Friday, December 14, 2012

Roosevelt Avenue underworld


From the Times Ledger:

Trafficking happens all around the city and the country, but the Queens neighborhoods of Jackson Heights, Corona and Flushing have been identified as key centers for the crime. City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-East Elmhurst) said with the cleanup of Times Square in the 1980s and 1990s, the criminal element moved down the No. 7 line into Queens. In these neighborhoods, johns have access to prostituted women not only from houses set up for the purpose, but from the back of vans and at bars that advertise $2 dances.

In recent years, Queens lawmakers have pushed legislation and conducted campaigns to combat sex trafficking. When asked, advocates do not have numbers for how prevalent it is in the borough, but Ferreras said she has heard often from constituents at Council hearings, at community meetings and in her daily life of sex trafficking going on in her district, especially around Roosevelt Avenue.

She said girls can be trafficked from as young as 12 and boys from as young as 10.

“It’s here. It’s a problem,” she said in an interview. “I think it happens behind closed doors. It happens in small areas of the community.”

Leticia Brown, of Girls Education and Mentoring Services, an organization aimed at helping victims, said during a panel at the Long Island University-C.W. Post in Brookville, L.I., earlier this year that the girls who are trafficked are often minorities and low-income, if not homeless or runaways.

“The girls, women I work with are deemed ‘less than’ in our society,” Brown said.

People are trafficked into the city both domestically and internationally, with victims coming into Queens from as close by as Brooklyn to as far away as Latin America and Asia via John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. Advocates say the pimps offer their victims the promise of a better life: an opportunity for work, a green card, a boyfriend.

Nassau County Police Detective John Birbiglia said pimps often set themselves up as a girl’s father, giving them gifts of clothes and jewelry or dinner before demanding they earn these gifts by sleeping with men for money of which they never see a dime. Once the pimps have the girls, they can keep them intimidated either through rape, physical abuse or threats to themselves or their families.

Some women who have been trapped in the lifestyle for years also grow up to become “top girls” who run prostitution rings, Ferreras said.

“You think this must be the movies,” Ferreras said. “This is someone’s reality.”

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Colombian DTO (Drug trafficking organizations) gave up on selling drugs. They let the Mexican ----> Dominican cartels/DTO do that.

They have moved on to a more renewable source of income, a womans vagina. Nobody gives a damn about QUeens and it is the perfect haven for prostitution.

Anonymous said...

And Councilman Peter Koo thinks that just switching from being a Republican to a Democrat will improve things in his district.

LOL!

Peter, take an English class at Zoni, please.

And we had to listen to all of the BS spewed by Flushing's leaders about the so-called blighted 1970s for years.

It's worse now than it ever was.

There was no 70s blight. It was all manufactured to enable the Taiwanese to take over Floo-shing. And so they did! So where is the promised improvement?

There is none.

Flushing is a failure and it's becoming very dangerous too!

Yet...LOL...tourists are encouraged to flock to Flushing.

Yeah....right...Flushing has become a destination of avoidance".

Anonymous said...

Between Nussbaum's Queens Trib's whore ads in Flushing...and those "chika, chika, chika" cards all over the streets of Jackson Heights...I say we should be encouraging sex tourism in Queens.

Forget about traveling to Bangkok, when you can bang your cock more locally and cheaply!

Anonymous said...

Climb aboard the time machine.

Queens Plaza; 1960s:

Mc Gowan's, "Ye Olde Dublin Pub" corner was the great spot for Manhattanites, etc. to find prostitutes.

Now it's become a flourishing industry further east
thanks to the enterprising Latinos and Asians!

Anonymous said...

What a shithole Queens has become.

Anonymous said...

Take a ride about 330am from 70 st-110st on Roosevelt ave,especially in the summer................

Anonymous said...

All the great work done by the NYPD in the mid-late 90's in that area has been completely wiped away. Sad.

Anonymous said...

Creating a historic district in Jackson Heights hasn't done shit either...except raise the costs of maintaining those buildings...which is passed on to the condo owners in the form of increased assessments and exorbitant carrying charges.

Once you leave the sequestered confines of the district...you are slapped in the face with a dose of reality...drug dealing...prostitution and some muggings!

Don't leave home after dark!

Anonymous said...

It is sickening that Mayor Bloomberg flaps on about gun control to appear like a BIG HERO on the national stage, when his human rights record should be questioned. Let middle America hear of the disgusting sanctuary city he's created that allows off the grid sex trafficking to flourish.

Anonymous said...

why dont the police start closing these dance joints..there are several places owmed by the same owners...operating under one license where is the rico law
put one business out and another five will dry up

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