Then there were the days on Esther Street when the prostitutes would jump into passing cars. In their wake, Marty Fowler remembers leaving her tidy s bungalow in the morning to find 15 to 20 used prophylactics on the curb and sidewalks. Marty Fowler and her comrades have prevailed, rallying to repulse the latest invasion of prostitutes along El Cajon Boulevard.
A police sweep last week has moved the working girls elsewhere, but there is no rest for riled residents. The community is meeting and planning. Residents turned out strong--and angry--to confront public officials Feb. There is even talk of taking out newspaper ads to publicize the names of men arrested for soliciting prostitutes. In addition, there is a growing movement to apply political pressure on city and county officials to ante up for more jail space so hookers who are arrested are incarcerated, and not sent back to the streets.
Led in part by Brian Bennett, principal of Blessed Sacrament School, this movement spawned a street demonstration against prostitution on March 1, and prompted Bennett to appear recently before a City Council committee to advocate the additional jail space.
Now Bennett and Fowler have been named to an anti-prostitution task force, an informal group that meets in living rooms to sip coffee, eat Danish and plot political strategy. People like Bennett and Fowler talk in terms of recapturing what is rightfully theirs, and they have taken matters into their own hands to shut down the prostitution trade by making the boulevard a crummy place for hookers to do business.
El Cajon Boulevard is an eclectic, sometimes funky row of convenience stores, restaurants, used-car lots, card rooms, fast-food joints, flower stands, motels, bars, strip shopping centers, food stores and small businesses. It stretches from Park Boulevard all the way east to the city limits and beyond. Driven from downtown by redevelopment, streetwalkers have found refuge on this thoroughfare that runs through Mid-City neighborhoods like North Park, Normal Heights, Kensington and East San Diego, police, residents and merchants say.
