Proposed legislation aims to disrupt violent criminal enterprise associated with the commercial sex trade
Video shows prostitution and gun violence in downtown Seattle
Video presented during a Seattle Public Safety Committee Special Meeting on Aug. 13, 2024, shows prostitution and gun violence at a downtown corner. (Credit: Seattle Public Safety Committee)
A shocking video shown to the Seattle City Council’s Public Safety Committee depicts an area plagued by prostitution and multiple nights of gunfights.
Seattle City Councilmember Cathy Moore is proposing legislation that establishes policies that govern arrests involving prostitution and loitering, as well as creating Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution (SOAP) zones, that if violated, could result in charges.
"This legislation seeks to disrupt the violent criminal enterprise of the commercial sex trade by specifically focusing enforcement efforts on the buyers, who are the johns, and the promoters, who are the pimps, while emphasizing diversion to social services, safe houses and treatment for the sellers, mostly women and girls," Moore said.
She then presented a compilation video giving a snapshot of the sex trade along Aurora Avenue in North Seattle, followed by multiple nights of gun violence all having taken place this year.
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A one-hour time lapse video showed several sex workers get sold and trafficked in north Seattle.
The video opens with a time-lapse showing several women being trafficked and sold on a single corner between midnight and 1 a.m. Several vehicles are seen driving through the area and picking up women.
The next clip was from March 7, and was taken at the corner of N. 101st St. and Aurora Avenue N. A vehicle is seen driving down N. 101st St., as another vehicle turns the corner and opens fire with more than 30 shots ringing out.
At the same location on June 10, the video shows a vehicle driving down the same road and speeding off before two men step into the roadway and start firing their pistols at the vehicle.
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The Seattle City Council was shown a video of multiple gunfights breaking out near Aurora Avenue in the northern portion of the Washington city. (City of Seattle)
A shootout took place at the same corner again on July 6, this time with prostitutes standing on the corner trying to drum up some business. The gunfire erupted when a man wearing 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, spoke about the unsafe atmosphere near her business.
"We’ve been there for 20 years… It’s become a very challenging place to run a business," she said. "It is unsafe. There’s visible signs of crime day and night."
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Seattle City Council was shown a video of multiple gunfights breaking out near Aurora Avenue in the northern portion of the city. (City of Seattle)
Mogillo said a couple of weeks before she was recorded 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 another pimp dropped a girl off to fight the sex worker. The woman did not want to fight, so she was hiding in the parking lot. Ultimately, Mogillo added, her staffer ended up driving the scared sex worker to another location on Aurora Avenue.
"I had another woman show up at my door in May who was terrified. She was crying. She had been abducted from another city," Mogillo said. "She had been brought to this neighborhood and told to go stand on the corner and make money. She was scared. She ended up hiding in my business for four hours before someone could drive from her town over here to pick her up. This is what sex trafficking looks like."
Detective Maurice Washington of the Seattle Police Department said in the clip that one of the greatest challenges right now is there is an "onslaught of trafficking-related incidents," not just locally, but around the country.
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Seattle police department, SPD (GENNA MARTIN/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
In Seattle, he said, there is an explosion number of people being sexually exploited. With that, he said, all the different pimps and traffickers are fighting over the territory, which leads to gun violence and other types of crimes like robberies and rapes.
"All of this is fed through the same system. It is the same ecosystem that feeds crime," Washington said.
Some of the traffickers and pimps are also associated with gangs, which introduces gang issues into the ecosystem, he explained.
"All of those things feed together into a very adverse and challenging situation, a very dangerous situation for our public, for our residents and citizens who live up there," Washington said.
The Seattle Police Department did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the matter.
Seattle city councilperson Cathy Moore introduced legislation targeting pimps and sex traffickers. (City of Seattle)
Moore said her proposed legislation is intended to help get a handle on public safety for the residents who live in those neighborhoods, for the businesses that are trying to survive, and the students who have to travel through the area to get home after being dropped off by the school bus.
"We cannot continue to have this level of gun violence in our city, nor can we have this continue to have this level of sexual exploitation of human beings on our street corners," Moore said.
Moore told the committee members she spoke with constituents, the YWCA, the police department’s Major Crimes unit, the Human Trafficking unit and others to find out what the issues surrounding the area were, before producing the proposed legislation.
She said this bill, for the first time, allows police officers to go after the buyers without the use of undercover officers, which she noted is degrading that women have to participate in undercover stings as sex workers.
Seattle City Council was shown a video of multiple gunfights breaking out near Aurora Avenue in the northern portion of the city. (City of Seattle)
The bill also offers diversion for the first time, meaning, it gives officers the ability to approach sex workers and talk about getting them help and offering professional services.
In Seattle, prostitution is illegal, and according to Moore, many people do not understand that prostitution is illegal.
Promoting prostitution is a felony and requires testimony from the sex workers to establish a case. Testimony puts additional heightened risk on the sex workers, and it makes it difficult to prove the case.
Moore’s bill also directs the city’s Human Services Department and mayor’s office to create a work program that will provide advocates who work with individuals with prostitution-related convictions. The goal is to have the convictions scrubbed from their record so when they apply for a job or housing, it does not exist.
Moore did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital for comment.
Greg Wehner is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital.
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