ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512030039
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: Sex in the Streets
A neighborhood fights back
second of two parts
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
note: below
THE mood begins with the outfit. Culottes. A hint of black lace peeks from a dip in her sweater. Once she hits the street, the feeling encompasses her. For two years, not much has changed, she admits. The work is dirty, gritty, demoralizing.
As she walks Norfolk Avenue Southwest on a rainy and raw Friday night, Roseanne hums to herself between propositions. ``Nice people ride by and shake their head and I know what they're thinking about me,'' she says, ``and I want to say, `I'm not really like that.'''
No one taught her this at the Police Academy.
When the vice detective, who asked that her real name not be used, began the undercover work, her husband helped pick out her outfit. Now, acting the role of a prostitute has become just another night on the job.
About twice a year she'll pull on the garb. She doesn't don the stereotypical black-lace bustier, red hot pants and thigh-high boots. The clothing, like her role-playing, is subtle.
She paces the corner, never stopping until a car slows by her side.
"It's not hard to do," she says. "You have to put yourself in the mind-set to be able to deal with the comeback from the men. They are perverts."
She has seen progress on the streets in the past two years.
Once, she would be propositioned eight or 10 times an hour. Now, she may be approached just once an hour. "A lot of them are still riding around, but they're not so quick to stop," she said.
Gradually, prostitution has slowed in the neighborhood just west of downtown Roanoke.
The setting - wooded dead-ends, quiet culs-de-sac, hidden alleys - attracts the illicit. In this neighborhood, the city's craving for crack meets its lust for sex.
For the residents, the combination was disastrous.
Upscale customers slipped away from downtown to find sex and adventure on the wilder side of Roanoke. Crack-addicted prostitutes found it easy to barter sex for drugs, with some of the city's busiest street dealers a short distance away.
But when the problem became flagrant, the community fought back. It took residents, police and prosecutors working together to subdue the action. The struggle, some say, may never be over.
`A lot of it is just curiosity'
The fall night that Roseanne walks the neighborhood, eight men roll down their windows in hopes of a ``date."
There's a construction worker, on his way home to his wife at the end of a night shift; a recently divorced man; a convicted child molester on probation; a machine operator toking some marijuana.
So far this year, 66 men have been arrested. In the 17 years the Roanoke Police Department has been operating the stings, only one man has been charged a second time. Police can seize a customer's car on a second conviction.
The men have more to lose than the prostitutes, authorities say. Most have families, jobs, responsibilities. While many prostitutes have multiple convictions, the first arrest does act as a deterrent for the men.
Most men who were arrested said it was their first and only attempt to pick up a streetwalker. One man said he didn't know prostitution was illegal. Another said getting arrested was part of the risk. Many talked about the embarrassment and feared that their families or wives would find out.
"I think sometimes men my age want excitement," says a 54-year-old man who was charged by police. He is married and the father of two teen-age daughters.
In August, he pleaded guilty in return for a 30-day suspended jail sentence and a $500 fine.
While the arrests are part of the public record, customers would agree to speak about their experiences only if their names were not used.
"A lot of it is just curiosity," the 54-year-old says. "I've never told my wife. She'd lose all respect for me."
A real-estate agent showing him the town introduced him to the strip along Salem Avenue Southwest. Like most of the men arrested, he says he has no intention of ever returning to the neighborhood.
One cruise along the strip also was enough for a 25-year-old man who went to the neighborhood after a night of drinking on the City Market. He stopped to negotiate the price of a prostitute for himself and a friend. He got a night in jail.
"I've paid tons of money for a lawyer, court fines - it's getting near $1,000," he says. "It's left a pretty lasting impression. But I don't think what happened will help Roanoke's overall situation at all."
As he drove to the Roanoke City Health Department on Eighth Street Southwest for his court-ordered HIV test, he was approached by prostitutes, he says.
"My feeling is there will always be more people - as long as someone is on the street corner," he says.
Cities like Washington and San Francisco are grappling with similar situations.
In Northwest D.C., residents and police hit the streets together to hassle the hookers. In San Francisco, city officials have established an experimental First Offenders Program. Counseling allows johns to wipe their record clean if they attend a daylong workshop about the effects of prostitution on children and neighborhoods.
In Roanoke, authorities have focused their attention on the courts.
