Prostitution blights a part of Raleigh's heart

RALEIGH -- On a chilly Tuesday at noon, three female prostitutes stand in the middle of East Lane Street flagging down cars that circle their corner. It's a slow day by neighborhood standards.

A heavy-set woman in a ski cap waves from a bus stop and occasionally picks through the trash can. A second woman in tight jeans and high heels dances in the street. No takers. A third, haggard-looking woman joins her, then moves up the street to a block with more traffic.

Much of Raleigh's street prostitution can be traced to this corner of Southeast Raleigh, just six blocks from the governor's mansion. Of Raleigh's 966 police reports for prostitution from 2001 to this past summer, 815 can be traced to a handful of streets nearby.

Street prostitution has long plagued the city's poorest neighborhoods near main thoroughfares, but residents are dismayed by how openly it thrives.

"There's women getting into cars at the same corners as kids waiting for the bus," said Joyce Kelly, who lives a few houses off East Lane. "They ride through at lunchtime, guys getting off work. They're not from here. You know they wouldn't let this happen in North Raleigh."

The scene embarrasses residents.

"My niece was here the other day and wanted to know what was that lady doing half-naked," said Robert Johnson, a retired police officer from New York who lives on East Lane. "I had to tell her she was a bad lady."

Police Chief Harry Dolan said he shares the neighbors' frustration. Officers know 60 regular prostitutes who work the streets in Southeast Raleigh, he said. Stopping them takes more than arrests. Roughly 90 percent of the women have suffered mental or physical abuse, he said, and nearly all are addicted to cocaine -- readily available in nearby crack houses.

Police point to a drop in prostitution arrests and to a new emphasis on finding treatment for chronic prostitutes who suffer from mental illness and addiction. Most have a casual attitude toward being briefly jailed for a misdemeanor. By this time last year, police had charged 209 people with prostitution, compared with 120 this year.

Progress, though, is hard to gauge. Police spokesman Jim Sughrue said a decline in arrests doesn't necessarily translate into a decline in prostitution. That depends on the frequency of stings and other crackdowns, which take manpower and timing.

Police try to run undercover stings once a month, said Kristen Rosselli, strategic initiatives manager for Raleigh police. In April, one such sting took 14 officers -- three undercover, 11 providing backup. After six hours, those officers made eight arrests.

"I think that citizens' concerns are very legitimate," Dolan said. "Police can do more. Citizens can do more. ... It's got to be a full, wraparound approach, not just how many prostitutes and johns can be arrested."

But police programs ebb and flow.

In 2003, the city started putting arrested johns' pictures on public-access television and the city's Web site. Over the past month, neither the TV program nor the Web site has shown a single john. Police haven't arrested any lately, Rosselli said.

Meanwhile, the area is becoming an increasingly open market for prostitution. Residents report women in the street waving red jackets, matador-style, at passing cars.

Word of Southeast Raleigh's reputation has spread through technology. Women frequently arrange liaisons via Craigslist.com. Men swap stories about random pickups on usasexguide.info.

On that Internet site, 20 men recently chatted freely about women they hired along two corridors in Raleigh: Jones/Lane streets and Garner Road/Bragg Street.