Seattlecrime.com's Jonah Spangenthal-Lee  has been doing a great job staying on top of the ongoing story about Seattle Police Department efforts to crack down on Village Voice Media's Backpage.com service, which, SPD says, promotes sex slavery by advertising juvenile prostitutes. In a defensive cover story (which referred to child-prostitution opponents as, among other things, "sex prohibitionists"), the Weekly argued that juvenile prostitution isn't as big a problem as McGinn and SPD have claimed. The flaw with the Weekly's argument? According to SPD, Spangenthal-Lee reports, the Weekly's numbers are wrong.

Last week, Mayor Mike McGinn wrote a letter to the head of VVM, which owns Seattle Weekly, demanding that the company "reexamine your policy" with regard to escort ads and crack down on juvenile prostitution. Morning Fizz raised questions about the Weekly ads back in March .

(McGinn did not raise similar concerns about the Weekly 's rival, The Stranger, which also runs ads for individual escorts, escort services, and phone-sex companies. The Stranger, a McGinn booster, told SeattleCrime.com that it verifies the ages of individual escorts.)

Spangenthal-Lee reports :

According to the Village Voice's story--which includes data obtained by the Seattle Weekly--Seattle Police arrested 17 juvenile prostitutes in 2007, 14 juveniles in 2008, and 16 in 2009.

However, according to the department's Vice/High-Risk Victim's unit, police actually made nearly twice as many recoveries in that same time period.

Police say they made 20 "recoveries"--the police term for rescued--in 2007, 30 in 2008, and 40 in 2009.

Village Voice's story only covers data from 2000-2009, but SPD was only able to provide recovery information for 2007-2011*. SPD also couldn't immediately tell me whether their data included juveniles arrested/recovered more than once.

I asked Seattle Weekly Managing Editor Caleb Hannan if he could explain the discrepancy between their numbers and SPD's.

In an email, Hannan wrote "The numbers we got came from SPD. That's why we're just as confused as they are."

More details in the comments on Seattlecrime.com.