Six New York City massage parlors suspected of operating as brothels were shut down Thursday during a raid by the New York City Police Department in Corona, Queens, according to Mayor Eric Adams.
Roosevelt Avenue residents and business owners had long been aware of the purported criminal prostitution activities, City Councilman Francisco Moya said at a briefing held just prior to the searches. Following Moya’s communication to Adams of his constituents’ concerns, the mayor put together a team of law enforcement and city officials to monitor the massage parlors – one of them situated just 50 feet away from a school – for possible sex trafficking activity.
“Sex trafficking is real, and these horrid conditions make it clear why the New York City Police Department is not going to city idly by and pretend that it does not happen,” Adams said.
Around 1:30 a.m., police and city officials conducted a neighborhood surveillance and discovered the brothels operating in “full effect.” After obtaining court orders, they returned in the afternoon and closed at least six massage parlors.
“We will come, we will send out under covers and we will do everything within the law to shut you down,” NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said. “If you open up again, under a different name, we’re going to repeat the process again. Come back and shut you down again.”
“We don’t want to lock up the women that work here, we want to get them help,” Daughtry said. “Our job as the police department is to help them get the services that they need so they don’t have to do this. There’s other types of work here in New York City that they can do besides doing this.”
Neither the women nor the owners of the purported brothels were taken into custody.
