New York neighborhood overrun by brothels in broad daylight

A street in Corona, Queens, has become the city’s most daring open-air sex market, one so popular with perverts that it’s advertised on YouTube.

As police enforcement decreases and immigration increases, nearly a dozen brothels have set up along Roosevelt Avenue near Junction Boulevard.

On a recent weekday in broad daylight, dozens of scantily clad pedestrians brazenly begged passersby, including a Post reporter, as sidewalks filled with children and legitimate shoppers and merchants.

One sex worker offered a “happy ending” massage for $40 and another offered “full body massages” for $80.

The women hang out outside pool halls, dentist shops and massage parlors day and night, and even recruit neighborhood kids to hand out their X-rated business cards, concerned mothers told The Post.

“How come this king is walking by in broad daylight?” a law enforcement source asked after seeing photos of the women on the street.

“Supposedly, they’re not allowed to arrest prostitutes anymore. But they have to figure something out.”

It’s a perfect storm for prostitution in Corona and other New York immigrant enclaves, experts say.

Vulnerable migrant women who cannot legally work are flooding the city, while local prosecutors have opted not to prosecute sex workers.

The Post found that the oldest profession has some new tricks:

• Roosevelt Avenue’s red light district is brazenly advertised on a Spanish-speaking YouTube channel, with 10 minutes of footage showing women working what they call the “Love Market” and two men guiding viewers on how to bargain with them.

• The brothels seem to be cooperating, rather than competing. While The Post spoke with a sex worker, others nearby filmed and photographed, appearing to warn each other of the reporters’ presence.

• It doesn’t just happen in the dark of night or inside massage parlors. The women were found plying their trade in the middle of the afternoon, in front of a dental clinic, a pool hall and a barber shop.

• Cops don’t arrest prostitutes anymore. The NYPD started focusing on johns a few years ago after a tragic hooker jumped to his death during a police chase. In April 2021, then-Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance announced that his office would stop prosecuting sex workers, and other city prosecutors soon followed suit.

• Brothels and sex workers are actively recruiting children. Some have them hand out cards with a photo of a sex worker offering “delivery service,” according to the terrified mothers, about 20 of whom have banded together to form the Young Values ​​and Principles Community in Corona.

“I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never seen it get to this point,” said City Councilman Francisco Moya (D-Corona), who is sounding the alarm on the issue and says he has asked help Mayor Adams.

Moya was particularly outraged by the video “Market of Lovers” by the group Comunidad Latina En Usa, which has more than 19,000 subscribers on YouTube.

The two male guides in the clip are seen asking a Corona sex worker, “How much, like, is a happy ending?”

The woman replies, “$200.”

“$200 with everything?” the man marvels, before telling the audience: “That’s what this service costs here in New York. And how much does it cost in your city?”

Moya enthused: “It’s put on Facebook, YouTube, and it says, ‘Here you have a destination to come, you know, to learn how to negotiate with prostitutes.’ And they are literally telling you the price of any sexual act they are willing to perform. It is simply unheard of. It’s in plain sight.”

He added, “We need to enforce here to clean up Roosevelt Avenue . . . because no community should have to face the quality of life issues that we face every day.”

At least six alleged brothels have been shut down since June by the Queens district attorney through nuisance abatement, which allows prosecutors to impose large fines and year-long closures, but police and locals say the effort barely it hurt

“You’re seeing hookers in a central area,” a law enforcement source told The Post.

“So your kids are there. It’s not fair to the people who live there.”

While human traffickers have long provided the local sex industry with a steady stream of Asian and Central American women trying to escape horrific conditions in their homelands, the recent flood of migrants in the five districts has created a bigger and more desperate potential. prostitutes

“Are we. . . aware of the fact that many young people have immigrated here – 15 or 16 year olds – and they are not going to school, they are working, and these [prostitutes] find them and throw them away”, said Guadalupe Aguirre Gomez, coordinator of Community of Values ​​and Young Principles.

Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, said, “There are trafficking cartels from Mexico and Central America that are sending women to Queens and parts of Brooklyn.

“I talked to a young girl in Sunset Park [Brooklyn]. He said that he has seen vans at night picking up women from the reception centers that welcome these new immigrants.

Women’s campaigner Jane Manning said migrants “are at high risk” of being lured into the sex trade.

“It is more difficult to get a book job if you are undocumented. It’s harder because you’re away from family and friends. It’s harder because you might not speak English. For all kinds of reasons, being an immigrant makes you more vulnerable,” he said.

While authorities said they targeted pimps, pimps and dealers, locals say enforcement in Corona is non-existent.

So far this year, there have been no sex-trafficking arrests in the 110th or 115th NYPD precincts, which cover Corona as well as Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, and a combined six prostitution arrests in both enclosures.

All of last year, there were two arrests for sex trafficking between the 110th and 115th precincts and only five were handcuffed for prostitution.

“The NYPD has proactively changed the work of law enforcement in recent years, reflecting our ongoing efforts to accurately target those who would buy sex or promote its sale,” said a spokesperson for the NYPD. NYPD.

“We have significantly reduced the number of arrests for prostitution because we work in every case to connect victims of human trafficking with the services they need.”

“We have also worked to proactively deter individual buyers of sex,” the spokesperson added.

“However, prostitution in all its forms remains prohibited by law. The NYPD is deployed where crimes are reported, in response to community complaints, and we enforce the law impartially.”

Meanwhile, there have been no prostitution convictions since 2020 in Queens, which has long been a center for trafficking due in part to the borough’s two airports.

“District Attorney [Melinda] Katz created a Bureau of Human Trafficking to aggressively pursue the real criminals in the commercial sex industry, the traffickers,” a spokesperson for the Queens District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

“Instead of treating enslaved sex workers as criminals, as used to be the case, we connect trafficking survivors with meaningful services to empower them to escape their exploitation.”

“Last year, we secured 22 felony sex trafficking and rape charges related to the sex trafficking of women and underage children. Of those convictions, 12 were for the crime of child sex trafficking, which is say, that the victims were between 13 and 17 years old.”

“We will continue to hold accountable those responsible for forcing these victims into the sex trade and will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”

Gómez, the local activist, insisted: “We want something done about the prostitutes, because [police] they pretty much allow that to happen here.”

On Thursday, Queens North leaders went to Compstat at Police Plaza to discuss with the NYPD what to do about the sex trade issues in Corona.