Shocking video shown to the Seattle City Council’s Public Safety Committee shows a neighborhood plagued by prostitution and gunfire over several nights.
Seattle City Council Member Cathy Moore has proposed a bill to create Prostitution Area No-Go Zones (SOAPs) that would establish policies governing arrests for prostitution and loitering and could result in prosecution for violations.
“This bill seeks to disrupt the violent criminal enterprise of the commercial sex industry with a particular focus on cracking down on buyers and pimps, while emphasizing the diversion of prostitutes, primarily women and girls, to social services, safe havens and treatment,” Moore said.
She then released an edited video that showed snapshots of a sex trafficking incident along Aurora Boulevard in North Seattle earlier this year, followed by several nights of gun violence.
Bills proposed in Democratic-run states would make schoolyard and sports fights punishable as felonies.
The hour-long time-lapse video showed several sex workers being sold and trafficked north of Seattle.
The video begins with a time-lapse footage showing several women being trafficked and sold on one corner between midnight and 1 a.m. Several cars can be seen driving through the area and picking up the women.
The following video was taken on March 7th at the corner of N. 101st St. and Aurora Avenue N. A vehicle is traveling on N. 101st St. when another vehicle turns the corner and begins firing, with more than 30 gunshots ringing out.
Video taken in the same location on June 10 shows a car traveling on the same road speeding away, then two men run out onto the road and begin firing handguns at the car.
Masked thief roams streets near Seattle school, attacks students: police
The Seattle City Council was shown video of the multiple shootouts near Aurora Boulevard on the city’s north side. (Seattle City)
Another shootout occurred on the same corner on July 6th, this time as prostitutes were standing on the corner preparing to do business when a man in a black shirt opened fire on five other people, who returned fire, sparking a shootout.
In a video shown during the commission meeting, Dana Mogilo, owner of Fuzzy Buddies Dog Daycare on Aurora Street, spoke about the unsafe atmosphere near her business.
“We’ve lived there for 20 years and it has become a very difficult place to do business,” she said. “It’s not safe. There are visible signs of crime at all times of the day and night.”
Jury awards $700,000 to Seattle protester jailed for writing anti-police slogans on barricades in chalk
The Seattle City Council was shown video of multiple shootouts near Aurora Boulevard in the north city. (Seattle City)
Mogillo said that a few weeks before the video, one of his staff members went to the parking lot and saw a prostitute hiding between two cars. After speaking with the prostitute, Mogillo’s staff learned that another pimp had dropped the girl off to fight the prostitute. The woman didn’t want to fight, so she hid in the parking lot. Eventually, Mogillo’s staff drove the frightened prostitute to another location on Aurora Boulevard, Mogillo added.
“Another woman came to my house in May, scared, crying. She’d been kidnapped from another town,” Mogilo said. “They brought her to this neighborhood and told her to stand on the corner and make money. She was scared. She ended up hiding in my store for four hours until someone drove from her town to pick her up. This is sex trafficking in action.”
Detective Maurice Washington of the Seattle Police Department said in the video that one of the biggest challenges right now is the “expanding number of human trafficking-related incidents” both locally and across the country.
Seattle business owner warns of violent crimes happening almost every hour: ‘This is insanity’
Seattle Police Department (Jenna Martin/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Seattle has seen an explosion in the number of people being sexually exploited, he said, as different pimps and traffickers fight over turf, leading to gun violence, robberies, rapes and other crimes.
“All of this is happening through the same system, the same ecosystem that facilitates crime,” Washington said.
He explained that some traffickers and pimps have ties to gangs, which brings gang issues into the ecosystem.
“All of these things combine to create a very adverse and difficult situation. A very dangerous situation for our people, our residents and the citizens that live there,” Washington said.
Seattle police did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital for this story.
After shootings, Seattle parents regret school expulsion of police officers in 2020: “Who is protecting our babies?”
Seattle City Council Member Cathy Moore has introduced a bill aimed at targeting pimps and sex traffickers. (Seattle City)
Moore said her proposed bill is aimed at ensuring public safety for residents who live in those areas, businesses trying to survive and students who have to travel through the area after getting off their school buses and getting home.
“We cannot allow this level of gun violence to continue in our city, and we cannot allow this level of sexual exploitation of human beings to continue on our street corners,” Moore said.
Moore told committee members that before introducing the bill, he spoke with constituents, the YWCA, the police department’s major crimes unit, human trafficking unit and others to find out what the issues surrounding the area are.
She noted that for the first time, the bill would allow police officers to track sex johns without using undercover officers, and that it was humiliating for women to have to take part in undercover operations as sex workers.
Seattle anti-Israel protesters delay campus rally amid lack of diversity: report
The Seattle City Council was shown video of multiple shootouts near Aurora Boulevard in the north city. (Seattle City)
The bill makes provision for gender reassignment for the first time and allows police officers to approach sex workers to discuss providing support and specialised services.
Prostitution is illegal in Seattle, and Moore said many people don’t realize that it’s illegal.
Promoting prostitution is a felony and requires testimony from sex workers to prove a case, which puts sex workers at even higher risk and makes the case harder to prove.
Click here to get the FOX News app
Moore’s bill also directs the city’s social services department and the mayor’s office to create a work program that would provide advocates to help people with prostitution-related convictions with the goal of expunging the convictions from their records so they appear conviction-free when applying for jobs or housing.
Moore did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
