Sunday saw workers and residents decry the hookers flourishing on a Queens street.
“The police do nothing — nothing!” fumed Anna Garcia to the New York Post. She works at a cellphone store along the seedy stretch of Roosevelt Avenue in Corona dubbed the “Market of Sweethearts.”
“Drugs, prostitution, alcohol — it’s terrible,” she said, speaking of the “underground” red-light district taking over the neighborhood filled with families with children.
Residents said the cops spend more time hassling street vendors than the prostitutes who have set up shop on the once-peaceful block.
“I have younger kids,” said mother of six Maria Valle, 40, to the Post. “One is 14, one is 8, and one is 5. And these girls, they try to pull them in and sell them their services. Even the kids! They’re really forceful about it.”
In an exclusive report Saturday, the publication revealed that nearly a dozen brothels have popped up in the neighborhood. The NYPD said to them in a statement, “The NYPD has proactively shifted the work of vice enforcement in recent years, reflecting our ongoing efforts to focus with precision on those who would purchase sex or promote its sale.”
