Groundbreaking tactics of the Middlesborough Police vice team supported by the Teesside Evening Gazette’s Kerb the Crawlers campaign has had a major effect on the area’s sex industry.

Their main objective was to deter men from travelling to Teesside to buy sex.

Previous arrests have indicated it was not just local men causing the problems, with some men travelling from as far as Edinburgh and North Wales to buy sex.

Police are hoping that their initiative of naming and shaming any man convicted of soliciting on Teeside, and informing their local newspaper, will be an effective means of deterring many kerb crawlers.

Inspector Gary Gamesby told the Association of Chief Police Officers: “The Gazette’s Kerb The Crawlers campaign shows that we can make a difference by working together with the media.

“I think we should now consider a national campaign because kerb crawling causes misery to people all over the country.”

He was speaking at the National Vice Conference at the University of Gloucester and called for Government intervention with the launch of a national media campaign and strategy to deal with “sleazy” kerb crawlers.

The war on Teesside’s sex trade involved the police vice team using Anti-Social Behaviour Orders against Middlesborough’s most prolific prostitutes and crackdowns on vice hotspots and using covert operations to catch kerb crawlers.

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