By Karl Fischer
Contra Costa Times
RICHMOND, Calif. — The woman in gray knew the drill. But the one with the green hoodie needed advice.
You’re going to a restaurant? Really?
“You know you got to be honest about what you are doing out here,” Richmond police Officer Daniel Sanchez said to the first, before turning to the woman with the fur-lined hood. “And you have got to learn. If you come out here again, I’m going to be here.”
Sanchez spied the duo as the sun set on 23rd Street, sauntering past a coin laundry in a not-so-subtle search of a buyer for their well-displayed assets.
“See!” complained the woman in gray, a smile on her 19-year-old face. “I can’t even walk down the street without getting stopped.”
She smiled because she knew Sanchez only wanted to chat tonight. But she also knows that jail looms, the more he sees of her.
Once a local prostitute stroll, Richmond’s 23rd Street now attracts women and customers from all over the Bay Area, from Santa Clara to Sonoma counties. Some even come from out of state. Police say old crime management methods no longer fit the need, nor the needs of streetwalkers -- often victims themselves.
So 23rd, once a backdrop for infrequent sting-and-bust operations, now gets full-time attention from Sanchez and his partner, officer Daniel Campos. They prowl the corridor, usually on bicycle, acting as living scarecrows for the shop owners.
“A few months ago, I thought I was going to have to move,” said Ali Mohamed Essa, who runs Mi Tierra Super Mercado on 23rd near Barrett Avenue. “But these guys are great. I don’t see girls no more. I see them.”
The officers watch for the women who stand out from the usual shoppers and stroller-pushers. Waving at cars, lifting shirts or just hanging out on the street without doing much can attract attention.
Some dress scantily, others for the cold. But fear in the eyes seems universal when police pop up.
The concern usually turns into surprise, however, because the officers rarely jail newcomers unless there is a warrant for their arrest or they carry drugs.
Instead, the officers ask if they need help. They chat with the women, extracting as much information as possible. Most admit their purpose, even discuss their rates and customer preferences.
“Eighty (dollars), OK?” said one girl from Alameda with pink streaks in her hair. “For anything. Everything.”
She turned 18 in November.
This horrifies business owners. Although 23rd Street has drawn prostitutes for nearly 30 years, it more recently became a prosperous hub for legal merchants, predominantly Latino shop owners serving families.
For years prostitution was arguably their top civic gripe. They felt ignored until Sanchez and Campos arrived in January.
“When they are not here, we see a lot of difference,” said Rigo Mendoza, who once expected to find used condoms when he opened his car lot Monday mornings at 23rd and Esmond Avenue. “They should have more officers.”
The officers depend on that enthusiasm to keep their phones ringing. Tips drive much of their success in shooing off the sex workers and building criminal cases against the persistent ones.
Sanchez and Campos catalog the information in dozens of files on individual women. They have amassed more than 50 files so far; records show police stopped 98 prostitution suspects citywide, many repeatedly, during the first seven months of 2010.
Warnings usually suffice -- Sanchez estimates that nine out of 10 never return to 23rd -- but a handful become prosecution projects.
Others become projects of a different sort.
Sanchez, a former sex-crimes detective, says most prostitutes he meets were abused as children. Many now suffer daily beatings and sexual exploitation by pimps, or grapple with drugs. Most have numerous arrests, usually for prostitution, drugs or property crimes.
The exploitation shows more on 23rd than other local strolls because the women are young. The streetwalkers tend toward late teens or early 20s. Police have met girls as young as 13 on the popular Richmond strip.
“When we look at the prior records of many of these women, we see dozens of contacts and arrests for prostitution and other crimes,” said Lt. Mark Gagan, who supervises Sanchez and Campos. “At no time did any of those contacts alter the reality of those women.”
Intervention works better than incarceration, in other words. So the department now works with Community Violence Solutions, a nonprofit that runs the county rape crisis center, to solidify connections between the women and social services.
The partnership remains unrefined. But police hope to become points of contact for women in need of mental health, addiction or domestic violence counseling, job programs, halfway houses and help with other problems that draw them to the street.
As in other established strolls, overcoming the mistrust and disinterest of the women presents an obstacle. Prostitutes working 23rd generally do not consider themselves victims, at least not victims who require outside help.
“Why do you do this job? Don’t you want to help people?” the girl with the pink streaks asked Sanchez. “I ain’t going to be ho-ing my whole life. I want to be an RN. I ain’t going to be out here when I’m 50.”
Word-of-mouth and websites advertising prostitution perpetuate the stroll. That community regards 23rd as a place with relatively safe clientele -- usually, Latino laborers carrying ready cash -- young hookers and, until recently, lax policing.
Some prostitutes journey farther to work 23rd. Two of six women stopped during a two-hour stretch Wednesday recently had been arrested in Los Angeles. A third had worked in Florida and Tennessee.
“I need money. That’s it,” said the girl with the pink streaks. “Do not call my mom, OK?”
Copyright 2010 Contra Costa Newspapers