(NewsNation) — Recent news reports about the sex-trafficking of minors in a notorious Los Angeles red-light district have circled back to a California legislative reform that critics and observers say has resulted in unintended consequences.
In July 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the “Safer Streets for All Act” (SB 357), which barred police from arresting suspected prostitutes who loiter in public. Proponents of the measure said the law, which took effect in 2023, would end harassment of suspected sex workers, including transgender women, thus cutting down on the targeting of females and minorities.
At the time, Newsom — a Democrat widely seen as a 2028 presidential contender — said the legislation was meant to stop the “disproportionate harassment of women and transgender adults,” but he didn’t rule out future legislative review to mitigate “any possible unintended consequences.”
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More than three years later, bombshell articles suggest those unforeseen results may have arrived.
LA red-light district is known as ‘Kiddie Stroll’
In an investigative piece published this month, The New York Times detailed the prevalence of scantily clad, underage sex workers being trafficked in L.A.’s notorious South Figueroa Street corridor. That area of the city is known also as “the Blade” and by the nickname coined by local prosecutors: the “Kiddie Stroll.”
The paper said many of the girls are former foster children recruited by traffickers from group homes, either by conning them through brief romances or by brutalizing them up front.
Under the California law change, the NYT said, uniformed officers can no longer round up suspected prostitutes with the intent of recovering a minor among them. Officers instead must suspect that each girl is underage, a near-impossible standard when the loitering females are wearing adult attire and makeup.
The New York Post, which did its own exposé, said SB 357 prohibits police from approaching a trafficked minor based on how they are dressed, even if that minor is wearing lingerie.
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Stephany Powell, a former L.A. sergeant in the vice division and anti-trafficking advocate, told the Post the California law change ended up sending signals to pimps to “work those girls even harder.”
Federal prosecutors in August announced racketeering charges against members of a South Los Angeles criminal gang who “largely controlled sex trafficking and prostitution in Figuero Corridor.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office said gang members focused on minor girls and young women.
“The exploitation of vulnerable women and children through sex trafficking is one of the most heinous crimes our society faces,” Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said in a news release announcing the charges. “The victims in this case — many of them minors, runaways, or from the foster care system — were preyed upon by individuals who sought to profit from their pain.”
