Off the Street
Prostitution is not a victimless crime.
By Chris Baughman
Trade paperback
5 ½ x 8 ½
252 Pages
Non-fiction – True crime
Release Date: September 2011
$15.95
ISBN: 9781933016931
They say prostitution is a victimless crime…
Off the Street goes on a personal journey with Detective Christopher Baughman as he and the Las Vegas Pandering Investigative Team (PIT) wage war against the pimps who kidnap, trick, and beat women into submission and into a life of prostitution.
What begins with an attempt to apprehend, arrest, and convict a pimp responsible for beating a woman with a baseball bat over a two day period, quickly spirals into something far more sinister. Chris shares the emotions of the victims, parents, and family members who were involved in this investigation, as well as venturing back to his own youth, to a memory that served as the momentum to his passion about saving the people and the city he has sworn to protect.
Off the Street is Chris’ story of fighting to protect a class of women who are too easily forgotten and readily dismissed.
About the Author
Chris Baughman
Christopher M. Baughman has made a meteoric rise within the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department since becoming a patrol officer in 1999. A year and a half later he was reassigned as an investigator in the Bolden Area Commands Problem Solving Unit.
Two years later he was recruited to the Gang Crimes Section and distinguished himself by locking away some of the most violent gang members within the Las Vegas Valley, including national high profile cases such as “The School Bus Shooting,” where six kids were shot while exiting a school bus. Christopher solved the case in four days.
Four years later, Christopher was recruited to the Vice Crimes, where he changed the culture and scope of the crimes investigated by the Vice Crimes Section. As a result of Christopher’s detective abilities, a team was built around him, the Pandering Investigation Team (P.I.T.) and Human Trafficking Task Force.
In less than a year, Christopher’s team arrested and convicted several of the wealthiest and most violent criminals in the city. This success of this team caught the attention of investigative reporter Chris Hansen of NBC Dateline Undercover “To Catch a Predator.”
Christopher has served as reference expert for the television show CSI: Las Vegas, specifically for the ground-breaking crossover episode CSI: Trilogy. Christopher taught the anatomy of pandering investigations to other departments across the nation, including members of the FBI, IRS Agents, Federal Parole and Probation.
To read newspaper articles about Detective Baughman and his PIT team, click here.
Reviews and Accolades
Christopher Baughman has that rarest quality among authors: a truly original voice. OFF THE STREET is like no other book I’ve ever read. Coming across as a real-life, crime-fighting, near evangelical super-hero on steroids, Baughman takes us with him every step of the way as he builds an impregnable case to take down a vicious Vegas pimp, but it’s his commitment to the life he’s chosen, and to the fascinating anomaly he has become as a cop, that renders this book unforgettable. I couldn’t put it down, and neither will you.
~John Lescroart, New York Times Bestseller author of the Dismas Hardy novels and The Hunt Club
Baughman serves up an action-packed ride into the dark underbelly of the sex industry. Off the Streets is an inspired page turner about one undercover detective’s fight against the pimps and bad guys–who are prostituting women and girls into human trafficking.
~Aaron Cohen, author of Slave Hunter
A disconcerting and unique look into the dark side of human behavior. The traumatic bond that pimps hold over their victims is equally powerful and infinitely more violent. Det. Baughman has captured the dynamics of these hidden relationships in a graphic but eloquent manner. As a professor of forensic psychology, I am recommending this book to anyone who wants to understand more about this criminal underworld.
~ Dr. M. Alexis Kennedy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
