.geocities.com/wccia/johns.html.
He said some of the site's 12,000 visitors have been wives who wrote to express their gratitude to him for exposing their husbands' philandering. Other thanks came from residents who were tired of aggressive, unpleasant behaviour in their neighbourhood, he said.
Rev. Lehotsky, of the New Life Ministries, said some people complain he is violating their privacy, but he doesn't have much sympathy. "People have privacy concerns," he said. "But I say, if you're pulling your weenie out in a laneway, you've forfeited your right to privacy."