Top NYPD brass and Mayor Eric Adams announced an action plan on Tuesday night to clean up seedy parts of Queens’ Roosevelt Avenue that have been plagued with prostitution activity in recent years.
“Operation Restore Roosevelt” brings together multiple city agencies to combat prostitution, illegal brothels and unlicensed vendors along the corridor in Corona.
“Every person who lives and works along the Roosevelt Avenue corridor deserves a clean, safe neighborhood, and that is what this multi-agency enforcement operation is going to deliver,” interim Police Commissioner Thomas Donlon said. “We are listening to the concerns of this community and finding permanent solutions to longstanding public safety and quality-of-life issues.”
Mayor Adams concurred, adding that “this road should be the pride of our city, but for too long, it has been plagued by persistent public safety and quality-of-life issues.”
“We won’t allow this to continue any longer,” he insisted.
The operation on Roosevelt Avenue goes through the neighborhoods of Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona and is expected to last 90 days, with officials focusing on combating sex trafficking and prostitution. Several residents who gathered at the location on Tuesday expressed skepticism about the initiative’s effectiveness, noting that prostitution and other illicit operations tend to return shortly after recent police raids.
But police officials insisted on Tuesday night that they were working on long-term solutions to end the dirty deeds on Roosevelt Avenue once and for all.
“Let me assure you that we have anticipated this problem,” NYPD Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry said. “This is why the NYPD has partnered with the multiple agencies that you see behind me, as represented here today, to provide long-term, permanent solutions to those problems. We will be monitoring adjacent neighborhoods and ensuring that these operations lead to continuous change. We are not simply going to put a band-aid on this issue. We are here to create lasting security for the community in this neighborhood.”
In addition to the NYPD, “Operation Restore Roosevelt” will also include assistance from agencies, including the NYC Sheriff’s Office, Buildings Department, New York State Police, and more. Additionally, the Department of Social Services will offer aid to women who are being trafficked in the area for prostitution activities. the mayor’s office said.
But more must be done beyond greater enforcement activities to protect the women forced into prostitution, according to Sonia Ossorio, president of the National Organization of Women.
“Our women are not for sale,” Ossorio declared. “That is what we have to do to keep our community safe. We are also asking the New York Legislature to repeal the five-year statute of limitations on sex trafficking. For all the work that we are out here doing, we cannot even prosecute these criminals within a short window of five years when so many of the girls and women are recruited and lured into the sex trade. It happens when they’re still girls, when they’re teenagers. And that’s not right.”
