A California Republican official bashed a San Francisco lawmaker’s push toward legalizing prostitution and called it a detriment to police who attempt to arrest human traffickers.
San Francisco County Supervisor Hillary Ronen said she supports creating a red light zone to decriminalize sex work and plans to introduce the resolution Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reported. This comes after police closed down an area of the Mission District to traffic to curb extensive prostitution there.
“What sane person would argue that the solution to human trafficking is to make it easier?” said Assemblyman James Gallagher (R).
“We need to identify traffickers, arrest them, and put them behind bars for a long time, but under California law, human trafficking isn’t considered a violent crime, so traffickers are able to benefit from early release programs,” he said.
Last year Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed a bill that decriminalized the intent to engage in prostitution. San Francisco residents have since seen a spike in such activity, prompting the street closure.
State Sen. Scott Wiener (D) was one of the bill’s authors. He said the measure was meant to combat arrests based on how people look, not if someone is actually committing a crime.
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“The police’s hands are not tied,” Wiener said. “They can arrest people for soliciting, they can cite vehicles that are stopped in the middle of the street, they can arrest ‘johns,’ they can arrest pimps.”
On Jan. 11, which was National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, Assemblyman Joe Patterson (R) introduced a bill that made sex trafficking a violent felony under the state’s three-strikes law.
“Everything wrong about California criminal law is laid out in our statutes pertaining to human trafficking — currently, trafficking children for sexual purposes is not considered a violent felony,” Patterson said.
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Gallagher supports the Patterson bill, saying that teenage girls will continue to suffer in San Francisco and elsewhere because Democrats have a “pro-criminal agenda.”
“Limiting police’s ability to investigate prostitution took away an important tool to go after pimps, and the suffering that’s playing out on the streets is the predictable result,” he said.
