Prostitution arrests have plunged nearly 60% along Queens’ notorious Roosevelt Avenue strip even as open street solicitation multiplies under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, local leaders say enforcement collapsed from the top.
A New York Post reporter walking Roosevelt Avenue near 90th Street last week counted nine Asian women openly turning tricks while two others worked as hostesses or managers. Ecuadorian prostitutes soon competed for the same customer’s business with priced offers for time upstairs.
NYPD figures show officers made 193 prostitution-related arrests along the corridor this year through Sept. 13, a 59% drop from 468 arrests in the same stretch of the prior year. Major crimes such as murders and shootings are down just 3% on the same roughly two-mile run through Jackson Heights and Corona, long nicknamed the “Market of Sweethearts.”
Streetwalkers solicit passersby around the clock, offering “happy ending” massages and more, often within sight of patrol cops. Customers are led into upstairs rooms in nearby two-story commercial buildings that function as illegally operating brothels by the dozens.
Former state Sen. Hiram Monserrate, now a local Democratic district leader for the area, put the blame squarely on City Hall.
“It is becoming apparent that there is less enforcement, and I think that comes from the top.”
Monserrate did not soften the assessment.
“The current formula is not working to keep our community safe. It’s a disaster. The problem has gotten worse, and this administration has done nothing to correct it.”
An anonymous city government official described the same revolving door in blunt terms: cops catch the johns, process them, and watch them reappear. “Restore, rinse, release, that’s the problem with Roosevelt Avenue. The cops catch these johns and put them away, but they pop up like whack-a-mole. Enough is enough. Someone needs to shut it down.”
A 40-year-old Manhattan customer who gave only the name “John” told the Post the market runs wide open. “I can get it done for $60 to $80,” he said, contrasting that with $200 to $300 in Manhattan. Negotiating a tryst is “super easy,” he added. “They just show up and that’s it, and when I get bored with those women, I head to Flushing.”
John laid out the price menu he hears on the strip: Chinese women charge $60 for sex and $40 for oral sex, and some will go without a condom for $100 or more. He said Latinas cost more and watch the clock more tightly; Chinese providers typically give 30 minutes. “The police are always around, but it seems like there’s nothing they can do,” he said. “The women know New York laws are lax. Many come from other states... That’s what they tell me.”
Ecuadorian prostitutes approached the reporter with concrete offers. One pitched “massages” using “three positions” for $100 over 20 minutes, with $50 of that covering a room rental nearby. Another said: “I can [give] you the hour for $300. Normally it’s just 15 minutes, but a half hour we can do it for $150. I give you four positions. We can do whatever.”
Enforcement has not vanished entirely. On July 29, John Maddox, 52, was arrested on Roosevelt Avenue near 98th Street after allegedly offering an undercover officer $20 for sex. He was charged with patronizing prostitution, pleaded not guilty, and has 12 prior arrests, including a 2024 case for criminal sale of drugs. The charge carries a potential penalty of up to a year in prison.
On June 11, Mario Sanchez, 31, was busted near 80th Street after allegedly offering an undercover cop $100 for sex. He too was charged with patronizing prostitution, pleaded not guilty, and has five prior arrests.
Those cases sit against the larger collapse in volume. The prior year, under then-Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the department ran “Operation Restore Roosevelt,” an enforcement push described as putting a major dent in the corridor’s activity. Arrest numbers from that period, 468 through the comparable window, dwarf this year’s 193.
In February 2021, Albany repealed the state statute that barred loitering for the purpose of prostitution. After that change, officers shifted attention toward traffickers, pimps, and johns rather than the street loitering itself. Sources now say the women understand the weaker tools and operate more freely in plain view.
An anonymous New York City women’s advocate said Commissioner Tisch remains committed to keeping the strip in check, but the political cover looks thinner. “I think the police commissioner is pretty committed to keeping things in check there, but I know that she probably doesn’t have the backing of the mayor the way she has under other administrations.”
Mamdani entered office this year after a record as a soft-on-crime socialist and an open supporter of decriminalizing prostitution. Community leaders now connect that stance to the visible surge and the arrest freefall.
City Hall spokesman Sam Raskin cast the mayor’s approach as balanced. Mamdani “is committed to partnering with local organizations and neighborhood residents to address conditions on Roosevelt Avenue” and is “using every tool available to the city while treating victims and survivors with the care and dignity they deserve,” Raskin said.
He added: “Our approach must therefore pair enforcement with the support and opportunity that help people build safer, more stable lives.”
Monserrate and the anonymous city official describe a different reality on the ground: less pressure from the top, a revolving door for buyers, and a corridor where open solicitation has become routine again. The arrest math is not subtle. Nearly 60% fewer prostitution-related collars, a reporter’s midday count of women working in plain sight, and priced offers delivered to a stranger on the sidewalk all point the same direction.
Taxpayers and residents who live with the strip every day are left with the gap between City Hall’s language and the numbers the NYPD itself reported. When arrests crater and the sidewalk market multiplies, the people forced to walk past it every morning already know which side is winning.
