Amid successes in New York City's fight to drive down crime, street prostitution is a stubborn exception, reports the New York Times. Though the police deploy various stings and strategies to clean up neighborhoods, prostitution-related arrests are logged at a fairly steady clip, averaging around 4,200 per year since 2006. Market forces and the Internet have pushed some sex work off the street, to where clients with more time and more money go.
Such indoor workers include escorts, who work in brothels or independently, in their own homes; strippers who connect with prospective clients in bars and make dates for later meetings; and dominatrixes, according to a report by the Urban Justice Center's Sex Workers Project. This has not diminished the vibrancy and persistence of the old-fashioned street hustle. Using decoys armed with remote audio systems and aided by “arrest teams” and undercover officers, New York police over three days last month made 195 arrests and seized 55 vehicles in what police officials called Operation Losing Proposition. The crackdown spanned all five boroughs in 28 precincts.