HOUSTON — Houston police once again blocked off streets Tuesday night in a part of the city that is notorious for prostitution. It's the latest strategy in an attempt by the city to crack down on sex workers.
The area is commonly referred to as "The Track."
At about 4 p.m. Tuesday, "Mozzie" stood outside of an elementary school. She was getting a ticket. Wearing house slippers and a see-through mesh dress, an HPD officer was writing her a citation for being on a public street in a manner of undress.
"We’re not bad people. We just do what we do," Mozzie said.
Mozzie agreed to speak with KHOU 11 News as long as we didn’t show her face or use her real name. The self-defined sex worker tries to make as much as she can before the sun goes down. She knows what she’s doing is unsafe.
"One of my friends just got killed a few days ago," Mozzie said. "I’m sorry, but it just scares me a lot because I have a kid. So, like when I see stuff like that, we don’t have to do nothing to people to be treated as such, just because of what we do."
Mozzie said police have recently stepped up their enforcement effort on The Track. HPD started a new operation last week, cutting off some of the side streets along Bissonnet overnight. The streets are those walked the most by the sex workers on the southwest side.
"No, I don’t think that’s going to stop anything," Mozzie said.
Bimbola Oguajinmi owns Finger Licking, a restaurant off Bissonnet Street.
"In about one week, the difference is significant," he said.
Oguajinmi has been there for about 21 years and said the new efforts are working.
"They want to use the bathroom, so a half-naked person or virtually naked woman will just enter your restaurant, and sometimes they’re very aggressive, too," he said. "But in recent times, they’ve disappeared. I mean I don’t see any of them around in the last few days."
Video taken from inside of his restaurant during an altercation with one of the women shows the woman pepper-spraying an employee. Now, he’s hopeful they won’t have to experience anything like that again.
"In the early 90s, the Bissonnet corridor was a thriving area. We had banks, we had restaurants, but over time, it’s just deteriorated, and a lot of that has to do with the prostitution, the drugs and the gangs," Houston city councilmember Edward Pollard said. "People don’t deserve to live in a community like that."
Pollard helped bring the HPD enforcement operation to his district. He said he hopes to keep it in place as long as the city will allow. Christina Hsu is one of the owners of an office building off of Bissonnet. She said the sex workers and the Johns have been using her parking garage as a bedroom.
"The problem is not just prostitutes alone," Hsu said. "It’s the buyers. The buyers are here. If there’s no buyer, there won’t be any prostitutes."
She said the barricades have already cut out the demand side of the equation.
"That will tell the buyers that the street is closed," Hsu said. "They don’t need to come here."
Houston police officers stay along the barricaded streets overnight until the sun comes up. Police said the operation will continue indefinitely, for now.