I do find it amusing any time the police get involved in some sort of investigation or raid on street prostitutes anywhere in this country because their public presentation is always one of being completely shocked that someone would engage in this sort of business practice and it is always the foreigners that they focus on.
Love it or hate it, prostitution is very much alive in Thailand and you don't have to go to seedy parts of town in order to encounter it. It also is not a foreigner-exclusive sort of thing although those are the only times that these arrests seem to happen and it is certainly the only time that the busts make the news.
There is, in virtually every single city in Thailand, very well-known red-light districts that are open and not even trying to conceal what sort of business goes on there and they are staffed 99% by Thai nationals. Yet it is always something really offensive and shameful when the women involved are foreigners.
So according to reports there was a roaming group of Vietnamese and "Russian-looking" young women that were approaching people offering their services on the streets and local people were concerned about the negative image that this was getting the area. I find this excuse / explanation pretty damn funny and also kind of sad that the police would think that anyone would believe this explanation when the area in question is extremely well-known for being a prozzy part of town. It is near Nana Plaza which if you have ever been to Bangkok, you are almost certainly aware of the fact that this massive complex is basically a 4-story complex specializing in ladies of the night.
Everyone knows what goes on in this part of town including and especially the police who definitely are receiving kickbacks and payoffs to ignore the fact that these sorts of services that this place and hundreds of other places just like it are offering are illegal.
The real problem here was not that the Vietnamese and "Russian-looking" women were engaging in the world's oldest profession, it was a problem because they were not part of the system where money ends up in the hands of the business owners, the pimps, and the police. It's all just so pathetic when the police try to pretend as though they are actually enforcing any sort of law here. what they are really doing is preventing people from doing something illegal when they, the police, are not financially benefiting from it themselves.
The pictures of these women being forced to sit around a police station while they fill out a bunch of paperwork (Thai officials LOVE paperwork) is something that is annoying for me to see. These people all posed for the picture so that they can pretend as though they are genuinely enforcing some sort of law and that's why the faces of the officials are not blurred out. They want to be seen as being protectors of the purity of Thailand when the reality is that they could bar "red-light activities" anytime they want to but don't because it makes their bosses a ton of money.
You also need to understand the laughably light penalty that comes the direction of the women themselves when they get picked up and arrested. They face, and I promise I am not making this up, a "fine of up to 1000 Baht." That's like $30 and I can guarantee that this money never makes it to the other end of that paper trail.
We don't really have a free press here in Thailand and the official news stories that you can read online by any sort of registered publication is always going to present it as the police being protectors and interested in cleaning up the illegal parts of this country. The official press would never present the police as being the sole reason why this industry continues to thrive in the first place.
They also have to report only on the foreigners getting arrested for this in order to create a laughably false story about this being a foreigner-dominated illegal activity.
If you spend just a bit of time here, you are going to see how widespread this employment actually is and how virtually all of the people involved are Thai nationals.
The foreigners get "busted" periodically merely because they are foreigners. After they pay their fine they will be back to the streets, perhaps shuffled to a new area for a while by their pimps, and nothing will change. These areas are territorial, and these girls were probably operating on someone else's "turf" and therefore had to be made an example of.