Video shows prostitution, gunfights on Seattle street corner as city lawmakers try to curb ‘unsafe’ problem – DNyuz

A shocking video shown to the Seattle City Council’s Public Safety Committee shows an area plagued by prostitution and several nights of gunfights.

Seattle City Councilwoman Cathy Moore is proposing a bill that would establish policies for arrests related to prostitution and loitering, and would also establish SOAP (stay out of prostitution zones). Violations of these zones could result in charges.

“This legislation seeks to disrupt the violent criminal enterprise of commercial sex trafficking by specifically targeting enforcement efforts at the buyers, the clients, and the promoters, the pimps, while emphasizing diversion to social services, safe houses and treatment for the sellers, primarily women and girls,” Moore said.

She then presented a compilation video showing a snapshot of the sex trade along Aurora Avenue in North Seattle, followed by multiple nights of gun violence that all occurred this year.

The video begins with a time-lapse showing several women being trafficked and sold on one street corner between midnight and 1am. Multiple vehicles can be seen driving through the area picking up women.

The following clip is from March 7 and was taken at the corner of N. 101st St. and Aurora Avenue N. A vehicle can be seen driving down N. 101st St. as another vehicle turns the corner and opens fire, firing over 30 shots.

On June 10, at the same location, the video shows a vehicle driving down the same road and driving away. Then, two men step onto the road and start shooting at the vehicle with their guns.

On July 6th, another shooting occurred on the same corner, this time involving prostitutes standing on the corner trying to conduct some business. Gunfire erupted when a man in a black shirt opened fire on five other individuals, who returned fire.

In the video shown during the committee meeting, Dana Mogillo, owner of Fuzzy Buddy’s Dog Daycare on Aurora Avenue, talks about the unsafe environment near her business.

“We’ve been here for 20 years… It’s become a very challenging place to run a business,” she said. “It’s unsafe. There are visible signs of crime 24/7.”

Mogillo said that a few weeks before she was filmed for the video, one of her staff members went into the parking lot and saw a sex worker hiding between two cars. After speaking with the sex worker, Mogillo’s staff member learned that another pimp had dropped off a girl to fight with the sex worker. The woman didn’t want to fight, so she hid in the parking lot. Eventually, Mogillo added, her staff member drove the frightened sex worker to another location on Aurora Avenue.

“In May, I had a woman come to my doorstep and she was terrified. She was crying. She had been kidnapped from another city,” Mogillo said. “She had been brought to this neighborhood and told to stand on the corner and make money. She was scared. She ended up hiding in my business for four hours before someone could drive her from her city to come pick her up. This is what sex trafficking looks like.”

Seattle Police Detective Maurice Washington said in the clip that one of the biggest challenges right now is the “onset of human trafficking-related incidents,” not just locally, but across the country.

In Seattle, he said, there’s an explosion of people being sexually exploited. With that, he said, all the different pimps and traffickers are fighting over territory, leading to gun violence and other types of crimes like robberies and rapes.

“All of this is fueled by the same system. It’s the same ecosystem that fuels crime,” Washington said.

Some traffickers and pimps also have ties to gangs, which introduces gang problems into the ecosystem, he explained.

“All of those things together create a very adverse and challenging situation, a very dangerous situation for our public, for our residents and citizens who live there,” Washington said.

Seattle police did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the matter.

Moore said her bill is intended to improve public safety for the residents of those neighborhoods, for the businesses trying to survive and for the students who must travel through the area to get home after being dropped off by the school bus.

“We can no longer have this level of gun violence in our city, and we can no longer have this level of sexual exploitation of people on our street corners,” Moore said.

Moore told committee members that she spoke with constituents, the YWCA, the police department’s major crimes division, the human trafficking unit and others to find out what the problems were in the area before drafting the proposed legislation.

She said that for the first time, this bill would allow police officers to go after buyers without undercover officers. She found it humiliating that women sex workers have to participate in such operations undercover.

The bill also introduces diversion for the first time, meaning officers will be able to approach sex workers and talk to them about getting help and offering professional services.

In Seattle, prostitution is illegal and Moore says many people don’t understand that prostitution is illegal.

Promoting prostitution is a crime and requires testimony from sex workers to establish a case. Testimony poses additional risks to sex workers and makes it difficult to prove the case.

Moore’s bill also directs the Department of Human Services and the mayor’s office to establish a work program that will provide advocates to work with individuals with prostitution-related convictions. The goal is to have the convictions expunged from their records so that when they apply for a job or housing, it doesn’t exist.

Moore did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

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