A residential street in San Francisco has been complaining about the number of cars that are cruising up and down the street late into the night. The cars are there because the street has somehow become a popular place for prostitutes to gather. People in the neighborhood say they don’t feel safe and frequently can’t sleep at night.
“There’s rampant prostitution on Capp street,” said one resident who did not want to reveal her name out of fear. “I wake up multiple times a week at night. My kids have missed school. I miss work. It’s the John’s in their cars, racing back and forth, turning their music on, having sideshows with their cars.”…
Neighbors told KTVU they realize many of the sex workers are being trafficked and are victims. But they want enforcement and accountability so they can simply walk outside their homes at night and raise their kids in a safe community.
“Most of us, if not all of us, don’t really have a problem with the sex workers or even their business itself,” said one neighbor. “It’s really the fact this is a residential neighborhood.”
There’s a huge sort of mental and moral gap between the second and third paragraphs above. In the second graph, neighbors realize these women are victims. In the third, they rush to assure reporters that they don’t have a moral problem with prostitution. The only way I can read it is that they simultaneously know it’s terrible but also don’t want to sound judgmental in America’s leading progressive city.
The plan to deal with the situation on Capp street, for now, is to install plastic barrels filled with water along the street to make it more difficult for cars to cruise up and down. But the San Francisco Chronicle reports some “community organizers” and at least one member of the city’s board of supervisors have another plan in mind. Why not just legalize prostitution and set up a sanctioned red light district:
As San Francisco leaders scramble to install barriers on Capp Street — hoping to divert, or at least slow down an unchecked market for sex work — some community organizers are contemplating a more controversial and far-reaching approach: creating a sanctioned red-light district.
The move has support from sex-worker advocates, Mission District residents who want the now-illicit business contained in a commercial zone and Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who broadly favors the idea but is more focused on lifting criminal penalties from the sex trade altogether. And she’s turned to Sacramento for assistance. Ronen is drafting a resolution that would urge state legislators to write a bill that would legalize sex work.
“I do feel that society’s acceptance and (ability) to get away from the morality issues is growing,” Ronen said. Resolutions at the Board of Supervisors are reflections of the board’s goals or ideals, and don’t carry the weight of a legislative mandate.
Society’s acceptance of what? Violent pimps and trafficked young women? Do we want to get away from moral condemnation of those things?
Other neighbors told us the situation has become dangerous, with presumed pimps seen violently attacking sex workers and threatening residents.
“They not only intimidate the women and manhandle them aggressively, they also sometimes intimidate the neighbors,” said one resident named Christina.
So there’s a group of women who are likely to have been trafficked, raped, beaten, robbed or threatened by pimps. Won’t legalizing prostitution just give the pimps more demand for more girls and a green light to abuse more women?
I genuinely don’t get what the thought process is here. Does Supervisor Ronen believe that the moment we remove the stigma and the threat of arrest suddenly the prostitution business will become a utopia of enlightened behavior free from trafficking and violence? I don’t think that’s how it will work.
Then again, maybe all that anyone cares about here is getting these women off their block. So long as the pimps are slapping these girls around in a non-residential neighborhood, the good progressives of San Francisco and Supervisor Ronen will be okay with it.