"Our strategy now is to show the courts the previous sanctions on prostitutes have had no effect," vice Lt. Ron Carlisle says. "We need to demonstrate to the courts that prostitution is not a victimless crime as often as it is perceived. Businesses existing in the prostitution area are affected economically. The residents' quality of life suffers. And families of the customers are at risk of being exposed to [sexually transmitted] diseases.''
It is less expensive to send repeat offenders to jail than to have them drag down the quality of life in a neighborhood, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Dennis Nagel says.
"If we say this is just prostitution and it's not worthy of jail time, then we must be willing to [accept] an explosion in prostitution and that the system is unwilling to prevent it," he says.
But jail is only a short-term answer, says General District Judge Vincent Lilley, who handled most of the latest prostitution cases during a one-day marathon court session in August.
Among the causes of prostitution are drug addiction and low self-esteem - issues that are not easily or quickly resolved. Lilley says he would rather offer rehabilitation to an individual. But while a court can mandate treatment and counseling, it cannot make a person change, he says.
"For the most part, all they're interested in is getting out and getting their next fix," Lilley says of the prostitutes. "When prosecutors offer them fines and a suspended sentence for pleading guilty, they take it. That first-offense treatment is not getting to the root of the problem."
`Had to work to pay the fines'
Karen has been arrested twice. She has been on the street only a year.
"It is an easy way of making money ... but it ain't all cotton candy and Cool Whip," says Karen, a 31-year-old prostitute who did not want her real name used.
Karen has been beaten. A broken front tooth is a reminder of the rape she survived during the spring.
"Mentally, it's a lot more stress," she says. "When you go out there, you don't know what the hell is going on. It's like going on hikes: You don't know where the snakes are, but you know they're going to be there."
Karen's hair is thick and red; her ivory skin is just beginning to show the year walking the streets. Her speech is rich and rambling - a lingering memory of her earlier years running a 1,500-acre farm.
"I've mowed yards, dug ditches, run computers," says the 31-year-old woman. "But the only thing I got out of hard work was bad health. I'd seen people living easy, and they'll probably still go to heaven."
Soon after she moved to Roanoke, she quit her job. A friend asked her if she wanted to make some extra money. She agreed, and the woman set her up on a date with a man from Martinsville. She made $110 in one night.
"It's definitely not like milking no damn cows," she says. "I said I might as well get paid for it. When he leaves, you don't have to hear about it."
She got caught two weeks after she started streetwalking. For her first prostitution conviction, she was fined $161 and spent four days in jail. This spring, she was busted again. She pleaded guilty and got a 30-day suspended sentence and a $309 fine.
But the punishment didn't make her stop; it only made her work harder.
"I had to go to work to pay the fines," Karen says, twirling a strand of hair on her index finger. "Where am I going to get that kind of money?''
Karen eventually paid off her fine. On one blustery Saturday night this fall, she again was walking a block in Southeast Roanoke, looking for a customer.
She says she can make $200 a day and turns tricks only two or three nights a week. She supplements her streetwalking income with regular customers.
She sends one-fourth of her money to her son, a toddler, who lives with her parents in the country. About half of her money goes to pay rent and buy food for herself and her boyfriend.
With what's left, she buys drugs - mostly marijuana and crack.
"That's where it can get expensive," she says. ``[But] I ain't going to be no crack whore. I eat and stay healthy."
Moving on or getting out?
The prostitutes now talk about moving their trade to Marshall Avenue Southwest, or Eighth Street near the Health Department. Others can be found walking underneath the viaduct off the City Market and across the railroad tracks on Third Street Southeast.
Some talk about getting out.
Three months after the convictions and the jail sentences, several of the prostitutes gradually returned. Recently, three worked the corner near David Clement's house. A couple of nights later, undercover detectives arrested six prostitutes. Among them was one woman who had been charged 12 times.
Clement and his family cannot escape it; they are buying the two-story house they live in on Eighth Street Southwest.
"I think the police are trying to stay on it," Clement says. "But this is just a breeding ground for them."
LENGTH: Long : 188 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. & 2. MIKE HEFFNER Staff A Roanoke undercover viceby CNBofficer posing as a prostitute attracts a customer (above). A man's
$20 is taken into evidence; e was caught soliciting for
prostitution. color
3. MIKE HEFFNER/Staff A man signs a summons during a Roanoke Police
sting operation in late September.
4. map - area of prostitution. STAFF
5. chart - Prostitution arrests. STAFF