Prostitution

HOOKERS NOW IN W-B'S SIGHTS

Beefed-Up Police Ranks Help The City Address Residents' Complaints

WILKES-BARRE -- Mike Scott can flip through his "to do" list and show you
just what was on his agenda last week.

For Thursday, Aug. 18, about halfway down the page, appears an unlikely
item for a manager of an auto parts shop:

"Call police about hookers -- they're still walking by."

From behind the big plate-glass windows at Rides & Rhythms, Scott has a
clear view of the prostitutes who often get picked up by johns in a parking
lot just across South Main Street, he says.

"I know the city's trying."

But he sees the women when he comes to work just before 8 a.m. and he sees
them again in the early evening. They even tried to solicit a crew of
window cleaners who came to give the expansive display windows a once-over.

It's a persistent problem that has only gotten worse since the store opened
in October, he says.

The day after complaining about prostitutes made Scott's to-do list -- and
about a week after a citizens' group appeared in city council chambers to
raise a cry about the number of "quality-of-life" crimes in the city, the
city launched a prostitution sting.

It was the first such operation of the year. Police Chief Gerry Dessoye
couldn't recall if there had been a similar sting last year.

But the operation's timing was determined more by increasing manpower on
the police force than by residents' complaints. It had been planned for
months, Dessoye said.

With most of the department's 10 new recruits out of training and ready for
patrols, Dessoye was able to use the officers' unfamiliar faces to his
advantage in the sting, he said. Once officers have a few months under
their belts, they become known to many of the women walking the streets,
making undercover operations more difficult.

On Aug. 19, officers deployed to South Main, Academy, South River and South
Franklin streets arrested nine women ranging in age from 22 to 49 years
old. By the end of the evening, the number of prostitution arrests for the
year had climbed to 15.

Most of the women have criminal records of minor crimes, some of them have
been picked up on multiple drug-related charges and two had been arrested
for prostitution.

A second sweep on Thursday resulted in four more arrests, pushing the total
number to 19.

Two of those women had previously been charged with prostitution.

A low-level crime, prostitution carries a minimal sentence. Not until the
third offense does the charge rise to the level of a first-degree
misdemeanor and carry the threat of significant jail time, as much as five
years.

It's often a life complicated with addiction that pushes these women out
onto the street, Dessoye says.

"Most of the girls we deal with are girls prostituting themselves just to
get enough money to get high. They live from $20 to $20."

Many of them are cocaine injectors, heroin injectors and crack users and in
the grips of powerful addictions, he said. The situation is very different
from what Dessoye combated as a member of a city vice squad in the mid to
late 1980s.

Then, Wilkes-Barre was a stop for traveling, professional prostitutes,
women who charged hundreds of dollars and were motivated by profit, he
said. They would travel across New York state and then make their way down
Interstate 81.

The problem today is "nothing compared to what it was in the past," he
said, when seeing between 30 and 40 different women working the streets on
a single night would not have been uncommon.

Dessoye couldn't venture a guess at how many prostitutes are working in
South Wilkes-Barre on any given night but called it "a limited problem in a
limited area."

That's not to diminish complaints from residents, he said. If prostitution
is affecting just one taxpayer in the city it's still a "nuisance crime"
that "absolutely needs to be addressed."

"I would not have devoted the time and money to what we did the other night
if I did not realize how important it was," Dessoye said.

Those who were arrested recently are likely to make their way back to the
streets, and if they don't there are others who will take their place.

"It seems to kind of be holding at a pattern of 'X' amount of girls."

Sexual services might only be half of what the women are offering.

"You can't look at prostitution by itself, it doesn't stand alone," he
said. Drugs, what the chief has called his department's first priority, and
prostitution go hand in hand,

"Drug enabling is the other half of what they're doing."

For money or payment in drugs, many of the women are acting as go-betweens,
interacting with dealers for those who are unfamiliar with the city's
landscape of illicit drugs.

Donna Kowalczyk, who, as part of South Wilkes-Barre's United Neighbors
Coalition, entered a plea for aid at the Aug. 9 council meeting, says the
recent bust has offered some welcome calm in the 400 block of South River
Street.

"It's been very nice and clean down here," she said of her neighborhood
after the sting. "Why can't we keep it that way?"