Former Cop-Turned-Pastor Evangelizes the Women He Would Have Arrested in New A&E Series
Former Orange County officer, now pastor, Kevin Brown has been trying to rescue women from their lives of prostitution for several years and will now be featured on an upcoming reality series from A&E.
Brown worked as a cop for many years, often having to arrest the women he wanted to help. So after retiring from the police force, he became a full-time pastor. He began working with members of his church to run an undercover intervention operation, often finding women online and arranging meetings while members of his team were staked out in prime locations, ready to call the police should things go bad.
"This is one of those great shows that was actually happening whether anybody was shooting it or not," executive producer Tom Forman told EW.com. "Brown told his congregation that for 20 years he's had to arrest these women when what he's really wanted to do is help them. It launched a drive within his church to run these undercover operations. We read that and thought somebody should put a camera on this, it's the most incredible thing I've ever heard."
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Brown has been doing this, with an approximate 50 percent success rate. He explained that some women just can't imagine doing anything else or are too fearful of their pimps. However, those that choose to leave are whisked away, taken to a safe house, and then most likely transported out of state, where they are taken care of and followed up with. Everything has to be well-coordinated, otherwise the women, and Brown's team, are at great risk.
The show, tentatively titled "8 Minutes" reflects the amount of time Brown spends with each woman in order to convince her to leave the industry.
"Kevin has got a lot of safety protocols," Forman explained. "Before he goes in and does one of these operations, he surveys the scene … one of his other rules is they would only have eight minutes to talk to any individual girl. In his experience, she's got eight minutes in which she could return to her pimp and say, 'I got a bad feeling about that guy, he backed out, I thought he was a cop,' without having a pimp come looking for her, which could create a dangerous situation. They've got eight minutes to talk her out of prostitution. If she says yes, that's great. If after eight minutes she hasn't, they give her a phone number and tell her they'll always be there, but they cut off the intervention."
The new series will debut in 2015 on A&E.
