SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — The sex trade in broad daylight, operating in neighborhoods where people live and work, sounds like a problem in a faraway country. ABC 10News anchor Kimberly Hunt shows you a part of San Diego overrun with prostitution — making life in America’s Finest City anything but. Prostitution is so out in the open in parts of southeast San Diego that there’s no other way to describe it other than to say sex is for sale in the city.
Neighborhoods of San Diego, parts of Shelltown, Barrio Logan and Southcrest into National City look like open-air sex markets. ABC 10News is not giving exact locations to avoid attracting more activity to the affected areas.
It's so blatant, it's something you have to see to believe.
From the wee hours of the morning to noon and night, ABC 10News cameras caught prostitutes peddling sex in the middle of the street and a steady stream of johns driving through. The booming illegal sex trade has taken over neighborhoods where people live and work.
People told 10News stories of being chased with a knife and johns grabbing women and trying to pull them into their cars. They’re afraid to show their face and tell their stories out of fear of retribution. Every father, mother and business owner Hunt spoke with told her the same thing.
"This needs to stop... This needs to stop right now! We got kids. They want to play outside, and they can't," said a man who lives in the affected area.
Neighbors told Hunt they can't walk to and from their cars on the street without enduring the nuisance, intimidation or harassment that comes with this crowd.
"You see the pimps, like 10 to 20 of them, out there... Playing their music, you know, bumping and just doing their thing, laughing partying and sometimes they come and fight," another person told ABC 10News.
Business owners in Barrio Logan and Shelltown are fed up with the impact on their businesses, the safety of their employees and the conditions nearby families have to deal with.
"I feel sorry for them. Business owners can leave, but they have to deal with this everyday," one of the business owners said.
They described seeing groups of prostitutes in the middle of the street harassing people, standing in front of vehicles and even trying to open car doors during the early morning and at night.
"So difficult when you see prostitutes walking around, and you see a young lady with their baby carriage, walking down the street. You can see solicitation going on with young kids playing football in their front yard," a business owner said. "You see a school bus drive by, and it has to drive past prostitutes in order to drop the kids off. That’s nothing these kids should have to see or have to put up with, or a parent to explain what that’s all about."
This business owner also said prostitution has nearly tripled in the area since Jan. 2023, when Senate Bill 357 took effect.
"It used to be at least they were somewhat behind the scenes. They weren’t so bold. They wouldn’t block traffic, and now it’s more to see who can get noticed first in order to get picked up," they said.
The Safer Streets For All Act, in an effort to prohibit officers from confronting and arresting trans women and women of color, repealed the law that made loitering for the purpose of prostitution a crime.
San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit says the streets are not safer as a result.
"This was all predictable. We've seen shootings down there, we've seen stabbings," Chief Nisleit said. "Part of the predictable consequences of this very bad bill is now you're having a community being impacted. They don't feel safe in their own homes."
One evening in the last two weeks, ABC 10News saw this reality first hand. Our news team was behind an SDPD cruiser as it passed by prostitutes clearly walking the streets for sex.
The people our photojournalists got video of all appear to be adults. This is not a story about sex trafficking of minors, which Hunt has reported on for years with agencies working to eradicate crimes against children.
On the same night, a prostitute screamed through the car window at Hunt and our photojournalists, threatening that they better get off the street before they get "blanked up."
ABC 10News saw almost a dozen SDPD units in the area. On one corner, officers surrounded a man on the street. A half-block away, officers were near an apartment complex, but both incidents involved crimes that come with pimps carrying guns and residents being threatened.
As for the prostitutes, unless they’re caught in the act, occasionally being brought in and spending a couple of hours being booked is just the price of doing business.
"All I'm asking for is people that need to do something about it... So we can have a life," someone who lives in the area said.
The intimidation described by everyone Hunt talked to in these areas is real. As Hunt and the photojournalists drove down streets peppered with prostitutes just trying to get the pictures to show you the problem, they were followed by someone 10News believes was a pimp until they hopped on a freeway entrance and left the area.
The people living in this area are desperate. A woman who was too afraid to even talk on camera in shadow told 10News she has to get to and from her car by going past a line of pimps everyday. She says their loud music shakes the walls of her apartment at all times of the night, but if she calls police, she’s threatened.
Virtually everyone who lives in these areas said they can’t afford to move. 10News has interview requests at SDPD and the city attorney’s office, which is responsible for prosecuting the misdemeanor crimes of soliciting sex and buying sex. This situation, in the eyes of the families trying to raise their kids here, is not a victimless crime.
