The Big Apple's top cop toured the Market of Sweethearts, a sleazy immigrant market in Queens, for the first time over the weekend, vowing to crack down on sex workers and illegal traders as they openly peddle their wares around him. .
“We've always taken this seriously, but we're going to take it to the next level,” Interim NYPD Commissioner Tom Donlon said Saturday night as he and other department leaders walked through the hotbed of illegal activity on Roosevelt Street. talked about. New York City Police Department video program.
“This is my first time here and I would love to be out here again,” he told Queens North Patrol District Deputy Chief Christine Bastendenbeck. “You know, once a week, twice a week. Because this is very important and the public wants to know how we're going to address this.”
Nearby sex workers roamed the streets and immigrant vendors peddled stolen goods on the sidewalks. It's part of a burgeoning crime pattern along the Strip that is driving local residents into a frenzy, frustrated by police who can't stop the madness with regular raids.
“What's happening on Roosevelt Street is a mixed bag here,” Bastendenbeck told the commissioners. “If you look around you, you'll see people selling vending on street corners, and you'll see naked women on the street offering services and massages.
“So prostitution actually happens here,” she said. “This is a team effort that we have here working with our patrol officers and deputy officers, and it’s a tremendous collaboration to address a serious problem. [on]I'm going. ”
The Post has repeatedly reported on troubled neighborhoods where immigrant gangs have launched sex-trafficking operations and where goods stolen by them are sold.
“We appreciate the police chief's visit to Roosevelt Street,” Democratic District Chairman Hiram Monserrat, a member of the Coalition to Improve Roosevelt Street, told the Post on Sunday. “It would have been great to meet him at a community meeting last week.
“Yet, the Commissioner heeded our cries for help. This illegality did not happen overnight and has been on full display for over a year. I’m looking forward to it coming out.”
Police have brought cases to court before. In January, for example, the New York City Police Department raided more than a dozen brothels along the street and shut them down, citing “inhumane conditions.”
In September, a 24-hour brothel dubbed the “worst of the worst” was also padlocked.
There are also regular raids on illegal street vendors on sidewalks in the area, but this has not stopped them from returning after police have left.
